Sumo Revise – Review

Sumo Revise is the latest game from a group of developers that was greenlit and released on Steam not too long ago. While initial responses on the greenlight weren’t the most positive, it has made it to Steam after all. According to the developers, it’s supposed to be a multiplayer-brawler game inspired by big hits like Super Smash Bros. QWOP and Surgeon Simulator. Let’s see how it is!

Story

Ancient Sumo Wrestlers have roamed the lands for a long time in order to find better opponents and prove they’re the best. Some believed they had the power of Gods because they had such high agility with bodies like boulders. You are an aspiring Sumo Wrestler with little to no experience as of yet. In a dream, it comes to you that you have been chosen and have to train to become the best wrestler. Only then you will find true salvation as your dreams keep haunting you.

Well, almost. All of this is made up. Sumo Revise doesn’t have any story at all, which is kind of disappointing. It would be nice to have at least some situation in time and space, just for the fun of it. It doesn’t have to be much, just something to catch the player’s attention and give them a nice first impression of the game.

Graphics

Graphically, Sumo Revise isn’t the strongest title. It’s heavily inspired by pixel art and it really shows in the level and character design. Everything is very blocky but it looks okay once you get used to it. Some elements can be hard to distinguish from another though, especially if they use slightly different colors. Character models are very basic as well, you’re simply a little pixelated guy which consists of one color only. You can however pick up some drops in the stages which can transform you or put some skins on your character.

Following up on the graphics, it’s pretty obvious that Sumo Revise doesn’t need a good PC to run. It also doesn’t have graphics options, but if the game runs bad it’s probably time to upgrade anyway.

Sound

Music and sound effects are again quite basic, the music is surprisingly catchy however, especially the menu music. It’s very lively and arcade like, which is extremely pleasant to listen to and it makes you realize you shouldn’t take the game too serious. On the other hand, the sound effects could be better and are very loud, luckily you can turn them down.

Gameplay

Sumo Revise is a casual action game, and as the title suggest, you’ll be Sumo Wrestling inside a ring or stage. The goal of the “classic” game is the same as any Sumo Wrestling match, you have to push your enemies out of the ring in order to win. In total, you can play on 7 very different stages which each have their unique features.

Controls are pretty basic but may seem overwhelming at first. The game shows the controls for all the players at once because you can play up to 8-player local multiplayer. However, when you pick your character, you’ll only have 4 buttons to use. Left, right, jump and attack. Regarding the local multiplayer, the game does not have online multiplayer at this time but the developers said they’re working on it. If you want to play with 8 players on local multiplayer, you’ll have to hook up 4 gamepads, 2 keyboards and a mouse, which is pretty ridiculous. You could get rid of 1 keyboard if you have an NKRO keyboard however (but that’s pretty technical so let’s not go into that further).

Moving in Sumo Revise may feel very clunky at first. Whenever you try to run left and right, it’s like you’re running on ice. It takes a while to get up to speed and it takes even longer to get to a stop, which might turn a lot of people down and is generally very strange at first. However there is a trick (intended?) which can make you stop instantly, you just attack and you stop, even if you’re in the air.

There’s also a fair amount of game modes and settings available. You can play Free for all (classic), Capture the flag, Team free for all, Bacon, King, Hitastic, Race and Virus. The first three are pretty straightforward, but the others might need some explaining. In the Bacon gamemode you have to take a flag and hold it for an amount of time in order to win the round. In King you have to stay inside a marked area for an amount of time. In Hitastic you have to get x amount of hits before the rest. In Race you have to race around the stage and be the first to finish and finally in Virus you have to infect people by hitting them and the round ends when everyone is infected.

In terms of game settings you have a lot of options. In the basic settings menu you can set a Modifier to the game, which changes behavior of players and attacks. You can also adjust item spawn, number of AI players and location spawn randomization. In the advanced settings you can adjust all sorts of stuff like powerups, amount of points to get, auto respawn, special rounds and more. You can even alter the AI’s behavior entirely if you wish to do so.

Depending on which game mode you pick, you’ll have different objectives, but the way you play stays the same. You can try to complete the objective or just be an asshole and slap everyone you see, which is pretty fun to do. There’s also powerups, which you can adjust before you start the game. Most powerups simply change the skin of your character, but there’s also push arrows which push you into the direction it’s pointing and a super speed, which makes movement even more unreliable.

If you’re a fan of content creation, the game also supplies you with a mode and level editor. The level editor is fairly easy to use but the mode editor is hell. It’s so complicated and big that there’s even a manual for it which is 50 pages long. You basically have to script your own gamemode and modifiers, which will be hell for most people if they don’t have any sort of programming background.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Sumo Revise is a solid game but it’s not the greatest. It does some things good but other ones could have been done much better. Movement is very clunky and multiplayer is local only. In its core, the game has it right, but it needs more features to really make it stand out. However, if you have a big group of friends and it’s easy to have them over to your house, Sumo Revise can be fun after a couple of drinks.

Subsonic

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