"Deep Rock Cracker" preemptive review: left hand gun right hand cannon, a drill bit drill overnight

The first few hours of Rock Breaker were the most enjoyable time for the game, and I enjoyed the fresh experience of novel mechanics, which is a very different process from traditional tower defense. Its later thin content became the reason for me to quit the game, and the low repetitive playability greatly reduced the player's desire to explore.

In fact, it's not just you, I once confused it with Galaxy Breaker, too similar names and similar tower defense gameplay, it is really easy to confuse people's minds.

However, after a little contact, I found that "Deep Rock Breaker" took a different path, which was not the same as anyone, and had some similarities with everyone. The overly novel gameplay mechanics allow it to play a completely different trick of tower defense under a similar main frame.

This novelty refers to the resource collection method that Deep Rock Breaker has a different way of finding out—the game gives the protagonist a drill bit, and the player controls the character to output against the surrounding walls, and what he drills will get.

With the roar of the drill bit, this extremely decompressing gameplay mechanism makes the tedious resource collection stage of the tower defense game seem endlessly fun. If you don't care about the countdown to the insect tide, you can even use your artistic cells to use this drill to sketch.

The game's 100% destructible terrain gives it an extremely high exploration cap. On the other side of the wall, the curiosity of the player is always seduced, which will fully stimulate your interest in playing.

Doesn't that sound funny? Tower defense games are no longer just about building factories and raising workers from God's point of view, players can actually fight in person. This time. You no longer have to complain about the slow production of resources, it is a big deal to be on the front line, and what is missing is targeted to drill what. You can enjoy the decompression thrill of the drill while waiting for the resources to rise out of the backpack.

But don't get too excited too soon, because soon you'll realize something's wrong. As a tower defense game, resource collection takes up almost half of the game's flow, which means that players need to spend a lot of time learning to punch holes with rats.

The space of the backpack grid makes the player have to return to the base at any time for resource recovery. Over and over again, a lot of time is spent on the road, and this busyness becomes a shortcoming that is not as good as God's perspective.

In order to fill the boring of running away, and to make the protagonist setting more meaningful, Deep Rock Breaker designed the map as a big "maze", which is not only rich in resources, but also dangerous.

You may accidentally open the road between the wormhole and the base, which will make you too late to build a defense line, and you will be engulfed by a wave of insects in the brain while you are still developing. This situation is especially pronounced at high difficulty levels – players often die violently in the exploration of the map before the countdown is over. Therefore, Deep Rock Rupturers is not a tower defense game that can develop with peace of mind, and the dangerous world requires players to concentrate at any time.

In a sense, Deep Rock Breaker looks less like a tower defense game and more like Lone Gunner. The protagonist travels through the wasteland world one by one, explores the wasteland world, and keeps running for life. From time to time you will find surprises, such as some supplies. There will also be some trouble and forced to fight against hostile forces.

This expansion of the exploration gameplay has become the biggest difference between Deep Rock Breaker and similar games. The protagonist's setting gives it a subjective initiative that is difficult to have from God's point of view, focusing survival on the individual rather than the disembodied player. The perspective also shifts from the survival of the base to the life and death of the characters, which undoubtedly sets off the atmosphere of the game and doubles the immersion of the game.

The excellent exploration content is the martial arts secret book of "Deep Rock Rupturer", but this will not be separated from the tower defense gameplay, because the exploration itself is a process of collecting resources, but it is no longer possible to build a good factory to wait for work. You could say it's a toss-up, but it can also be said to be extremely fulfilling.

After all, in similar games, players at this stage are accelerating at the midpoint of boredom. "Deep Rock Cracker" can use unique gameplay to fill the gap period of the development stage, making itself an interesting experience like RPG survival.

However, "Deep Rock Cracker" freezes the main theme of the game when exploring, which means that the content of urban construction has shrunk, and the content of base construction is not rich enough compared with the rich process of mining.

For example, although the infrastructure such as city walls, tower bases, and resource conversion offices are readily available in the game, there are few advanced options for derivation. A lot of the game's upgrades are geared toward characters, such as boosting lives, weights, movements, and more — making it feel more like Lone Gunner — and machine gun towers only look monotonous when the insect tide comes.

As a tower defense game, players actually pour resources into the character, such as making themselves stronger, or making the character carry more explosives and equipped with more powerful weapons. And the construction of the city wall is only to provide a more comfortable output environment for themselves, and the tower base has become a supporting role, which seems to be a bit upside down, losing the fun of the tower defense game with the BD lineup.

And limited by the core gameplay of the game, "Deep Rock Breaker" is also difficult to achieve fully automated production of resources, which is undoubtedly a heavy blow to business fans, it makes players unable to experience the extraordinary sense of achievement from frugality to luxury.

After all, the game emphasizes that players do their own thing and find fun in exploration, which is different from the design context of traditional tower defense games, which is difficult for players to fully accept. It is closer to a combination of survival games and business simulation games, seeking a balance between the two.

The good side is that you can get a rich process of opening up the territory and exploring the world, without sticking to an acre and a half of land; the bad side is that the acre and three points of land can not become a skyscraper and achieve class leapfrogging.

To enjoy the free exploration of the sky and flying at will, you have to bear the endless torture brought about by repeated running; if you want to survive the tower defense with both hands, you will definitely sacrifice the respective content ratio of the two.

"Deep Rock Breaker" is a good interpretation of what you have to give, which is a meaningful experimental attempt at the tower defense category. It may not be possible to say that the integration is very good, and there are very obvious content shortcomings, but the freshness from the gameplay mechanism also makes up for the imbalance of content to a certain extent.

At the very least, a fresh picture is definitely enough. As for whether you can play in depth, it depends on whether you are more inclined to urban construction development or territorial exploration.

The first few hours of Rock Breaker were the most enjoyable time for the game, and I enjoyed the fresh experience of novel mechanics, which is a very different process from traditional tower defense. Its later thin content became the reason for me to quit the game, and the low repetitive playability greatly reduced the player's desire to explore.

Therefore, increasing the proportion of urban construction content, so that the core exploration gameplay can serve the terminal city construction, so that the resources in the hands of players can be played to a greater extent, not only limited to increasing the value of the character, but also become the next content to be improved. Fortunately, the game is still in the early beta stage, and Deep Rock Breaker has plenty of time to perfect itself so that its novelty is not limited to gimmicks, and the spending is not limited to drills, which is very exciting.