Have you ever gotten so angry, you just wanted to hit anyone with everything that was in sight and smash them into teeny, tiny blood splatters, well…here is that chance with Paint the Town Red by South East Games. When you first see the game in the steam store and you watch the trailer, you instantly go, wow, I wasn’t expecting that, you can literally punch the head of somebody, can I have a go please? In simple terms, think of Paint the Town Red as Minecraft pixels and sprites but on a massive drunken drug fuelled binge in Ibiza, where you have the attitude that absolutely nothing can or will stop you doing whatever you want to.
The game has a simple premise, be the last man standing in a fight and you win, how you become the last man standing though is where the fun and your imagination begins. I will warn you now, the game is extremely brutal and does not hold back on any violence whatsoever, you have been warned! You can and will use literally anything as a weapon from a bar stool, pool cue, plates as well as your fists and feet to overcome the horde of people around you. All the people don’t come charging at you straight away, when you enter the building, you can get a chance to survey your territory and make a plan of attack…if there is such thing as a plan.
Once you start the fight off, then all hell breaks loose and it is every man for themselves, thankfully it’s not Left 4 Dead style where everything is chasing you, there will be pockets of AI fighting amongst themselves and will only join in when you ‘disturb’ them, for example chucking a bar stool at someone’s face or kicking them off the top floor through the banister onto the floor below. The more people you kill, the more the power/rage bar grows, this is where you can release devastating attacks, the first one is a shockwave, which blasts people away from you allowing you to breathe, then my favourite Berserk mode.
Think of when you picked up that red health chest mode in Doom and went balls to the wall, fists flying punching everything into smithereens, well this is what that allows you to do for a short time, great for a crowd of people. There is a third power which is some laser type thing, but I never got that far and just used the berserk power whenever I acquired it. There is currently no story mode as such, as there are only 2 levels currently available, a bar fight and a disco clubbing, a prison level is due very soon and they have just released a sandbox for you to play around with to your hearts content and much more in the making looking at how far they have come so far, including multiplayer!
Even though the game is still in early access and only been available since the middle of October, there has been a lot of changes made and the developers are more than happy to listen to ‘constructive’ criticism and feedback they are also more than happy to help out whenever and wherever they can and are very active in their subreddit. Initially, I admit I was very unsure about this game, with the over the top violence, but it didn’t take me very long to change my mind. It’s a fun, simple, game which is very easy to pick up and play whenever you have any free time in which you get the urge to murder someone. I have to agree with a lot of people who say “Think of Paint the Town Red as Hotline Miami but in first person mode!”, and you can’t go wrong with that combination.
+ Easy to pick up and play
+ Simple concept, murder everything
+ Developers are constantly working on the game
– AI can be a bit simple at times
– Weapons can break too easily
battlemisfit.com 