Terrordrome: Rise of the Boogeymen (Video Game)
Developed by Huracan Studios
Not classified by ESRB
Available for free from website
There’s been some debate on the internet recently about the validity of Terrordrome: Rise of the Boogeymen. I vaguely remember hearing about the game some time between 1 and 3 years ago, and I immediately lumped it in with M.U.G.E.N. as a novelty internet project. With graphics that look like a FMV game file got corrupted and more copyright infringement than a Carlos Mencia stand-up special, I saw two futures for the game. The first option was that it would share the fate of many fan Sonic remasterings and be killed before it had a chance to breathe. The second was that it would be so comically bad that no one took any time to notice it existed, and it would go by quietly existing for a diehard few. I never imagined that the game would gain any real fanbase. A swarm of angry tweets and FB comments would prove me wrong, as the game seems to have a large following despite all odds.
I grew up in an era of gaming where game mods would in equal measure add %400 new content and blow up your computer. I cannot tell you how many times I had to reinstall Red Alert 2 before I got the “Mooman’s Rule” mod to work, and you might as well try to learn Sanskrit before thinking you can get multiple mods to run simultaneously. Looking at the cheap site design and low-res screenshots, I was certain that the whole thing was about to delete my system32 folder.
While a functioning game, it is certainly the product of fans rather than professional developers. The controls are tricky, and features minimum. It’s certainly a notch above flash games, some of which have crawled their way onto Steam, but it doesn’t at all feel like a finished product. There’s a bare bones story mode that laughably tries to tie all the characters together, which I do not mean derisively. It is campy and doesn’t take itself close to seriously, and just kind of expects you to be along for the ride.
Combat wise, the game is surprisingly functional. Grabs, blocks, high and low attacks form the basis of combat, with special attacks filling out the movelist. There are supermoves that can be executed when you charge an energy bar, and every round you have two charges of a special consumable attack. These range between characters, but generally serve as a ranged disable to set up for combos.
What actually impressed me about the game was the character variety. The 14 character roster is all comprised of memorable horror faces, but this is a free game using the M.U.G.E.N. engine, so I was expecting every character to be a half baked button masher. To my surprise, the characters all have personality. Jason moves slower, but has bursts of murderous speed in his specials. He switches between iconic series weaponry, and focuses on devastating melee to dominant. Ash Williams has a good mix of charges, pushes, and midrange. The Candyman has a number of displacement moves that allows him to ambush you and close the distance. It isn’t what you will get in a mainstream fighter, but was close enough that it impressed me.
There are definitely negatives to the game. Between the three game modes—Story, Versus, and Training—you can see pretty much everything the game has to offer in a couple of hours. The story mode is pretty tedious, as it consists of 13 rounds where you have to beat every other character in the game. For your efforts, you are rewarded with a series of still frames with poorly translated Russian to English text. I know the studio is probably two dudes from Russia, but the babble that comes out is “All Your Base” status. Playing through all 13 fights over and over again gets repetitive fast, so I doubt it will last anyone more than a couple of playthroughs.
There are some minor design bugs too that I’m sure would have been smoothed out with some money. You have to sit through the introductory cutscene every time you want to exit the story mode or change modes, which gets old at about the second time you see it. The training mode can’t be extended past the standard 99 second rounds, so you have to go back to the character select over and over if you want to practice.
In terms of gameplay, the hit boxes can be a bit inconsistent. There are random invulnerability frames during the performance of certain moves, which can lead to unpredictable ranged exchanges. The time between when you are downed and when you are considered up and can be hit again is a bit too long to facilitate fast combat. It also does that bullshit fighting game difficulty of old were later enemies can just pull off absurd strings of moves that no person could possibly input. If the final boss is Pinhead, then god help you, because you are about to be subjected to a chain-spam-teleport-grab-combo hell worthy of the cenobites.
That all being said, this is probably the best bad game I’ve played in a while. It’s fundamentally entertaining, and there’s only so much you can hate on a game whose opening disclaimer is “this game is free, if you paid for it you were ripped off.” You can’t really trash a game with that kind of self aware honesty. What I take away from my time with Terrordrome: Rise of the Boogeymen is a profound desire to see what kind of product would come out if there was money behind it. The concept is awesome, and even this horribly broken rendition is still fun enough to recommend. It won’t ever happen, but if all the licenses could come together and back a true horror fighter, it would be a fanboy’s dream come true. As it stands, it’s a fun diversion. It certainly is a real game.
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Categorized:Horror Gaming Reviews
