Twin Blades: The Reaping Vanguard
	Genre: Fighting Action (Brawler) Developer: Press Start Studio
Publisher Region Released Microsoft NA 12/29/2009

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Staff Review

Review by Jeremy Peeples
February 14, 2010

The second you lay your eyes on Twin Blades, its incredibly sharp graphics make it stand out from its peers. Unfortunately, the visuals are where the excitement ends. Though the full game is deeper than the trial version, it still doesn’t offer enough. You spend the entire game slaying waves of zombies and even though there’s some semblance of depth with the addition of new and upgradeable weapons and enemies that require some strategy to defeat, the game never rises above being a hollow experience.

As a scythe-wielding nun, you’ll slash, blast, freeze and scorch your way through 31 nearly-identical side-scrolling stages filled with zombies. Adding to the repetition is the fact that things aren't even broken up by the occasional boss battle. There's some depth here, sure, but not much. Armored enemies take more bullets to defeat, for instance, so in order to defeat them you'll have to slash them from a distance with your scythe or use another weapon such as the ice beam, the laser beam, the explosion gun or my personal favorite, the flamethrower.

However, using those specialty weapons drains your magic. The only way to replenish it is to use your scythe - so you can’t rely on those weapons to get by. I found that the best way to get through the game while retaining health and magic is to quickly blast the zombies with the flamethrower. That leaves them stunned so that you can finish them off with the scythe while refilling your magic gauge in the process. That particular technique works better than any others that are convenient, especially since the lack of a pause menu means that weapons switches are effectively useless due to the amount of time that they require. Aside from the lack of a pause menu for weapon swaps, Twin Blades controls very well. Its button mapping is logical and the jumping, slashing, and secondary weapon usage required throughout the game is as responsive as could be expected.

Unfortunately, the game's visuals underwhelm. While they shine in screenshots that highlight the incredible detail in the hand-drawn characters, weapons and backgrounds, those same high standards aren't adhered to when the game is in motion. Animation isn’t particularly fluid and there's little variation in the number of ways in which your enemies can wind up dead; they either get blown up, chopped in half, or decapitated. The repetition can really grow tiresome by the time you near the end of the game’s 31-level run. Three backdrops--a marketplace, a castle and a graveyard--don't help matters when they're repeated throughout the entire game. There are also some major issues with the transparency effects that the developers incorporated, since many objects in the foreground that should barely be visible (stuff like trees and columns) get in the way. That unfortunate fact leads to a lot of cheap hits, especially later on when you’ve got large swarms of enemies coming at you and you can’t see where you are, where your opponents are in relation to you or even which direction you’re facing.

The music in Twin Blades is surprisingly good, however, and easily the best I've heard in an indie game. While there aren't a lot of songs in the soundtrack, the available selections fit the horror movie theme well. Unfortunately, the aural experience is dragged down a bit due to the awkward transitions between songs. Instead of smoothly changing from one song to the next, one song will conclude and you'll be playing without music for a couple of seconds until the next song finally begins. The game’s sound effects are also fine. They vary not only depending on the weapon that you're using, but on how many enemies you kill with it. Slashing through a pack of six enemies is louder than just slashing through one, which makes risky combat more rewarding.

While it’s far from the worst game available on the indie marketplace, Twin Blades is still too hollow to recommend a purchase. Press Start Studio’s debut offering does show some promise, however. The graphics are easily the most jaw-dropping to yet arrive on the 360’s Indie scene. If the game's other elements had lived up to the potential that is shown in screenshots, it would be a top-notch game. Unfortunately, nothing else really compares. The result is a repetitious experience that grows old very quickly.

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