Quick Review: The Deadly Tower of Monsters

It’s a miracle that this director hasn’t been struck with half a quadrillion lawsuits. Or that he somehow gets to commentate on his own films. He sounds like the type who’d produce so many bombs his career would be a complete minefield.

Without the "commentary" both audio and
at the bottom of the screen, this would be a
pretty basic action game.

Developed by ACE Team, published by SEGA and released on January 19th, 2016, The Deadly Tower of Monsters is the crown jewel of director Dan Smith’s filmography, originally released to theaters in the ‘70s, and he was brought back on to provide a commentary track for the DVD re-release. The “game” is basically the film, in which you control the heroes as they climb the titular tower to face off against the Emperor of Planet Gravoria. The characters are Dick Starspeed, a regular human who crashed on the hostile planet; Scarlet Nova, the Emperor’s daughter now rebelling against him; and Robot, Dick’s co-pilot, who gets rebuilt but was never given a name. Now, let the film play out while Smith comments, with every trope of filmmaking lampooned to Hell and back.

Not pictured: The stilted, shaky movements
done by the stop-motion King Kong.

Being able to shoot down from a ledge is an
interesting meahcnic, but it also causes
some headaches from time to time.

There’s a lot of controls to this one: WASD to move, aim with the mouse, left- and right-click to attack with the melee and ranged weapons respectively, swapping between weapons with Q and E (you gather various weapons throughout but can only carry two of each type). Press Space to jump, F to change the view to look downwards by a ledge (enemies may come from there), Left-Shift to do a rolling dodge, Z to activate a special move (each playable character later gets their own unique ability), C to teleport back to a ledge if you fell off it, and M to open the teleportation console. You can swap between unlocked characters at certain stations, and you can also use other stations scattered around the Tower to change your weapon loadout, upgrade the weapons using the Gold and some resources you can gather, or upgrade your character. The method to do the latter is a bit weird, though; you can only upgrade the astronauts by completing the in-game missions. For each mission completed, one more upgrade step is unlocked.

Can you see the strings?

The developers went the distance to make the game look like a cheap B-movie production. You can see strings on flying enemies, several others are explicitly said to be people in suits, and then some others are animatronics or stop-motion (such as the big ants or the Mega-Gorilla that serves as a boss). The costumes are lame even by the standards of the in-game film’s ‘70s release date. And that Smith guy? He’s got the arrogance and the budget of James Cameron, but the level of talent of Tommy Wiseau.

If you don't obsessively search the map for the
golden cogs, there's a lot of weapons you won't
be able to upgrade.

Pretty fine game with nice gameplay and a very clever idea, but not without its flaws. The soundtrack is pretty forgettable in my opinion. Aiming can get pretty tricky with your crosshair often being hard to find, and the camera is frequently a bother. The framerate could also spell trouble, to the point where it could make some parts impassable until you lower the settings – one glaring example is the treadmills that only Scarlet Nova can cross with her unique special ability, which is impossible if the framerate makes it so that Scarlet cannot run far enough to reach the other side.

No word on how they managed to do THAT
effect.

Come on... come on... get through... Fu-!
Why the Hell can't she go all the way to the
end of the goddamn treadmill? She's supposed
to be able to!

Although the concept of this game being a film getting commentated by its director is nice, ultimately the jokes will mainly appeal to movie buffs who can laugh at the absurdity of everything that supposedly took place during filming. At least the low-budget sci-fi pastiche hits all the right notes, with a style that mimics the special effects of the time; I wouldn’t go as far as to call it style over substance, but it didn’t leave as much of an impression on me as I hoped it would. It’s not bad, though; I felt it was average, but I like the idea. If a top-down beat’em up claiming to be a movie sounds like something you’d like, then, by all means, get this one.

The Deadly Tower of Monsters is available for 14.99$ USD.