If you told me you've never had a "worst movie ever" discussion with your friends, I'd call you a liar.
Everyone, at some point or another, has gone through a phase in which they inexplicably track down the fucking worst movies they can find, watch them with their friends, and attempt to coordinate and determine which movies are, indeed, the worst ones ever. It's an Internet tradition, with channels like I Hate Everything and YourMovieSucks looking for the best examples of it on Youtube, and even our own beloved Movie Night doing its own search for the worst out there, because somewhere there's gotta be some hilarious fail to enjoy.
This is true of video games as well, which is why shit like Sonic 06 and Ride to Hell: Retribution are continually played despite being complete, utter, borderline-unplayable shit. And while what makes a bad movie terrible can be a nebulous thing (because every critic has their own code of reviewing and what criterium must a bad movie fill to qualify as a truly bad movie can vary dramatically depending on individual reviewers), what makes a bad game terrible is usually a lot more hard, fast, and clear-cut.
Certainly, you'll have the errant faggot who tries to say Dark Souls or Call of Duty is the worst game ever but that's primarily just to stir shit and everyone who actually seeks out, reviews, and mocks bad games knows what makes a bad game what it is. There are games that are technically broken, games which are mechanically fucked, games which are incompetent, and there are games whose stories just.... Fuck up. The reasons for these can change, but can range from time crunches and the need to slash and burn to meet a deadline, to developers running out of money. Rarely, you can see games where it's clear that nobody actually gave a damn, and are just blunderingly incompetent, full stop. Some games make the beautiful merging of virtually no gameplay and an absolutely terrible story, Quantic Dream style, and other games nail one, but fuck the other one up so hard that it can either make the game a cult hit in its own right or screw the pooch entirely.
But what if there was a happy medium? What of there was a game which had solid ideas for mechanics, but they were executed terribly? What if there was a game which had a fantastic idea for a story, but couldn't really cut it due to the fact that those involved with writing it didn't really know what they were doing? The result is a game that's not greater than the sum of its parts, and manages to both be playable, yet keeps being terrible in a variety of ways that is both entertaining and hilarious.
The result is Revolution 60's remake.
For the uninitiated, Revolution 60 was an IOS game. It was notoriously bad - a game with tons of potential that failed miserably technically. A terrible and unstable framerate, constant audio desynchronization, virtually no trailing or particle effects, severe audio mixing issues, and more. At its core was a very interesting premise, storyline-wise, that was executed terribly, resulting in a story both cliche and which failed to capitalize on its potential. There is nothing in Revolution 60 that wouldn't have been done more competently by a team that knew what it was doing, and you could look at it as a laudable first attempt if it weren't for the fact that the game cost $400,000 and almost 2 years to make. The port to Steam took just as long to arrive, and we went through countless false starts and a Kickstarter backer revolt before the game finally reached its PC version release.
Was the wait worth it? In two words: Sort of. The game is still the same Revolution 60 at its core - same poor dialogue, same bad design decisions, same cliched plot. However, the game's mechanical emphasis is greatly improved. The framerate is much more stable, the audio mixing problems are fixed, the audio stuttering is gone, the audio synchronization issues are no longer a problem, the animations are improved, and the game, as a whole, looks, plays, and feels a whole lot more fluid than it did before. It's the kind of upgrade the developers of a lot of games would kill to get, frankly. It's not enough to make Revolution 60 good - not by any stretch - but it does make the game both play better and look a lot better. And with these improvements, we are free to look away from the game's technical problems and stare directly into where this game's mis-steps lie. What we have is the ideal case of a game that had everything going for it, and yet due to its flaws, could never really meet the lofty goals its developer intended for it, and wound up sacrificed on the altar of Steam purely out of obligation.
There's a certain sense of levity in Revolution 60 that is lost on pretty much everyone but its creator, Brianna Wu, and you can see it more clearly in the game now than ever before. For all the problems with the game, a lot of love and care went into making it. Not on Brianna Wu's part, mind you, but we'll get to that.
Let's dive right into Revolution 60 and take a closer look at this game.
From the outset, three things jump out immediately at any player - that the graphics have been improved, that the new models do, indeed, look better, and that the Hyperion - Holiday's Motorcyle - has a world model that is absolute trash and completely unanimated. In fact, it's so glaring and so obvious that it actually goes into the realm of parodic. You can't help but see this garish gold monstrousity and ask yourself why in god's name it's designed in a way that makes its issues so obvious. One can imagine Brianna Wu arguing with the modelers for why this thing had to look this way. It's not like there's not a ton of cool future bikes on the internet to draw inspiration from. But enough of that nonsense, it's time to get started.
One thing that the remake has that the original doesn't is FMV cutscenes with really, really obvious HD models. This wasn't noticable on the IOS version because between the small screen and the way the original was coded, you couldn't really tell what was in-game graphics and what was HD cutscenes. You can on PC with ease, and it sort of makes the transitions jarring, since the two look very similar to how they otherwise would, but are different enough that you can see it far off. It sort of reminds me how Syphon Filter would have cutscenes that were FMV but then use the same models, which generally looked like 14-karat shit.
The intro starts the same as the original, with Holiday having just broken into and entered a Fifth Column outpost and killed a bunch of people getting to the checkpoint. You might not be aware, but this is actually intended to help get the player acclimated to their chosen response type; from the very outset of the game, you basically need to choose a path - Professional or Rogue - and then stick with it to get a quality ending. The game's design is actually intended in such a way where you benefit from this, and you can actually see changes in Holiday's characterization depending on how you go.
This was true in the original as well, but in the remake, there's new animations added and a few new line-reads that can pop up post-fight in both Rogue and Professional paths. Since @Smutley's playthrough of Revolution 60 on IOS was mostly intended to induce a failure state and it wound up getting him one of the worse endings, I'm going to try something a little different and make the exact opposite choices he did in the IOS release. We're going to see the results this has on the story, and what changes it has for the game as a whole.
Since Smutley went Rogue, I'm going Professional. Let's challenge.
Two new things I noticed that the original didn't have are motion blur and depth of field effects. It's seen relatively rarely but you can definitely notice it when the enemies move or react, and, by and large, it looks good. Whilst a lot of people will give Revolution 60 shit for its visuals, and good god, does it deserve a lot of that shit, I will give props for this much: It looks like no other game currently on the market. The stylized character designs, whilst anime-inspired, are clearly done in a way that I don't think anyone's ever tried before, and it allows for some expressive facial animations and responses.
It has the same problem Revolution 60's other aspects have - they're done by a company that has no experience whatsoever - but you can tell that the people who made this are desperately trying for the game to be unique to be unique if nothing else. I imagine that if the game's visual design hadn't been up to Wu, the character designs may have looked more anime-style than they actually turned out to be.
Imagine the arguments that were had to make this choice happen, too. It's amazing.
The new input system is command-based. It's not the worst thing around but it's kind of dumb since your choice of keyboard can screw how the game plays. Regardless, as dumb as this is, it is a dramatic improvement over the IOS's "Maybe I will work if I feel like it" touchscreen commands. Moving along, Holiday escapes the outpost with the stolen codes and runs across the dropship. In the original, this was an area notorious for the game lagging and/or fucking up due to how busy the screen is. I'll direct you Smutley's infamous playthrough:
On the IOS port, this infamously caused the audio to desynchrionize. On the PC Version, though? Not so much as a single dropped frame. Holy shit. To say this is an improvement is an understatement; fixing Revolution 60's technical problems is a worthy endeavor. However, at the end of the day, this is still Revolution 60, and everything that was true about the original game's shortcomings that weren't technical issues are still valid.
Now, I do want to point out that I'm an outlier here - everyone else seems to be having trouble running this game without lag, but I have had absolutely none. This leads me to believe that Revolution 60 is a Battlecruiser 3000AD situation, where it runs worse the better your rig is, but we'll check that out in due time.
Holiday jumps on the Jumpship, uses her blade to cut through the cockpit, shoots the pilot, and then fires on the power core for good measure. Everything about this scene is hilariously stupid. Why does the pilot not shoot her when she moves? Why does the pilot do nothing when she jumps on the ship? Why does the pilot not do anything until he's shot in the face? It's the same sort of logic-defying stupid that we only see in terrible action movies and Revolution 60. It's retarded and I completely approve.
Professional Holiday is actually funnier than Rogue holiday is. She's both kinder and more snarky, and the talents of her voice actress, Jill Melancon, really shines through here. She offers one of the better performances in Revolution 60, and she's only one of two characters who seems to actually be having legit fun with her voice work. Holiday is actually not a terrible character, contrary to her original Socially Unconscious incarnation, and depending on you go with her, she comes across as either completely in over her head or fed up with everyone and is just one chocolatte from bring-a-shotgun-to-work day. She has some great lines in both paths and is about the only bright spot in the game's dialogue until about halfway through the game, so enjoy it.
Actually, as an aside? Revolution 60's script is fucking terrible. The line-reads are fine and the voice actors and actresses mostly do a perfectly servicable job, but the script gives them very little to work with. Min comes across as a completely transparent threat to herself and others 12 minutes in, and Amelia is of course Brianna Wu's shameless self-insert who essentially fucks up the exfiltration attempt.
Useless bitch.
The cutscenes that follow highlight everything wrong with the game's cutscene design; no use of tracers and almost no impact graphics means that firefights in it look cheap and stupid. Anyway, Valentina takes a grenade, and Holiday calls for backup. I then notice the humor that while Holiday's hair strands are jiggleboned, her giant heart-shaped ponytail (which I believe our dear @Cynical once accurately described as "Ballsack of Hair") is not.
A long and completely unskippable tutorial later, we're done with the first fight. Let's move on to the one that isn't holding my hand in a pin vice.
The fight system is actually sort of fun, but not for the reasons you might be thinking. The actual combat itself is boring and repetitive. Instead it's the AI that makes this a fucking joy to watch unfold. All of the Leopard enemies use slightly different versions of the same AI script, but all of them are fucking mental in some capacity or another and this generally makes them about as effective a fighting force as COBRA.
The Snow Leopards will reliably move all the fuck over the place just to fire on a random column that isn't yours, or perhaps chuck a grenade at the place you were standing about 12 seconds ago. Alternately the Dark Leopards may fire much more effective lasers, or they may pointlessly try to melee you while you are standing on the back row. There are confirmed cases of the Dark Leopards throwing their Laserkraals (those beam-wall thingamajigs they use) into their own rows and subsequently hurting themselves.
I can only imagine what is going through these guys' minds as you fight them. Was this an intentional design decision? Were the enemies just unable to be programmed right? Is it clone-based Autism?
I have no idea, but I'm finding it hysterical.
Additionally, I'm going to point out something new: There's actual hit graphics on impacts now. That is a significant improvement from the original game even if the overuse of overlays and ridiculous lack of trailing effects is still a thing. I'll take what I can get, really. Anyway, Holiday fights the bad guys and punches and kicks and stabs them and saves Valentina after hijacking one of the cargo robots that are moving supplies and equipment to and from the launch pad.
...Only for a Dark Leopard to show up and introduce her to the ground.
Minuete, however, shows up and saves Holiday's bacon. What you then are greeted with is this.... Masterpiece:
This is of course one of the things that makes Revolution 60 as enjoyable as it is, and that's its pathological inability to keep a consistent tone. The closest movie equivalent I can see to this nonsense is Laserblast, or perhaps one of those really old Japanese movies like Invaders from Space. Revolution 60 wants desperately to be taken seriously, but it throws things in like a girl with deely boppers and compound eyes that happens to be some sort of combat mod and is dressed in a skirt that looks like it escaped from an Austin Powers set. Metal Gear Solid was known for inconsistent tone, but only Revolution 60 can screw up its own tone so well that instead of being really bad, it's just hilarious.
If I didn't know Brianna Wu so well, I'd almost think that this was done on purpose.
Anyway, Min is coldly logical and mission-focused to the point of being callous. Brianna Wu makes very clear that this is what she thinks a leader is supposed to be like - willing to make the hard decisions and get shit done - but it's equally clear that if it wasn't for the voice actress, this character would fail utterly. Min's professed reason for saving Holiday is that it will improve the mission odds. With the gang back together, they hijack a nearby dropship and we prepare to make like the Space Core and go to space.
Stay tuned for next episode, where we begin the first of the game's "faffing about" components, and begin exploring the ship in preparation for arrival at N313, the satellite where the game takes place, and Brianna Wu throws a reference to Metal Gear for no discernable reason. Smooth.
Everyone, at some point or another, has gone through a phase in which they inexplicably track down the fucking worst movies they can find, watch them with their friends, and attempt to coordinate and determine which movies are, indeed, the worst ones ever. It's an Internet tradition, with channels like I Hate Everything and YourMovieSucks looking for the best examples of it on Youtube, and even our own beloved Movie Night doing its own search for the worst out there, because somewhere there's gotta be some hilarious fail to enjoy.
This is true of video games as well, which is why shit like Sonic 06 and Ride to Hell: Retribution are continually played despite being complete, utter, borderline-unplayable shit. And while what makes a bad movie terrible can be a nebulous thing (because every critic has their own code of reviewing and what criterium must a bad movie fill to qualify as a truly bad movie can vary dramatically depending on individual reviewers), what makes a bad game terrible is usually a lot more hard, fast, and clear-cut.
Certainly, you'll have the errant faggot who tries to say Dark Souls or Call of Duty is the worst game ever but that's primarily just to stir shit and everyone who actually seeks out, reviews, and mocks bad games knows what makes a bad game what it is. There are games that are technically broken, games which are mechanically fucked, games which are incompetent, and there are games whose stories just.... Fuck up. The reasons for these can change, but can range from time crunches and the need to slash and burn to meet a deadline, to developers running out of money. Rarely, you can see games where it's clear that nobody actually gave a damn, and are just blunderingly incompetent, full stop. Some games make the beautiful merging of virtually no gameplay and an absolutely terrible story, Quantic Dream style, and other games nail one, but fuck the other one up so hard that it can either make the game a cult hit in its own right or screw the pooch entirely.
But what if there was a happy medium? What of there was a game which had solid ideas for mechanics, but they were executed terribly? What if there was a game which had a fantastic idea for a story, but couldn't really cut it due to the fact that those involved with writing it didn't really know what they were doing? The result is a game that's not greater than the sum of its parts, and manages to both be playable, yet keeps being terrible in a variety of ways that is both entertaining and hilarious.
The result is Revolution 60's remake.
For the uninitiated, Revolution 60 was an IOS game. It was notoriously bad - a game with tons of potential that failed miserably technically. A terrible and unstable framerate, constant audio desynchronization, virtually no trailing or particle effects, severe audio mixing issues, and more. At its core was a very interesting premise, storyline-wise, that was executed terribly, resulting in a story both cliche and which failed to capitalize on its potential. There is nothing in Revolution 60 that wouldn't have been done more competently by a team that knew what it was doing, and you could look at it as a laudable first attempt if it weren't for the fact that the game cost $400,000 and almost 2 years to make. The port to Steam took just as long to arrive, and we went through countless false starts and a Kickstarter backer revolt before the game finally reached its PC version release.
Was the wait worth it? In two words: Sort of. The game is still the same Revolution 60 at its core - same poor dialogue, same bad design decisions, same cliched plot. However, the game's mechanical emphasis is greatly improved. The framerate is much more stable, the audio mixing problems are fixed, the audio stuttering is gone, the audio synchronization issues are no longer a problem, the animations are improved, and the game, as a whole, looks, plays, and feels a whole lot more fluid than it did before. It's the kind of upgrade the developers of a lot of games would kill to get, frankly. It's not enough to make Revolution 60 good - not by any stretch - but it does make the game both play better and look a lot better. And with these improvements, we are free to look away from the game's technical problems and stare directly into where this game's mis-steps lie. What we have is the ideal case of a game that had everything going for it, and yet due to its flaws, could never really meet the lofty goals its developer intended for it, and wound up sacrificed on the altar of Steam purely out of obligation.
There's a certain sense of levity in Revolution 60 that is lost on pretty much everyone but its creator, Brianna Wu, and you can see it more clearly in the game now than ever before. For all the problems with the game, a lot of love and care went into making it. Not on Brianna Wu's part, mind you, but we'll get to that.
Let's dive right into Revolution 60 and take a closer look at this game.
From the outset, three things jump out immediately at any player - that the graphics have been improved, that the new models do, indeed, look better, and that the Hyperion - Holiday's Motorcyle - has a world model that is absolute trash and completely unanimated. In fact, it's so glaring and so obvious that it actually goes into the realm of parodic. You can't help but see this garish gold monstrousity and ask yourself why in god's name it's designed in a way that makes its issues so obvious. One can imagine Brianna Wu arguing with the modelers for why this thing had to look this way. It's not like there's not a ton of cool future bikes on the internet to draw inspiration from. But enough of that nonsense, it's time to get started.
One thing that the remake has that the original doesn't is FMV cutscenes with really, really obvious HD models. This wasn't noticable on the IOS version because between the small screen and the way the original was coded, you couldn't really tell what was in-game graphics and what was HD cutscenes. You can on PC with ease, and it sort of makes the transitions jarring, since the two look very similar to how they otherwise would, but are different enough that you can see it far off. It sort of reminds me how Syphon Filter would have cutscenes that were FMV but then use the same models, which generally looked like 14-karat shit.
The intro starts the same as the original, with Holiday having just broken into and entered a Fifth Column outpost and killed a bunch of people getting to the checkpoint. You might not be aware, but this is actually intended to help get the player acclimated to their chosen response type; from the very outset of the game, you basically need to choose a path - Professional or Rogue - and then stick with it to get a quality ending. The game's design is actually intended in such a way where you benefit from this, and you can actually see changes in Holiday's characterization depending on how you go.
This was true in the original as well, but in the remake, there's new animations added and a few new line-reads that can pop up post-fight in both Rogue and Professional paths. Since @Smutley's playthrough of Revolution 60 on IOS was mostly intended to induce a failure state and it wound up getting him one of the worse endings, I'm going to try something a little different and make the exact opposite choices he did in the IOS release. We're going to see the results this has on the story, and what changes it has for the game as a whole.
Since Smutley went Rogue, I'm going Professional. Let's challenge.
Two new things I noticed that the original didn't have are motion blur and depth of field effects. It's seen relatively rarely but you can definitely notice it when the enemies move or react, and, by and large, it looks good. Whilst a lot of people will give Revolution 60 shit for its visuals, and good god, does it deserve a lot of that shit, I will give props for this much: It looks like no other game currently on the market. The stylized character designs, whilst anime-inspired, are clearly done in a way that I don't think anyone's ever tried before, and it allows for some expressive facial animations and responses.
It has the same problem Revolution 60's other aspects have - they're done by a company that has no experience whatsoever - but you can tell that the people who made this are desperately trying for the game to be unique to be unique if nothing else. I imagine that if the game's visual design hadn't been up to Wu, the character designs may have looked more anime-style than they actually turned out to be.
Imagine the arguments that were had to make this choice happen, too. It's amazing.
The new input system is command-based. It's not the worst thing around but it's kind of dumb since your choice of keyboard can screw how the game plays. Regardless, as dumb as this is, it is a dramatic improvement over the IOS's "Maybe I will work if I feel like it" touchscreen commands. Moving along, Holiday escapes the outpost with the stolen codes and runs across the dropship. In the original, this was an area notorious for the game lagging and/or fucking up due to how busy the screen is. I'll direct you Smutley's infamous playthrough:
On the IOS port, this infamously caused the audio to desynchrionize. On the PC Version, though? Not so much as a single dropped frame. Holy shit. To say this is an improvement is an understatement; fixing Revolution 60's technical problems is a worthy endeavor. However, at the end of the day, this is still Revolution 60, and everything that was true about the original game's shortcomings that weren't technical issues are still valid.
Now, I do want to point out that I'm an outlier here - everyone else seems to be having trouble running this game without lag, but I have had absolutely none. This leads me to believe that Revolution 60 is a Battlecruiser 3000AD situation, where it runs worse the better your rig is, but we'll check that out in due time.
Holiday jumps on the Jumpship, uses her blade to cut through the cockpit, shoots the pilot, and then fires on the power core for good measure. Everything about this scene is hilariously stupid. Why does the pilot not shoot her when she moves? Why does the pilot do nothing when she jumps on the ship? Why does the pilot not do anything until he's shot in the face? It's the same sort of logic-defying stupid that we only see in terrible action movies and Revolution 60. It's retarded and I completely approve.
Professional Holiday is actually funnier than Rogue holiday is. She's both kinder and more snarky, and the talents of her voice actress, Jill Melancon, really shines through here. She offers one of the better performances in Revolution 60, and she's only one of two characters who seems to actually be having legit fun with her voice work. Holiday is actually not a terrible character, contrary to her original Socially Unconscious incarnation, and depending on you go with her, she comes across as either completely in over her head or fed up with everyone and is just one chocolatte from bring-a-shotgun-to-work day. She has some great lines in both paths and is about the only bright spot in the game's dialogue until about halfway through the game, so enjoy it.
Actually, as an aside? Revolution 60's script is fucking terrible. The line-reads are fine and the voice actors and actresses mostly do a perfectly servicable job, but the script gives them very little to work with. Min comes across as a completely transparent threat to herself and others 12 minutes in, and Amelia is of course Brianna Wu's shameless self-insert who essentially fucks up the exfiltration attempt.
Useless bitch.
The cutscenes that follow highlight everything wrong with the game's cutscene design; no use of tracers and almost no impact graphics means that firefights in it look cheap and stupid. Anyway, Valentina takes a grenade, and Holiday calls for backup. I then notice the humor that while Holiday's hair strands are jiggleboned, her giant heart-shaped ponytail (which I believe our dear @Cynical once accurately described as "Ballsack of Hair") is not.
A long and completely unskippable tutorial later, we're done with the first fight. Let's move on to the one that isn't holding my hand in a pin vice.
The fight system is actually sort of fun, but not for the reasons you might be thinking. The actual combat itself is boring and repetitive. Instead it's the AI that makes this a fucking joy to watch unfold. All of the Leopard enemies use slightly different versions of the same AI script, but all of them are fucking mental in some capacity or another and this generally makes them about as effective a fighting force as COBRA.
The Snow Leopards will reliably move all the fuck over the place just to fire on a random column that isn't yours, or perhaps chuck a grenade at the place you were standing about 12 seconds ago. Alternately the Dark Leopards may fire much more effective lasers, or they may pointlessly try to melee you while you are standing on the back row. There are confirmed cases of the Dark Leopards throwing their Laserkraals (those beam-wall thingamajigs they use) into their own rows and subsequently hurting themselves.
I can only imagine what is going through these guys' minds as you fight them. Was this an intentional design decision? Were the enemies just unable to be programmed right? Is it clone-based Autism?
I have no idea, but I'm finding it hysterical.
Additionally, I'm going to point out something new: There's actual hit graphics on impacts now. That is a significant improvement from the original game even if the overuse of overlays and ridiculous lack of trailing effects is still a thing. I'll take what I can get, really. Anyway, Holiday fights the bad guys and punches and kicks and stabs them and saves Valentina after hijacking one of the cargo robots that are moving supplies and equipment to and from the launch pad.
...Only for a Dark Leopard to show up and introduce her to the ground.
Minuete, however, shows up and saves Holiday's bacon. What you then are greeted with is this.... Masterpiece:
This is of course one of the things that makes Revolution 60 as enjoyable as it is, and that's its pathological inability to keep a consistent tone. The closest movie equivalent I can see to this nonsense is Laserblast, or perhaps one of those really old Japanese movies like Invaders from Space. Revolution 60 wants desperately to be taken seriously, but it throws things in like a girl with deely boppers and compound eyes that happens to be some sort of combat mod and is dressed in a skirt that looks like it escaped from an Austin Powers set. Metal Gear Solid was known for inconsistent tone, but only Revolution 60 can screw up its own tone so well that instead of being really bad, it's just hilarious.
If I didn't know Brianna Wu so well, I'd almost think that this was done on purpose.
Anyway, Min is coldly logical and mission-focused to the point of being callous. Brianna Wu makes very clear that this is what she thinks a leader is supposed to be like - willing to make the hard decisions and get shit done - but it's equally clear that if it wasn't for the voice actress, this character would fail utterly. Min's professed reason for saving Holiday is that it will improve the mission odds. With the gang back together, they hijack a nearby dropship and we prepare to make like the Space Core and go to space.
Stay tuned for next episode, where we begin the first of the game's "faffing about" components, and begin exploring the ship in preparation for arrival at N313, the satellite where the game takes place, and Brianna Wu throws a reference to Metal Gear for no discernable reason. Smooth.
