Review friv game Blast Brigade vs. the Evil Legion of Dr. Cread

Friv2Online Games Studio website, part of Allods Team, has released their debut game, Blast Brigade vs. the Evil Legion of Dr. Cread is a colorful, even very colorful 2D metroidvania in the spirit of 80s James Bond spy thrillers. We tried on black glasses, saved the island from a villain obsessed with the idea of ​​world domination, and we are in a hurry to tell you what impressions the creation of Russian developers left. Spoiler: only positive.

The plot of Blast Brigade is an undisguised collection of action movie clichés from the 80s and 90s. The villain Dr. Creed, wearing a medical gown and with a distraught expression on his face, has founded a factory for the production of robots on a remote paradise island, with which he plans to enslave the world. We play as a team of spies with unique skills and big guns who intend to save the world.

Blast Brigade is a classic metroidvania with platforming elements. Controlling a side - view spy, we challenge hordes of robots and tropical monsters, progress through the story and fight bosses like in good old arcade games.

The friv game world is presented in the form of a paradise island. It is divided into locations with secrets - from time to time, having found new weapons and characters, you will have to return to them in order to open previously inaccessible places. Those hide improvements for the character, with which further passage will be easier, and sets that will be useful for building a base.

Four characters go under our care at once, you can switch between them by pressing one button. True, only a typical commando Jeff Jefferson is available from the start, whose favorite weapon is a grenade launcher. With it, by the way, you can destroy part of the passages to the secret places mentioned above.

Gradually, the team will be replenished with other spies - sniper Shura from Russia, who will add a grappling hook to the equipment ; Scotsman Gavin Henry Gale, who became half-robot due to Creed's experiments; and a native of the island, whose name is not only difficult to pronounce, but also hard to write.

The game itself offers simple gameplay consisting of dummy shooting and puzzles. The enemies turned out to be diverse: there are not only robots and drones, but also local monsters that caused a lot of problems for Dr. Creed. You can learn about the latter through notes and dialogues with NPCs who will ask for help; despite the cliché, the story of the game turned out to be curious and humorous.

Boss battles, which have become Creed's huge monsters, replace checkpoints in progress. I won’t say that they turned out to be difficult - the first ones are completely given in one attempt, but this is how the developers offer to “try out” the mechanics of Blast Brigade. The following opponents will be more cunning and more difficult, but they are unlikely to be able to offer serious resistance.

However, opponents will not cause as many problems as puzzles with lasers, spikes, poisonous waste and other obstacles. You won’t be able to quickly run through them, otherwise you will lose the treasured heart - if the lives are reset to zero, you will have to stomp from the last save, and the character will lose precious coins. The control points in Blast Brigade are located at unfair distances from each other, which makes the game moderately difficult.

There are also elements of management here, but they are utterly simple - our militants have a base where you need to gradually build up a workshop, machine guns with improvements and other objects. This costs repair kits hidden around the game world.

For coins, you can purchase improvements - for example, additional health, faster recharge, reduced energy consumption, and others. They do not radically change the friv game, because. for the hero, you can choose a limited number of modules, but it will help to ease the battles a little and build your fighting style.

The smooth, classic Blast Brigade gameplay is wrapped in cartoony graphics reminiscent of Nickelodeon animation. I was delighted with the picture - in my opinion it is very bright and stylish, although not too detailed. Animated cutscenes are voiced and resemble comics.

Created by Russian developers, Metroidvania did not receive Russian voice acting - although this can be explained by the authors' desire to create a classic American action movie, because Shura, by her origin, often releases phrases in our language.

As a result, Blast Brigade turned out to be such a game that if you can find fault with it, then on trifles: long animation of treatment, long distances between control points, the inability to replenish first-aid kits in any other way. But if you play carefully, then you will not pay attention to them.

The amazing visual style of Blast Brigade vs. the Evil Legion of Dr. Intertwined with classic metroidvania rules, a combat system that can challenge but not overdo it, and humor that cleverly dilutes the clichéd plot, Cread is a great game in its genre.