Slain: Back From Hell
Indie publisher Big Sugar is delighted to present the Valfaris & Slain: Back From Hell Double Pack, which is available to download now for Nintendo Switch in North America, and arrives tomorrow, 17 April, for Xbox
Slain Back From Hell Secrets
Slain: Back from Hell. A heavy metal inspired arcade combat with puzzle elements and gore galore. Stunning visuals and true old school gameplay accompanied by the most metal soundtrack you've ever heard. Slain: Back from Hell is not a game that everyone will enjoy. It’s difficult and requires a lot of patience to see it through to the end. It’s also not a very long game. My first playthrough clocked in at around seven hours, though better players could certainly finish it more quickly. There’s also nothing new to do once you’ve slain Vroll. Slain on Steam: Bosses in video: 00:00 1. Thorn Beast 01:33 2. Banshee Queen 04:00 3. Lupus Rex 05:24 4. Buy Slain: Back from Hell by Merge Games for Nintendo Switch at GameStop. Find release dates, customer reviews, previews, and more.
Indie publisher Big Sugar is delighted to present the Valfaris & Slain: Back From Hell Double Pack, which is available to download now for Nintendo Switch in North America, and arrives tomorrow, 17 April, for Xbox One in all regions. The bundle arrives in the European eShop next Thursday, 23 April. A launch discount will be available for all versions for a limited time.
Developed by two-man team Steel Mantis, and featuring original soundtracks by former Celtic Frost guitarist, Curt Victor Bryant, Valfaris and Slain: Back From Hell are inspired by old-school gaming sensibilities, and heavy metal music and culture.
After a disastrous launch due to various design and technical issues, the original Slain! was withdrawn and taken back into development for several months. Repaired and polished by the newly formed Steel Mantis, the game was rebranded as Slain: Back From Hell and re-released in the summer of 2016.
It has since built a fan-base of players who appreciate its hardcore challenge, gory-but-gorgeous visuals, and relentless guitar riffs. Despite getting off to such an inauspicious start, and still being a game that consistently divides opinion, Slain: Back From Hell has clocked up almost 300K downloads.
Valfaris – the spiritual successor to Slain: Back From Hell – launched at the end of 2019 and, just like its predecessor, has been praised by players for its retro-inspired action, heavy metal aesthetic, and forceful soundtrack.
It’s also been a hit with critics, appearing on several GOTY lists, including ones from Giant Bomb, Hardcore Gamer, and Waypoint. The PC version of Valfaris is currently ranked by Metacritic as the #15 Best PC Game of 2019.
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ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE
So, let’s just get right to the heart of things, shall we? I really wanted to like Slain: Back From Hell. I really, really did. After all, from the earliest days in my gaming career, I have always loved me some spooky-themed videogames. From Haunted House on the Atari 2600 forward, any game that even hinted at having a touch of the supernatural appealed to me, considerably increasing my desire to play it. Sometimes this pursuit served me well, giving me gaming experiences that I would treasure throughout my life, while other times it would only end up in massive disappointment, causing me to curse the very genre that I am so enamored with. Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, I verily say unto to you that Slain sadly falls into that latter camp.
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD
Now, Slain starts off well enough, with an introduction that finds our protagonist, Bathoryn, being raised from his grave by a spirit who charges him with cleansing the land of evil. Upon exiting his tomb, you’re greeted with a crap-ton of macabre visuals (in indie gaming’s favorite pixelated visual style, of course), creepy enemies, and a soundtrack of hard rockin’ METAL composed by former Celtic Frost guitarist, Curt Victor Bryant. The presentation is certainly legit, and the promise of carving your way through the game’s various spooky locales and enemies really fired me up. Unfortunately, though, after a few minutes of play, my enthusiasm began to be curbed (curb STOMPED was more like it, actually), as frustration began to set in and started chipping away at what little patience I had to give.
Might want to stay within the safe confines of your tomb, sir
GIT GUD, BRUH!
Perhaps more than anything, patience is the key here, folks. The gameplay in Slain suffers from the Dark Souls affliction, and requires you to memorize every little thing you encounter as you progress through the game. You have 1 life (with which you can only take 3 or 4 hits from enemies before taking a dirtnap), and must face a slew of enemies that are tougher than you are, stages with several points of instadeath, and bosses that leave absolutely no room for error. Hell, it’s probably more appropriate to say that the entire game leaves no room for error. Put simply, this is a game of memorization that requires a whole boatload of patience.
Bathoryn controls well enough and I’m a fan of the simplistic control scheme (jump, attack, slide, special move), but every attack you make must be quite calculated; there’s no “run & gun” gameplay to be found here at all. I don’t particularly happen to enjoy this type of slow, methodical gameplay in my action platformers, and coupled with the “@$!# you” difficulty, the aforementioned patience needed to survive this title dissolved from me at a rapid rate.
Slain: Back From Hell Wiki
In the game’s defense, it does offer checkpoints throughout the stages. These checkpoints not only autosave your progress, but also allow you to start back at that location after you inevitably get ganked. The reaching of these checkpoints is quite an achievement in itself, and really helps to give you that “Okay, ONE more try” motivation. This is a step-up from the painfully difficult 8-bit and 16-bit days of gaming that Slain’s developers pine for, with titles that all too often offered no relief, forcing you to replay entire swaths of the game upon death. Still, though, in the end, it just wasn’t enough to keep me playing and suffering through Slain’s abusive level and enemy design, and at 23% game completion, I was DONE.
Slain: Back From Hell Ps Vita
BOTTOM LINE:
I really wanted to see all that Slain had to offer (especially in the audiovisual/atmosphere department), but without a way to decrease the difficulty, it just wasn’t to be for me. “Back in the day” I probably would have put in the effort to see it through to the end, but with 40 years of gaming under my belt, I don’t care about the masochistic “street cred” that comes with completing games like this. In short, I just can’t be bothered.