Review: Dusty Revenge

Review: Dusty Revenge

MADE IN SINGAPORE

Revenge is a kind of wild justice, said British author and philosopher Francis Bacon.

And in this 2-D side-scrolling action platformer game by local developer

PD Design Studio, you play Dusty - an angry rabbit with super long ears, hell bent on revenge.

Dusty had gone home one night to find his house burned down and his wife, Daisy, dead.

As he carried Daisy's body out of the inferno, he saw the culprits escaping with an artefact left behind by Dusty's father. The only thing on Dusty's mind is to find the killers and bring them to justice.

The first thing that strikes you about this game - from the cutscenes to the gameplay - is its excellent artwork.

Everything, whether it is Dusty or the environment, looks hand-drawn with exquisite details.

The linear storyline will take you to fight in several settings - from the Wild West towns to moving trains.

At the end of each stage, you will meet a boss whom you have to defeat before you can move on. These bosses can be quite difficult to beat.

Thankfully, Dusty has a repertoire of attacks at his disposal. He can jump, slide and roll to dodge attacks. He can also deliver light and heavy melee attacks or fire pistols and shotguns.

You can use the keyboard to deliver these attacks or you can mix it up with a mouse.

Overall, controls are intuitive and you can string attack combinations easily. However, the game introduces new foes, which forces you to learn to use new attack combinations.

Along the way, you will be joined by Rondel, a bear wielding a grenade launcher; and McCoy, a sniper hound.

Both have their own agendas in helping Dusty's quest for revenge. But they prove to be useful in both battle and platforming challenges.

Rondel can take out a few targets at once or destroy big obstacles, while McCoy helps to take out enemy snipers. But switching to these characters leaves Dusty vulnerable to attack, so you need to time their use carefully.

While it is a visually beautiful game, the audio leaves much to be desired, with poor voice acting that does not evoke Dusty's anger. The soundtrack is also repetitive.

Also, the platforming elements do get boring after a while, with similar traps and techniques.

Depending on how good you are, you probably need about six to eight hours to finish the game. After you have exacted your revenge, you can only increase the difficulty level to replay the game. Alas, there is also no cooperative or multiplayer mode.

Dusty Revenge might look unpolished in its mechanics when compared with the competition. But overall, the game looks gorgeous and is fun to play.

By Trevor Tan

Rating: 7/10

US$9.90 (S$12.30), (PC via Desura.com, version tested); $12.98 (Mac via Apple App Store)

Action Platformer


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