- Chad Myers
Game Review #261: Riddled Corpses EX (Nintendo Switch)
Reviewer: Chad M.
Developer: COWCAT
Publisher: COWCAT
Category: Arcade, Action, Role-Playing
Release Date: 03.02.2019
Price (as time of review): $9.99
Buy Riddled Corpses EX from the Nintendo Switch eShop here.
Zombies Are Moving In On The eShop
There is no shortage of twin-stick shooters on the Switch eShop, and I feel, just like with TV, the gaming industry gets a slew of zombie-themed releases—with quite few making their way to Switch. The latest I’m set to try out is Riddled Corpses EX, from the great team over at COWCAT. Originally released in 2015 on PC by developers Diabolical Mind, the game has been remastered for the port to first Vita and PS4, and now Switch, in which they added a story and a few other things.
The story is fairly simple, with a bunch of scientists looking for a way to rid the world of evil, but end up opening a portal from hell, unleashing evil in the purest form to wash the slate clean—and by slate, I mean the whole damn world. You play as the protagonist Jon—or one of the other 5 unlockable characters—who goes around mowing down undead and looking for survivors in the post-apocalyptic world. Not the most original, but if you’re a zombie fan. you know the story lines are a little thin in that department.
Gold Bars, Bullets & Blood
So there are three main modes to play through in this twin-stick side-scrolling scooter, with Story Mode being the main mode. You start off with one character (Jon) taking on waves of zombies. As you kill the zombies and blow up explosives around you, like cars and barrels, you’ll acquire gold that they drop. This makes the game a grind fest, and for my tastes, not in a bad way. It was so much fun!
As you stack gold, you can head back into the menu after you die—which you’ll do a lot—to then buy upgrades for you character, or pay to unlock other characters that have different attributes, but also have different special abilities; for example, there are characters who draw the gold in so you don’t miss any, and some that double the amount of every gold piece you get. Then to upgrade each of them costs gold, so if you wanted to unlock everyone, it’s going to take some grinding; and to max everything out is going to take a while.
Each level, you fight through waves of the undead that evolve and change along the way, but as each wave is defeated, the screen will scroll on in a linear fashion until all waves are defeated, and then you’ll face a boss. This is where its gameplay becomes interesting. Like the game Geometry Wars, it goes from twin-stick shooter to all out bullet hell when you reach the bosses. The boss fights are epic in scale and in fun factor, though when so much is happening and the bullets are flying it can be easy to lose sight of your character, so I wish they were more pronounced or easier to see when the poop hits the fan.
The second mode, Arcade Mode, is similar to Story Mode, except they remove the story, and the progression of your character is done within the game, with them naturally leveling up. So, though you can choose later levels once they’ve been unlocked, I’d recommend against it, as you’ll need that extra time to build up your character if you intend on lasting.
Survival Mode is exactly what it sounds like, and it’s a humbling experience. The characters you unlock and level up from Story Mode are used here, so going in with a level 2 character is a quick death sentence. Even with a character who is leveled up quite bit, it was still very tough, though it’s worth it as you work to climb the online leaderboards. Speaking of survival being tough, that can be said for the game in its grinding entirety, as it is very challenging.
You can pick up clocks that can be used to freeze time and dynamite that will destroy almost everything on screen. To lessen the burden of killing all these undead baddies by your lonesome you can bring in a friend to help in two-player couch-co-op. The co-op really adds to the fun, but I only wish there was an option for online co-op.
Audio & Visuals
The soundtrack available is the original and newly cut for the EX version. I mostly played the original, and I like it quite a bit. It was pretty catchy and wasn’t intrusive, which is important when playing something over and over and not getting annoyed. I enjoyed the art style with the retro-style characters and zombies, but the bosses are the clear winner in design. The level design, however, just felt copy/pasted with a new coat of paint.
It’s A Wrap!!!
As you walk the streets or cruise through the desert killing zombies and other monsters, we quickly see this game is a lot of fun and is extremely challenging. There are a few things that hold it back from being truly great, but as it stands, I can easily recommend you adding Riddled Corpses EX to your collection.
Score: 8/10
Buy Riddled Corpses EX from the Nintendo Switch eShop here.
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*Review Code Provided by COWCAT