Danger Scavenger is the latest game to join the pantheon of roguelite’s looking to part you with your hard earned cash. With a cyberpunk theme, whichever character you choose is tasked with traversing each level of a building (5 in total), obtaining loot, shooting everything in sight and trying to top the leaderboards. But sadly, it just isn’t that interesting.
You have a number of characters to choose from at the start (with others being unlocked) and each one has their own unique abilities. There’s the tank character who has double the heath of others, the lady who can rocket jump and others catering to whatever your style of play may be. When the game gets going though is when the cracks begin to show.
Firstly by default the game has screen shake turned on. It’s amazingly disorientating and genuinely gave me a headache about playing for about ten minutes. So turning that off should be the first thing you do. Secondly, the framerate is really, really bad. At first I thought it might be because I was playing in handheld mode, so I hooked it up to the TV and it felt somehow worse. When the action heats up with bullets flying everywhere the game can slow to a crawl. I consider myself quite lenient when it comes to framerate drops, but this was too much even for me. It also seemed to affect the shooting itself, as multiple times it felt like my character wasn’t shooting in the direction I wanted and was instead locking on to someone else off screen.
The key like a lot of isometric shooters is to stay on the move, but when it’s difficult to differentiate bullets from the background this becomes no use. Objects are scattered around each floor, some explode and some don’t making each level a bit of a mess, especially as graphically there’s nothing really that stands out here. It all looks incredibly mediocre.
That said, there are some positives to take away from Danger Scavenger. It’s definitely content rich. With multiple characters, weapons and items that can be collected, there is a lot of variety here. At the start of each run it’s best to look at your equipment and cater to what matches your playstyle. And throughout each level there are hidden areas where you can find new weapons and items, as well as sections where you can spend scrap for new stuff. So if you find yourself really getting into the game there is something there for you to latch onto. I just wish I was one of those people.
In the end then, there’s way too much here that gets into the way of the fun. As soon as things were starting to click I just got punched in the face, whether it be the framerate or getting hit by an impossible to see bullet. With so many games of this ilk to choose from on Switch, it’s really difficult to recommend.
