Quick Review: Chainsaw Warrior

(I was supposed to post this last Wednesday, but work got the better of me. Sorry!)

Like Ash from Evil Dead? I’m in! Mowing down level after level of enemies… This is gonna be awesome. …wait, what’s that… Cards???

Chainsaw Warrior was created by Auroch Digital and released on October 7th, 2013.

"Sir, we'e offering you a Die Hard With Zombies."
"I'm in. No questions asked."

In the Warhammer universe (a world I know nothing about, for the record), in the year 2032, experiments in spatial warping have led to the creation of a Doom- or Mist-style portal that’s now spitting out zombies, mutants and demons into Manhattan. Science-fiction had warned us! The Army was unsuccessful in its attempts to stop the threat, so they go fetch an ex-soldier turned cyborg. He will go into the building where the portal was opened and make his way up the floors, killing everything on the way, and take down the Darkness.

Here's an idea: If you want to open portals to
worlds of monsters, maybe... just... don't, y'know.

Rolling for stats scares me in tabletop games.
I know my crummy luck will screw me over.

This is actually a virtual version of a single-player board game originally released in 1987. Dice, a Deck of equipment, two Decks for the game itself. You start off by choosing a difficulty level (Easy, Medium or Hard), then roll your stats. For the record, the only difference between difficulty settings is the leniency; you get better stats on Easy or Medium because you roll more dice and can thus use the best rolls you get, and receive extra points in other stats. On Hard, you get what you get, and that’s it (DnD 1st Edition purists ahoy). Roll for Endurance (Chainsaw Warrior’s resistance to radiation and venom), wounds (Max HP), ability in hand-to-hand combat and marksmanship, and then an extra skill. Then, roll for a number of points you can use to equip weapons and items.

It does capture the feel of a tabletop game.
Several pages of rules to figure out how the damn thing works.

From then on, the game is simple: You must defeat the Darkness, the boss monster hidden in the second deck, but you must first go through the first deck and its 54 cards. Flip a card, react. Is it a zombie? A chaos agent? A pack of rats? A mutant? Whatever. You can shoot first to kill from a distance, depending on your marksmanship skill. If that fails, you move on to hand-to-hand combat. Yet again, everything is done through die rolls, so if the Random Number God decide to spite you on that playthrough, there’s little you can do. On top of that, there are random traps in the decks as well, which you must defend against. Sometimes, you'll get empty hallways or equipment refills.

Roll over 3? I can do that.
My odds are pretty high.

Did I mention that you have exactly one hour to complete the mission and each turn takes 30 seconds in-universe? Have a reminder that a) you must beat the first deck and its 54 cards, and then b) kill the Darkness, located randomly within the second deck. Both times I played, I didn’t lose by dying to enemies; I lost because I timed out. Also, both times, I could deal with most threats, but beats me why, the fucking mutants just had luck pouring out of their asses with their die rolls and stalled me into long combats. Even when I had the right equipment to fight them. And that’s on Easy!

Augh, I HATE those fucking things!

At least you have a lot of options
for equipment.

I guess having the virtual version is a little more practical than the original tabletop one, for plebs like me who’ve never played tabletop RPGs at least – the game explains everything and does all of the calculations. However, it’s all there is to do here, so the replayability feels limited. Sure, you can experiment with different sets of equipment or try the harder difficulties, but that’s about it. Although, to be fair, the game does hook you in with a cool comic book-styled intro explaining the story.

I don’t think it’s worth the 4.99$ price tag (I’d be more inclined to pay that or more for the tabletop version), but it’s out there if you want to give it a try...