Slaughter. If I had to define BUTCHER, a game by Transhuman Design, one word would fit perfectly, though it certainly is not a seamless slaughter of the innocents. The slogan promoting production, ie “The easiest level of difficulty is HARD” is not an exaggeration, and the frequency of deaths, not only of our opponents, is frightening.
Not always in productions of all kinds we get extensive plots that would justify our actions. Sometimes we are thrown into a fight without any explanation, just to do our thing. This is also the case with BUTCHER. We play the role of a cyborg whose sole purpose is to wreak havoc and paint all rooms with blood. Sounds like an easy job, but it is not. Each of the clashes may well end our lives and return us to the very beginning of the level.
Right at the start of the game, we can choose the difficulty level. As I wrote before, the easiest one is the difficult one. I just looked at the rest, because the challenge I got on this lowest difficulty made the rest of me count as suicide missions. The higher we raise the bar with the lower health level, we begin our bloody adventure, and we may lose the possibility of using first aid kits and additional protection. However, whatever the difficulties faced in BUTCHER, each of the boards is up for completion. It is enough to be patient and careful. We have a limited amount of ammunition, so each cartridge is worth its weight in gold, and besides, life slips away so quickly that it only takes a moment to hit the very beginning again.
To complete the BUTCHER you need to complete over twenty boards from which the game is composed. The location changes every four levels, so you don’t have to worry about the diversity of our surroundings. The most distinctive places were the jungle and the area around the volcano. There is also nothing to complain about our arsenal and monotony when dealing with successive hosts of opponents. We have six different weapons at our disposal, including a shotgun, grenade launcher, and an electrical work. As soon as we run out of ammunition, a chainsaw is always at hand so that we can shorten the list of problems to be rectified at a direct meeting.
Our enemies are not a clone army and among them we can find basic mercenaries, as well as those with slightly better equipment, which can be additional difficulties, especially if they are equipped with a jetpack. In addition, there will be units with increased health and unusual weapons, and if that sounds too easy, the boss is the icing on the cake.
BUTCHER is a challenging 2D shooter that should satisfy fans of real challenges and often blood splatter. A pleasant slaughter of opponents, during which not only them death smiles often, is accompanied by an atmospheric soundtrack and pixel graphics, all of which will last for at least a few hours of gameplay. To make it not so colorful, I would like to mention that I miss the co-op mode, but everything is ahead of us, because the game is to be enriched even more, and the multiplayer mode is on the agenda.
