November is a pretty weak month as far as new game releases are concerned, or at least as far as the ones I care about are concerned. Fortunately, I have Microsoft’s Game Pass for another 23 days thanks to the stingy PR people behind The Outer Worlds, and there are a bunch of games on there that I’ve missed out on for one reason or another. Even better—I’m not under any kind of obligation to finish them, or even make an effort if I stop having fun. With that in mind, I’m going to spend a decent chunk of November digging into these games. First up is Dead Cells, which I downloaded before The Outer Worlds and started playing while waiting for it to install. Dead Cells was so good that I couldn’t pry myself away even after that game’s install had completed. I actually passed on requesting a key for this one, initially because it was in early access (which inevitably becomes a whole thing) and then later because I was busy. That was probably a mistake. Dead Cells is utter chaos in the best sense.

“Roguelite metroidvania” isn’t a description that piques my interest all that much, to be perfectly honest. It feels like 95% of indie games these days use the same descriptors. We’ve reached the point where it might be easier to list the indie games that aren’t roguelites and/or metroidvanias.

It’s the fluidity of Dead Cells that sells it, though. Your horizontal movement is incredibly fast, and while your jumping ability only launches you up about half as high as you’d expect, ledges are very forgiving about how close you need to be to climb up. There are also ropes and scaffolding, with some stages expanding vertically rather than horizontally.

Dead Cells is a good game, then. That doesn’t change the fact that those who gave it a 9/10 or 10/10 are out of their minds.

It’s insane how modern reviewers get so blinded by good gameplay that they become totally oblivious to the not-so-good things. For one thing, your movement can be incredibly slippery, and oodles of overwhelming combat effects can make it difficult to tell whether you’ve successfully made it to the non-shield side of some enemies. I also encountered situations where my dodge didn’t work for some reason, which I’m entirely comfortable blaming on the Xbox One’s subpar hardware. And while there are some upgrades that allow you to start each subsequent attempt through Dead Cells‘ stages more empowered than the last, the system is grindy and each playthrough is very same-y; the randomization doesn’t change things around as much as I’d hoped, and the randomized weapon drops can make or break your playthrough.

Despite being hooked for a few hours, the repetition begins to wear away at the magic, so it’s unlikely that I’ll bother to finish this one. Still, Dead Cells is one of the better roguelites/metroidvanias that I’ve played, and I could see myself getting pulled back in a few more times to try again.

Exploring Game Pass: Dead Cells is pretty good first appeared on Killa Penguin