Obey Me Review on Xbox

Obey Me is a co-operative 3D holypunk brawler. Use astral weapons and your hound from hells powers to destroy your enemies in unique and brutal ways, as you journey to unravel a world-shattering conspiracy.

The premise of the game is simple, you take control of Venessa who is accompanied by her faithful companion Monty the houndhell. As a low level subordinate of Satan’s brother Ammon, you start of by taking on your first job for him by killing a previous employee which then slowly deteriorates into all out….hell.

The game has 12 levels of carnage, supports co-op play and has unlockable skins.

Gameplay

Every chapter starts of with your character Venessa and her trusty devil pooch, Monty exploring the level around them collecting codex’s, killing enemies, collecting their souls and trying their best to level up before getting to a boss fight.

I will say now that this is a game that starts off slow, but as you progress, things get more challenging, more technical and more fun. The reason I say this is that the first level leads you into a false sense of security, with you barely taking a scratch and an overall feeling of being underwhelmed with your weapons/powers in general combat. This is here to introduce you to the games mechanics, but because of this slow approach you may think this is just a general hack n slash game.

This could not be further from the truth, as you will soon learn that the varied enemies each have their own pattern of attacks that you will need you to judge on countering rather than blindly mashing the attack button. Don’t get me wrong, you can do that, however if you use games combo attacks and powers wisely, you will soon see enemies go down faster.

This will also help you get a better rating when you complete the many battles, which in turn then helps give you a better overall grade at the end of the level. It has a similar system to Devil May Cry in which you get a nice overlay telling you how well your fight was i.e rubbish or super slayer. 

To help you get the best rating possible, there is a nice selection of weapons and powers you can use in a bid to kill your enemies. Vanessa through the progression of the story can pick up 4 weapons, each with their own unique skill tree. These can be upgraded by spending shards obtained while playing the game, allowing you to unlock alternative attacks and combos.

Switching between these weapons can be done on the fly and provide some interesting attacks, like pulling in an enemy for a flurry of punches to finish him off with a huge hammer. They contrast each other perfectly and near the end of the game, switching becomes a joy and a necessity. Monty also has his own unique powers which come from the different forms he can take, 3 in all. And again each of these have its own unique attacks and skill tree. They work perfectly and have some great effects like shooting laser bullets to throwing up bile to damage enemies in a wide area.

In single player mode, you only control Vanessa and her attacks, with Monty being controlled by an AI that cycles though his powers whilst attacking your foes. You can control however, what doggy form you wish Monty to be and in turn can control an area attack based on that form.

What’s great here is that each forms power can be used to chain your attacks to provide a more powerful attack, so keeping an eye on what Monty and the power he is using is essential.  It’s a shame you can’t Swap to control Monty as this would have been ideal, however a local second player can join you and do just that. Thanks to the rubber-band mechanic, you will never get lost when playing together either.

Once you have collected enough souls represented by bars underneath your health, you can also use your ultimate. This fuses you and Monty together to create a new powerful form and provide attacks that do a huge amount of damage whilst also replenishing your health. I have many a time used this ability to keep me from death and gain some much needed health, though it is my recommendation to try and save up enough bars to use for the bosses.    

The bosses in the game are nicely varied and immense fun, but challenging in the own way. This is because they all have a completely different attack styles with some shoot homing orbs and others calling in minions, so no singular attack will work on the same one. This means you are going to have to use each of your weapon abilities and doggy forms to its fullest, to work out how to take down these titans. Thankfully there is a checkpoint just before, so should you die and you will, you don’t have to trudge though the level to get back to the boss in question.

The one area I did have some issues with was the control system as it felt a little clunky in landing the hits where i wanted. Many a time Id start of a combo of hits only to finish hitting thin air in the opposite direction. Now whilst not a deal breaker it can be a little frustrating when there are swaths of enemies on the screen at once. Maybe increasing the hitbox might help this item and can be dropped In a later patch.

Graphics

The games art style has nice bright shaded look, with levels being drenched in colour showing off mood lighting in dark alleys or cancer like pusses covering an a sewage area. Each level looks like it being taken out of a comic book and the visual do sell this well. The bestiary Is a great visual treat and the in-game menu’s do show off a superb red and black look, that works beautifully. The overall level design themselves is very much corridor based with small areas opening up for those typical enemy ambush. Also dotted around is a plethora of varied traps that in conjunction with enemies can ramp up the difficulty when you lease want it to.

Unfortunately there is no map, so whilst these levels are small, you can find yourself missing some collectables by getting lost. Between the levels are cartoon strips to tell the overall story, and this graphic look and works really well as a nice visual break up. 

I did however, find that there was some framerate drops and the visual glitches like my character to continue punching when I’ve stopped. This looks like it may have been sorted though as a patched dropped when reviewing.

Sound

The music here is very mood orientated with its enthesis to be on the general attacks as the main source of sound. But when it does appear it ranges from almost cathedral like tones ramped up to an almost grunge pop music for bosses. 

The general sounds like your characters movements, explosions or general attack sounds are top notch and do help you feel like there is a weight behind your powers. There is superb voice delivery in the game that help sells the quirky friendship between dog and owner and their witty banter really brings the characters to life.

Verdict

This leads me onto the rating of the game:-

Now I rate games in order of, avoid, on sale, great purchase and must own. My rating for Obey Me is "Great Purchase".

This game starts slow by ramps up nicely and with a difficulty that I never found to hard to accomplish, and gave me joy to play. It’s a fun title that has some surprising depth, if you stick with it whilst bashing enemies and listening to funny conversations with your dog.

The game is currently priced on Xbox at £15.74 or approx $20, and depending on skill and patience would give you about 10 hours worth of gameplay to potentially clear all the stages. With a co-op mode and retained experience and powers for playing harder levels, you could easily double that.

Is this a perfect brawler of a game, no, but what it does have it does well, and for me at least was a fun and enjoyable experience that will get me to keep an eye out of what future releases the developer produces. Oh did I mention it also has a comic based on it too?