Chop

Genre: Action-Platformer / Arcade

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local)

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Review:

Chop is a Platformer with Arcade sensibilities where players play as one of a variety of ‘roided-out fighters in a battle arena looking to bloodily slaughter each other in fast-paced combat.

At its core, the idea behind Chop is fairly simple. You control one of four different characters who each has a unique special ability, as well as a double-jump and a dash attack, as well as an ability to stick to walls and ceilings. With these abilities, players confront each other in one of three game modes – a straight-up deathmatch, a mode where players must take out an enemy and then reach a goal alive to score a point, and a mode where players take out enemies and collect the numerous skulls that drop from their body and take those to a goal to secure them.

There is some good gameplay underneath all of this that could make for a solid party game, but unfortunately it’s hampered by numerous problems.

Firstly, these characters are awkward to control, with an odd control scheme that the game doesn’t let you alter. In addition, the way characters automatically stick to surfaces is disorienting and can mess up the way you jump, especially with how big the characters are compared to the arena they fight in, making bumping into walls fairly frequent. Also, the arenas themselves often flip the screen upside-down, adding even more confusion and disorientation to an already frenetic game for really no good reason.

The graphics in this game aren’t anything special, either. The absurdly-muscular and kinda’ gross character designs are not only not particularly endearing, but overly busy to the point where they make it so it’s not always clear what they’re doing. I suspect that if characters weren’t color-coded, it might be easy to lose track of them in the battle.

All of these issues are frustrating, because I feel like Chop had some potential. There’s some good opportunity for fast-paced combat here, but all of the game’s problems mean that while this game has moments of great, frenetic fun, they’re wedged between far too many moments of frustration and confusion.

tl;dr – Chop is an arena-based Action-Platformer that has up to four muscular characters in a bloody battle to the death. While this has its moments of fun, the game has far too many problems getting in the way, from awkward controls to poor design choices. Ultimately, it’s a game that had promise, but not one you’ll likely want to buy.

Grade: C+

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