With the exception of the long forgotten “online pass,” few money making tactics have been frowned upon by gamers as much as the dreaded loot box craze. While I am all for randomly dropped gear and items in the form of free loot boxes, I find the practice of asking for real money in exchange for these often useless goods to be obnoxious to say the least. The loot box craze has become a bit of a joke, with a number of games being released poking fun at them; Shadow of Loot Box takes it a step further and makes the crates full-fledged enemies. I could ask you for $1.99 to hear me ramble about some things that may include my opinion that will likely be junk, but since this is your first time logging in for the day, I’ll give you this one free.

The game is extremely difficult to categorize into a specific genre, as each level looks and plays out completely different than the one before it. The first level puts you in a dungeon with minimal abilities, tasking you with collecting large yellow orbs of XP. You’ll slowly accumulate enough to purchase upgrades that most games would hand you simply for pressing start at the main menu, such as moving at a faster pace, jumping, and even opening doors. Yes, you have to unlock the ability to open a door. Each skill you attain allows you to progress further into the winding maze, eventually leading to a key to unlock the exit.

The following level plays out like a strange combination of an FPS with basic RPG style sidequests making up the bulk of the level, complete with a Preston Garvey (of Fallout 4 fame, you know, “A settlement needs your help”) lookalike if his father was Bert or Ernie from Sesame Street and made of pixels. Big surprise, he tells you a settlement needs your help, and gives you a loot box just for talking to him. The remainder of this level pits you against spider/loot crate/robot enemies that come in huge waves, pursing you relentlessly while you complete menial tasks for the townsfolk. When I saw menial, I mean it; you’ll be delivering letters, picking up mushrooms that are sitting right next to the NPC giving you the quest, among other amazingly mediocre missions that the NPCs are too lazy to do themselves. Along the way, you’ll collect more loot boxes, which work as giving the player additional ammo, health, or other useful items.

Each level that follows will bounce back and forth between these types of objectives, with mild to moderate changes that are never really explained properly. The variety is something that many games lack, but having to figure out what you need to do to progress in many of the levels feels downright sloppy. In the previously mentioned level with the fetch quests, I completed the same side quest no less than five times before realizing the game would allow me to grind out loot boxes on the same chore as many times as I wished. This was partly due to the lack of direction as well as the fact that the important elements of the HUD that would tell me my ammo count, health, and so forth fell partially outside of the safe zone of my TV, with no option to adjust it within the menus. I could see I had a number that would deplete if I shot, got hit, etc, but had to use trial and error to determine what they meant due to the symbols next to the numbers being obscured.

In most cases, if you give me the option of playing a puzzle game or something where I can point a gun at something and pull a trigger, I’m going to go with the latter. This game is one of the few exceptions to this, as the shooting is downright awful due to floaty, inaccurate aiming and a downright disappointing arsenal, resulting in the puzzle based levels being much more entertaining than the FPS challenges. Even when attempting to look at a specific item you need to interact with, the hit boxes are extremely small in comparison to the real estate they take up on the screen. The same can be said for the ridiculously bullet spongey enemies. Making matters worse, the enemy forces will spawn randomly anytime you look away. I am in no way exaggerating – if you clear an area and do a 360, you’ll be faced with yet another swarm of the same enemies you just killed. At the end of the day, this plays like the South Park video game from the PS1/N64 era, but without any of the charm or dirty jokes.

The presentation is downright terrible, although it has a few merits. Some of the levels, mainly the interior spaces, look like they were rendered in an OG Doom mod, while others appear to be user created levels from Roblox. The end result feels like a “best of” collection from the FTP title, which really isn’t saying much. Even with the uber basic design to the assets, frequent clipping and frame rate drops are so frequent you could sync your watch to them. The mashup presentation carries over into the enemy design as well. While there is some variety in the form of the vicious loot boxes that attack you, with the spider/loot box/robots being the most interesting, others look like the decapitated head of a Minecraft creeper hobbling around trying to attack you. The majority of the sounds effects and music grind on your ear drums due to the repetitiveness of the generic sounds. The game’s saving grace is there are a few easter egg type jokes taking aim at more noteworthy franchises, in addition to the inclusion of Mr. Garvey – some of the townsfolk will reference Skyrim, I found a few Super Mario Bros. inspired pipes that allow you to warp about the levels, among a few less interesting ones I won’t bother mentioning.

Since Shadow of Loot Box finally let me live out my dream of putting a few rounds into Preston Garvey (and him exploding into a violent mess of bones and blood no less), it doesn’t feel like a complete failure, but is pretty close. I would encourage you to take the $4.99 price tag (or more depending on the system) and spend it on any Loot Box of your choosing, as the digital treat found within would probably make for a more worthwhile purchase.

4 out of 10

Pros

• Shoot Preston Garvey In His Stupid Face
• No Paid Loot Boxes

Cons

• Enemy Respawn Rate Is Brutal
• Lack of Direction
• Poor Presentation on Every Front

Shadow of Loot Box was developed by Stately Snail and published by Ratalaika Games S.L. The game was released for NS, PC, PS4, and X1 in 2018. The game was provided to us for review on XFPS1. If you’d like to see more of Shadow of Loot Box, check out the publisher’s site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

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