Paranautical Activity launched a while back on PC but landed on Wii U today. This isn’t your ordinary game, it’s a rogue-like dungeon crawler created in pixelated 3D environments. Don’t expect an easy ride; the eight levels are probably the eight most brutal levels you’ll ever play on your Wii U system. Are you looking for a challenge? Paranautical Activity might quench that thirst.
Prepare to die, a lot
Before you start this adventure, be warned, it’s never easy. Since the launch of Dark Souls, the industry launched a couple of hard games to keep those gamers satisfied. Paranautical Activity can be added to the ‘you died’ games since you’ll be restarting this adventure a lot. Everything starts with your character to start your quest.
Before you enter the eight rooms of death, you can pick your hero. Each character feels different thanks to his/her equipment. Some will be able to carry two weapons like a katana and shotgun, while others will be able to carry big cannons with them. Each hero has a different set of weapons, varying from powerful shotguns to more obscure weapons as crossbows. Besides that, the number of grenades also differs from the playable character, there’s only one thing that’s the same with each character and that its health. The first few runs you’ll try will often end in a game over screen, at first, the characters feel underpowered and it feels like they aren’t up for the insane amount of damage the enemies can inflict, this changes the more you play.
Random rooms
One of the mechanics that makes it a lot harder to survive are the randomized rooms. You never know what kind of enemies will be waiting for you behind the door. Once you enter a room, the door closes until you defeat the last enemy in the room. The developers added very original enemies ranging from huge land sharks to invisible ninjas and tiny magicians casting fireballs. Defeating these regular enemies isn’t that hard once you figured out how to deal with them but prepare to die a lot before your reach that point.
Harder to tackle are the bosses. Just like the Dark Souls franchise, defeating a boss will demand a lot of skills and a little luck. Once you managed to defeat a boss, however, you’ll be able to grab upgrades; these are the beating heart of the game and the difference between life and death.
Grab those upgrades
The upgrades are useful to make it to the end, at least, most of them are. Some are rather useless with effects like changing the gender of your character for some kind of reason. Besides that, there are more useful powers of course. Some will give you extra health while other will increase your power so taking down the enemies becomes a little easier.
Grabbing these upgrades is crucial although we noticed that bosses tend to drop more upgrades instead of more health, resulting in a true challenge until the bitter end. This is due to the fact that you never know what to expect in your next room.
That being said, the rooms do look rather the same, the developers didn’t really invest a lot of time to include variation in the levels. It doesn’t matter that much since the rooms are just used to kill the enemies and thanks to the modern 3D pixelated style, it al looks great.
| The Good: | The Bad: |
| + A true challenge | – Lacks variation |
| + Great enemies | – Too hard for many |
| + Great designs |
Paranautical Activity is a great addition to the Wii U’ eShop but be prepared for some challenges. If you like rogue-like dungeon crawlers or games like Dark Souls, you’ll enjoy this one. It will take some time to get used to its strange and yet brilliant visual style but once you’re over that, you’ll enjoy the experience for sure. Looking for a challenge and aren’t afraid to die a lot, be sure to check this one out.
Score 3.5 out of 5:
