HALLOWEEN SPECIAL 2025 TRASH DESCENT IV: 0HxN0xY0UxARExDEAD
...and now, your host Paimon.
Looks like our beloved pilots of this forum are here for another horror game review? Well, if you are asking for horrors on Halloween, hell GLADLY provides.
Let's see what this month of videogame terrors had brought from the depths of gaming nightmares...
Our name guarantees a trip to hell.
Oh, look at this, its that dreaded Xitilon again, bringing us a monstrosity called 0xDEADRUN. Just when I thought he would learn the lesson, or at least improve further from his work with Crushborgs, looks like it does stepbacks and that means one thing: TRASH GAMES.
Corridor of Boredom.
Well, shit. But it's time for Halloween again and it's time for my annual "TRASH-O-WEEN" reviews. So, let's review this shit so we can take a well earned break.
Developed by gl33ntwine and Published by Xitilon, this game is a very simple corridor shmup where at least tries a different type of game mechanism: Taking damage based on how much hit points you have.
To understanding this mechanic it goes like this: Your character (whatever the fuck it is) starts with 1HP, indicated on the left side of the sprite with a very small red 1. You can increase that health by picking hearts that grant you 1 more point or crossing the blue "Doors" that give you a larger amount. Crossing red ones will cause you damage or death, and there's no spare lives if you die. You can also see how much HP your enemies have in this never ending corridor and this is where you can decide if you want to give a try on killing something or just dodge it. But when the enemies HP is in dozens or hundreds, you have one advantage on your favor. ¿Which one? Tapping X and Circle nonstop to increase your firing rate. That's all what there is to know about the gameplay. No items, no bosses, no stages, just one perpetual level that only ends with your demise.
Looks like your basic name entry
But its unorthodox to input.
The Ranking system is also fucked up. Unlike most games where you only need to move the cursor to change the letter, here you have to push either X or O to change the digit, so, ¿How do you change to the next letter? Guess what, by pressing Down, and pressing Up moves to the previous letter. ¿What kind of fucked up shit is that?, ¿Why not the "RUB" or "<-" like any other game?. Also there's no numbers, commas, periods (or "Points") or fancy symbols like hearts or spades, just the basic alphabet.
Deliberate Death. Typical from Shovelware games.
Trophy progression involves not just the typical destruction of enemies, it involves pacifism (not shooting for a while) and even multiple instances of deliberate suicide. Basically it's the "junk food" of gaming like many, many, many bad shmups and games I've played before. But like Bixby Snyder (RoboCop) said "I'd buy that for a dollar!" Fuck that, this game doesn't deserve your hard earned dollar.
The ad-blurb is another mumbling bullshit: "Inspired by one-bit classics but juiced up with CRT shaders, subpixel movement, and cyberpunk flair, this is the kind of game you’d find in a broken arcade cabinet deep inside a Night City dive bar". Well, there's no cyberpunk flair, or 1-Bit classic influences. It's an horizontal scroller that feels like an obscure Atari 2600 prototype or demo that didn't made the grade. As for the bar claim, I've never been into one, but I swear God, Satan, Buddha, Tlaloc, Marduk, Nimrod, Sett and Ra althogether that no bar would have shit like that, the bartender will prefer to have another TV to watch ESPN College Football or something.
Graphically, its your typical Xitilon shit where effort is unexistant. Well, not as unexistant and imbecile as Soraja Invaders because 0xDEADRUN at least has recognizable shapes like the weird Jigglypuff lookalike as your character shooting at Space Invaders ripoffs and fusions between Invaders and Pac-Man ghosts. The screen distortion is horrendous and to make things worse, it can't be toggled off. The scenery is again the generic space background in an eternal corridor plagued with the mentioned characters.
The music on the other side is decent, if you like fast paced electronica that fits more on a generic racer game more than a shmup. The sound effects are in-between NES and Commodore 64 in the premise of being old and 1-bit like. So we can definitely say the sound department is the only virtue of this game.
What can I say about this game?
Xitilon's latest "shmup" is another spam game that plagues the PlayStation Store waiting for your money. If you're SO DESPERATE for trophies, then pick it, even if that means giving him your money. I mean, he would deserve it if he made more games with quality just like he did with Crushborgs, but this? This is just another insult to injury to gaming.
1 R-9 out of 10:
This pic means "Oh, my mental sanity"...