AGAINST promises sick beats and fast-paced action, and fails to deliver on both.
At a first glance, AGAINST appears to have it all, rhythm, combat, and a campaign with a noir detective story. Upon playing it, however, this image quickly falls apart, and what’s left is a sub-par rhythm game that has very little working in its favor.
Overview
AGAINST is a rhythm-combat game in VR by Russian developer Joy Way, known for titles like the parkour game Stride, or Superhot-like Time Hacker. Originality is not exactly Joy Way’s strong suit, and AGAINST is no different.
AGAINST takes the rhythm combat of Pistol Whip and combines that with the directional slashing of Beat Saber. It’s a cool concept, but those are two very big titles to live up to. Each level consists of running in a straight line through a city, factory, whatever, while fighting evil thugs made of “darkness.” The game hands you four different weapons that you swap between during each level, which are a sword, brass knuckles, a revolver, and twin tommy guns.
Each level takes approximately five minutes, and they are all set to the beat of a song, with a unique song for each level. This is where the rhythm comes in, as you need to shoot, slice, jump, and wall run on time with the beats of the song.
Story
AGAINST’s campaign of seven levels is accompanied by a story, which is simultaneously amazing and terrible at the same time. Fans of low budget B movies will likely love the story of AGAINST, because the writing, voice acting, and overall story are awful to the point of hilarity. The story is completely nonsensical, and the writing and line delivery only serve to make the storyline funnier and more confusing. The ending caps it off with one of the worsts twists I've ever seen, and I laughed like crazy.
Surprisingly, this terrible storytelling is accompanied by amazingly well done comic book style cutscenes. The cutscenes are non-animated pictures that fold out similarly to a comic book, and they add an incredible deal of charm to a game that is hardly deserving of it. These cutscenes are brief, and most of them detail the protagonists’ journey from one mission location to the next. I almost wish there had been more, but there really wouldn’t be any room for them as the campaign is only an hour long, if that.
Gameplay
The gameplay is what you would expect a game like this to get right. Unfortunately, it really just falls flat on all fronts. It does play similarly to Pistol Whip and Beat Saber, which is clearly what the developers were going for, but it’s much worse than both games. It’s frequently just unresponsive, to the point where your sword or brass knuckles will go forward and just clip through the enemies without doing any damage.
The rhythm aspect is bad too. Frequently, the notes of the song will not line up with the action on screen, making AGAINST potentially the first rhythm game where you need to actively try to ignore the music so that it won’t distract you from hitting the bad guys at the right time.
Combat is not particularly satisfying either, when it does work. The sword just feels like a worse version of Beat Saber, while the guns feel and sound bad. The brass knuckles were the best weapon by far. If AGAINST had been entirely focused on punching, it might have been a little more interesting.
The one part about the gameplay that feels completely original are the jumping and wallrunning mechanics. Arrows will show up at certain points of the song, giving you a direction in which to swipe your hands. Up will result in a huge vertical leap, while left or right will make your character run on a wall. Frequently, the game will have you shooting enemies while flying through the air or wallrunning, which does feel pretty cool. The speed at which you move is also very cool, but it is very motion sickness inducing, even as someone who does not frequently get motion sickness from VR.
Presentation
AGAINST does have some things working for it in the visual department. The comic book cutscenes are by far the best looking part of the game. The visuals in gameplay sequences are okay, but not nearly as cool as the comic book sections. The enemies are a weird blend of noir gangsters and demonic entities, which may do it for some people, but it didn’t really work for me. The environments are cool though, and riding on top of an airship in the midst of a thunderstorm was definitely the highlight of the game.
The sound, though, is an aspect in which the game really suffers. The sound effects are not good. They aren’t satisfying to hear, and many of them get old really quickly. The boss before the final boss is particularly bad. He has one sound effect, a groan, which plays over and over. God forbid you fail the stage because doing it multiple times becomes a truly grating experience.
In my opinion, the music is no better. It’s a mix of nu-metal and dubstep/electronica that is, again, truly grating. Each stage has its own track, but they range from forgettable, at best, to just plain bad. AGAINST has easily the worst selection of music out of any rhythm game I’ve ever played.
Final Impressions
While AGAINST has some good ideas, it falls flat on its face as a rhythm game. There isn’t enough content in the base game to warrant the purchase, and the game itself is not fun enough to warrant taking the time to download custom song packs. As a game that clearly takes a lot of inspiration from the other VR rhythm game heavy hitters, it doesn’t do enough to set itself apart, nor does it innovate enough on the formula put forward by its predecessors. VR gamers looking for rhythm games would have a better time checking out Beat Saber or Pistol Whip, while those looking for more action would do well to check out After the Fall.
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