Thank you Atlus for sending us this game to review!

In The Deadly Tower of Monsters, you play Dick Starspeed, the stranded astronaut in a fictional, cheesy, sci-fi movie that's getting converted from VHS to DVD. Dan Smith is the director and provides hilarious commentary on the making of the "movie" that's being re-enacted in real time.  While the 3D action RPG gameplay isn’t anything special, the dialogue is great and its worth playing for that reason alone.

Dick Starspeed crash landed on the planet Gravoria and in order to escape, he must find his robot companion and repair his rocket ship.  Most of the life forms on this planet are hostile and are being ruled by an evil emperor.  The emperor’s daughter, Scarlet Nova, does not condone his behavior and allies with Dick Starspeed to end his tyranny.

In total there are three playable characters, but only one can be used at a time.  It’s a shame since co-op multiplayer player would have been a blast!  Each character has a special ability that will come in handy while scaling this treacherous tower swarming with low-budget looking enemies.   For example, Dick Starspeed is the only character that can place landmines to blow up inflatable cubes since the director didn’t think that a woman could handle that task.

The director freely shares his opinions and funny stories about how some of the actors got injured or died in the making of the film.  One of my favorite moments was when the director was complaining about the lens flare effect and how the cameraman didn’t want him touching the camera.  A couple of seconds later in the game I noticed fingerprints on the screen when looking at the lens flare areas.    

The enemies and their explanations are funny to listen to as well.  Of course there are aliens and ape men (that fling poop) along with giant ants, snails, robots, and dinosaurs.  There are some boss battles as well including taking down a giant gorilla, a robotic chameleon (mechameleon), and a mutant octopus.  The final boss battle was rather unique and I like how it used a mirror to think outside of the box.  

There are two attack modes (melee and ranged) to take down foes.  Throughout the game you’ll collect and upgrade to better guns, swords, and whips.  The weapons can be upgraded using cogs scattered across the planet and left behind by conquered foes.  When it comes to the guns I’m torn between the rocket launcher and the black hole gun being my favorite.   

The level design was a little confusing at times, but thankfully there are plenty of checkpoints and areas to teleport to using the map.  In the event of a character’s death, they are respawned at the last checkpoint they were at with full health.  Occasionally you’ll find healing stations, but most of the health is regained by collecting health cubes from fallen foes.

Overall the game is fairly easy with some areas requiring a couple of tries for me to get past them.  I beat the main campaign in roughly five hours and I did not pursue earning all twenty-four available Steam Achievements.   This game does reward exploration and maxing out various weapons. 

Despite the mediocre gameplay, The Deadly Tower of Monsters is worth playing for the funny commentary.  The voice acting is top notch, but does include a couple sexual innuendos (mostly regarding the main character’s name) and some mild cursing (d*mn).    The sci-fi themed background music is great and reminded me of Star Trek.

If you enjoy low budget sci-fi movies and goofy humor, then I highly recommend checking out The Deadly Tower of Monsters.  The asking price is a reasonable $14.99, but since it’s only five hours long, I’d wait for a sale before grabbing it.