Developer: HYDRAGON
Publishers: Falcon Games, Ultimate Games
Platform: PC
Tested On: PC
Psycho Wolf – Review
All games need something for players to strive towards, a payout of sorts and this can come in any shape or form, from exploring and discovering the world to beating a final boss. As mechanically solid as a game may be, without this payout, it will ultimately fail to engage players; this is the case for Psycho Wolf.
Story
Psycho Wolf’s story follows the titular wolf, a scammer turned into a murderous maniac, seeking revenge on his neighbors for putting him in jail. During his time in jail, the wolf lost his sanity, proceeding to eat the counterfeit gold he once sold. By a miracle of nature, or possibly drugs, these bars granted him the strength to bust out of prison, now with a penchant for a massacre.
After all this is established through an opening cutscene, the game proceeds to forget all about its story. Besides this introduction, the game lacks any dialogues or exposition, leaving the player to clear level after level for no reason other than murder.
Graphics
The game’s graphics are quite decent, made in a 2.5D paper-like style. It also features several different environments with varied assets and enemies, although the latter pull from a pool of a few different base models and animations. What this means for the game is that, despite the variety in styles, enemies of the same type are little more than asset swaps from area to area.
Sound
Psycho Wolf’s sound is, similarly to its graphics, quite well made. There are different songs in the soundtrack, changing from environment to environment, and the SFX hold up decently. That said, the length of the game prevents it from having much variety, totaling to around five or six songs, these repeating on a loop within their respective areas.
Gameplay
Psycho Wolf describes itself as a stealth game, although that categorization is quite arguable. In truth, saying it’s a hack n’ slash with stealth and crafting elements would be more appropriate. As stated earlier, the objective of the game is to slay all of the wolf’s neighbors. In each of the levels, players are thrown into the world with whichever equipment they have collected throughout the game, tasked with violently murdering any animal they encounter.
These animals vary in types and characteristics, such as different amounts of health, damage and reactions to the wolf’s presence. Once an animal notices the wolf, their hp will increase by a set amount and their reaction will trigger, these being fighting against it or running away. This is where the stealth component comes in, allowing players to strike while unseen in order to prevent the health increase on top of gaining the upper hand.
Besides straightforward axe-slashing, players also have other tools at their disposal, these are gained through crafting. By finding materials throughout the map, players can create items such as bear traps, body bags and lockpicks. Sadly, most of these are completely useless due to how the game works, or rather how it doesn’t work.
Bear traps are extremely unreliable due to the randomness added to the enemy movement, combined with the unreliable hitboxes of both the trap and enemies. Camouflage is irrelevant due to the enemy detection system, which makes everything ignore the wolf as long as he’s standing behind a solid object or the future victim’s back. Body bags are useless due to the fact that enemies don’t react to dead bodies and the ability to just chop up said bodies until they disappear. Last but not least, lockpicks actually have uses, but the rewards for opening locked doors are irrelevant.
Besides the pickups for materials, players can also find other items throughout the world, these being food to restore health or “rage” and items like weapons and money. Sadly, similarly to the craftable items, both the weapons and money are utterly useless, the first being all identical in effect and the latter having no use besides sitting in the inventory.
The aforementioned “rage” meter is also yet another questionable inclusion, as it can unlock later levels for no apparent reason at all. By reaching 600 ”rage”, something easily doable by playing a level or two, players can skip ahead to the last level and unlock everything in-between. This doesn’t change anything though, with all levels being more or less equal in difficulty and identical in mechanics.
Conclusion
While not the worst or even excessively bad, Psycho Wolf is a game with an utter lack of purpose. This is clearly visible in the amount of useless mechanics or the lack of closure for the story. As cheap as it may be at €6,59/$7.99/£5.79, Psycho Wolf is not a particularly recommendable game. This might be a fun experience when in the sales bin at a 90% discount.
Personal Opinion
“I don’t dislike Psycho Wolf, it’s alright, but it definitely feels more like a prototype than an actual game. Finishing levels rewards nothing, killing enemies is just spamming, all weapons are identical in effect, etc. While I wouldn’t generally recommend the game, someone looking for a thirty-minute distraction while murdering methhead animals (yeah, all the animals have that general look) may enjoy it.”
Psycho Wolf - Review,
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