A City Sleeps review: Bullet purgatory
PC, Mac
A City Sleeps marks a bold new direction for developer Harmonix. After spending the last several years working on the big-budget Rock Band and Dance Central franchises, Harmonix is now scaling back its internal studio culture, forming small independent teams within the company to encourage new gameplay concepts that can be fleshed out quickly.
A City Sleeps is the first project to launch in the wake of this major shift for the studio. While it doesn't require any musical instrument peripherals to play, the finished product retains much of Harmonix's signature charm, skillfully implementing rhythm-driven gameplay elements in the context of a side-scrolling, arcade-style shoot-'em-up. A City Sleeps succeeds on many fronts, but its short length and uneven difficulty curve make it a tough prospect even for hardcore shooter fans.
In A City Sleeps, players control Poe, a "dream exorcist" who saves people from endless nightmares by slaying their inner demons. Poe's adventure unfolds in the context of a bullet-hell shooter, challenging players to navigate endless waves of neon-colored bullets that fill the screen at all times. It has a similar feel to Cave's 2010 Xbox 360 release Deathsmiles, another game that pits human characters against impossible bullet-dodging odds. Like Deathsmiles, your character in A City Sleeps is only vulnerable in a small glowing icon at her center – shots that make contact with this weak spot deal damage, but all other bullets will pass by harmlessly.
Unlike many of its arcade-born predecessors, A City Sleeps lets players aim their shots using a twin-stick setup. This gives you finer control over where your shots are headed, but the limited spread of your default weapon makes it very difficult to aim at faraway enemies when you're dodging incoming hordes of bullets. Even if you're a bullet-hell veteran, the dual-analog setup presents a unique challenge, and it takes some practice to master.
Players can augment their firepower by using "idols" (contextless bits of architecture and other ephemera) that appear throughout the game's dreamy backdrops. Insert one of Poe's collected ghost familiars into an idol and you'll trigger helpful effects. The "Mercy" ghost causes idols to release health-restoring power-ups, while the "Anger" ghost turns idols into enemy-targeting turrets. There are multiple idol types that trigger different effects, and you'll often need to juggle and rearrange your powers to deal with incoming enemy waves. This mechanic has the potential to burden and complicate gameplay, but a time-slowing feature allows players to manage background idols at their leisure, aiding the process greatly.
Poe is also equipped with a powerful sword attack that slices up enemies when they approach melee range. Hack up enough creatures with your blade and you'll charge a screen-clearing super move that cleaves through minor enemies and does major damage to bosses – a twist that recalls Treasure's Radiant Silvergun, and introduces a similarly executed risk/reward element.
True to Harmonix's house style, A City Sleeps features gameplay driven by a background music track. While you can move your character freely, your shots don't travel across the screen at a consistent rate; instead, they follow irregular rhythms, melodies, and other backing musical elements. Enemy attacks and icon powers are also tied to the background music, and you'll often need to track multiple on-screen elements at once in order to survive the constant onslaught. A typical scene will find Poe lobbing a stream of bullets at nightmarish bug creatures while dodging bright pink lasers accompanied by a vibrato-infused musical flourish. It's very aesthetically pleasing, and the game's visual elements mesh well with its audio backdrop.
This approach helps set A City Sleeps apart from traditional shooters. If you're familiar with how the on-screen action maps to the backing rhythm in a particular level segment, you can fire off a volley of shots, dash to the other side of the screen to inflict melee damage on an enemy before it can retaliate, then race back to the safety of a Mercy-powered icon in time for a health boost. Pulling this off in the middle of a heated battle is an exhilarating rush, and it's immensely satisfying to manipulate the game's musical elements in your favor.
Since each stage features a different background music track, your shots don't always behave predictably. I took damage on many occasions because my desired attacks didn't match up to the backing beat, leaving me defenseless. At one point, a minor enemy killed me right before a checkpoint even though it was in melee range. It turns out that your sword attacks are also tied to the backing rhythm, so depending on the background music track's current position, you may end up dry-firing for several frustrating moments before the game will let you squeeze a shot off.
While it's admirable that A City Sleeps attempts to merge rhythm elements with traditional shoot-'em-up gameplay, the result proves too unpredictable and unwieldy for a genre that hinges on precise movement and crisp controls. Unlike many shooters, players are stuck with analog input for movement, and your character control feels slippery when it should offer pin-point precision. The dash mechanic is similarly flawed, frequently teleporting you far beyond your intended target and sending you hurtling into dangerous territory with a skidding halt. The lack of invincibility frames also means that you'll absorb damage several times in a row when you careen into a wave of enemy bullets, resulting in many unfair deaths.
Moreover, your character's attack balance could use some work. Your shot power and spread are so weak – and your melee attack is so strong – that it's often more worthwhile to "tank" stronger enemies by charging through their bullets for a quick melee kill, rather than dodging their attacks and playing out encounters as intended.
Merging two disparate genres requires compromise, and A City Sleeps offers little. It's every bit as difficult as many bullet-hell games, but you just can't keep up with the action with the imprecise controls that you're given. Even at its easiest setting, A City Sleeps puts up a heck of a fight, and the hampering controls and unpredictable rhythm-driven firing mechanics will make you die and restart from previous checkpoints more often than you'd like.
Overcome the control difficulties, though, and you'll find that A City Sleeps is surprisingly short. It's only three levels long, though you're expected to complete them multiple times on higher difficulty levels to unlock new content. Arcade-style shoot-'em-ups aren't exactly known for their length, but after two hours and playthroughs on two difficulty settings, I felt like I'd seen the majority of what A City Sleeps had to offer. I didn't feel encouraged to try higher difficulty levels, either, especially when the first two loops were already so punishing.
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I had the most fun with A City Sleeps when I was replaying levels on the lowest difficulty setting and chasing leaderboard scores. The relaxed pace allowed me to test out new ghost combinations against reasonable odds. It's fun to blaze through levels with some sense of competence, adopting new strategies and forging your own pace as you massacre weak enemies. Bump up the difficulty, though, and this style of play becomes much less viable, and any progression or improvement you make beyond that point is a struggle.
There's a lot to like about A City Sleeps. The stylized artwork is striking, and its pounding beats will burrow into your brain as you die and repeat each level segment. I thought a lot about A City Sleeps in between my play sessions – its skilled audiovisual mix and solid writing makes it memorable and likable in a way that few games are.
As a shoot-'em-up, though, A City Sleeps feels half-baked. The foundation is solid, but since it only includes three levels, it has to ramp up its difficulty too quickly, and it becomes overwhelming and frustrating as a result. With a more measured approach to difficulty and more levels to give players time to acclimate to its mechanical quirks and control issues, A City Sleeps could be exceptional. As it is, it's a hardcore challenge that requires patience to master.
This review is based on an approved Steam download of A City Sleeps, provided by Harmonix. Images: Harmonix.
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