Damsel Review

"Fast Vampire Hunting"

Campaign

August 13, 2019 at 3:48am
By Jason Stettner

Damsel is an insanely fast paced platformer with intense combat and many objectives to tackle. In this comic book style game you’ll be dealing with the dark world of vampires, and trying to save people along the way.

You’ll play as a special agent named Damsel, the first and last line in a battle against some corporate based vampires. You’ll accomplish this by blazing through levels and completing the primary objectives. Sometimes extra goals will be present, but you mainly just need to finish what’s essential to progress. Each level is meant to be worked through quickly, and there are many of them. Prior to starting each of them you’ll also seek a comic strip pop up, and that delivers the narrative.

I wish there was more character development, but it was generally a neat way to showcase a story. There are quite a few levels to this, and some extra elements aside from the campaign. There’s also an arcade area for extra challenges and that should add additional value if you need more.

Gameplay

The art style for Damsel is really great looking, and it comes across as sleek during combat. It carries the comic aesthetic from the starter images and then transfers that almost seamlessly to the game. You have a number of moves in your arsenal and it’s all about getting used to the controls to perform well.

That being said, there’s definitely a challenge as shots need to be watched and you can die. If you hit hostages, or don’t hit the right mark you’ll fail and it may take a few tries to actually complete a level. On top of that, there are scores you can aim for while also being pressured by an overall clock time. The combat felt great, some neat quick mechanics for battling as you deal with vampires and other ghouls. Sometimes they’re right in the coffin, other times you’ll have to shoot into the air to dispose of them.

The levels are fairly minimalistic in terms of the backdrop, but they were always filled with tasks to complete and enemies to blast through. They also felt fairly distinct the whole way through and therefore always a challenge in regards to learning the layouts.

The Conclusion

Damsel delivers a fairly solid experience with a narrative told through neat comic book style strips prior to levels. It really isn’t at all what I expected, this is essentially a hardcore platformer where you’re a vampire hunter. It’s pleasing aesthetically and is a lot of fun to blast or smash vampires within. There are many levels, and the story is presented in a unique way.

You will seriously get a good challenge out of this, and it can last quite awhile. Each level brings something new and it may take a number of attempts in order to actually hit the mark well. Even then, you may not hit the score you desire. The extra arcade option was also a nice extra addition to this title.

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Damsel Review on Xbox One X
Review Code Provided by Screwtape Studios

Rating Overall: 7.3