Grade: A-
Retro RPG like classic Pokemon, but with laptop battles
A top-down retro RPG! I love these. The premise of Danger Crew is that you play as a programmer starting a job search and a hopeful applicant at a “five-star belts” company. I made my protagonist named “JEAARRRRI.” You are fighting through a bunch of hacker/laptop battles as you fight your way to the top of the org
Turn-based combat
In the turn-based battle, reminiscent of old-school pokemon games, you use attacks, defenses, buffs, and nerfs. The abilities are in programmer jargon like pop, stash, push, slice, forEach, curl, network reset, etc. It goes on and on with the inside jokes. In these battles, you have to drain the other programmer’s laptop battery before they drain yours. The humor is all techy/dilbert-style jokes that make fun of the programmer’s life throughout.
Once you get to the top of the company, you get banished in a buyout, and you then have to fight through a horde of data zombies that the opposing company has placed in your way. Finally, in the epic finale, you fight the equivalent of Steve Jobs, who’s the boss of Macrodome. The end fight was pretty tricky, but in a good, challenging way, not a frustrating “I hate everything” kind of way.
It’s a short, 4-5 hour tour to go through the whole game. My biggest beef with the game is the same as I experienced with Pokemon. The fights can get pretty repetitive, and you fall into set combos. As a result, the combat becomes rote after a time.
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