Marlow Briggs: The Mask of Death - God of what now?

Marlow Briggs: The Mask of Death makes no bones about what its supposed to be, it quite clearly is an indie-ish take on God of War, a budget price attached along with it too. In all honestly, I was expecting a rather 'eh' game that either was a little dull, or a game that would try too hard to be wacky and silly. Instead, I got this incredibly fun gem of a game.

First thing that hit me was the graphics, while they don't exactly hit all the right high notes AAA titles do, they definitely do the job well and at times, manage to look quite stunning with sunbeams breaking through jungle, explosions popping out well and the various areas being full of detailing that you wouldn't normally expect from a lower budgeted title.

 

The plot is pretty simple, boyfriend visits girlfriend at work, girlfriend is working for a crazed lunatic who is trying to take over the world, boyfriend is killed and comes back to life with a strange mayan-esque voodoo-esque scythe and proceeds to kick ass everywhere. Yep, the plot is pretty simple but really, there's no real need for a massive amazing plot, where this game shines is the gameplay.

The core gameplay is actually quite basic, one button for light attacks, one for heavy and another to shoot projectiles. There's no real complexity here which may turn off some, but for others it also means that each and every fight flows easily without any real awkward breaks in combat. The enemies manage to be varied enough to keep a decent flow until near to the end and the four different weapon-styles help keep things from becoming too stale either.

Where things begin to fall down however is the platforming side of the game, occasionally the game throws you into high-speed platforming sections which just don't work thanks to games engine not exactly being suited for these, a great example being a log-chase sequence down a river, getting repeated gameovers right at the start of the level because somehow during the cutscene and level transition, Marlow has fallen off the logs right from the get-go, throwing a 'Game Over' before you can even do anything to prevent it. The bosses too are not exactly on the memorable side, often being rather easy and simplistic compared to the mass-enemy brawls throughout the rest of the game.

That said, these issues don't manage to wreck the game completely, damage it? Yes, however it still manages to be an incredibly fun and silly title and at the small asking price (£3.99 at the time of writing) it also manages to be one that wont murder your wallet either.