I am a little bit of an energy drink connoisseur. I like to try many different tastes and brands, and right before I played this game I drank Pro! brands BCAA drink with raspberry flavor. And I kept drinking over the course of my play through. Sometimes it was hard to distinguish - was I drinking the game, or playing the drink?
Astral Chain is the energy drink of gaming. It's brisk, fast, fun and it just brims and hums with energetic youth. Most of all, it's the raspberry of Platinum's roster where Bayonetta is THAT club's infamous jäger shot and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance lets your tongue taste the harsh coldness of winter-befrostered steel.
Raspberry. It sounds weird, but that's exactly because it is. A little sour, a little sharp, but sweet and tasty nonetheless. Shine on the tongue.
Because more than anything else, Astral Chain has flavor. It's a bit hard to describe. Or, it's rather easy to describe, but one has to go an extra linguistic mile to fully encompass the greatness of Astral Chain. But let's give it a try: It's a charming, cool and unbelievably stylish action game that is fun, flippant, quirky and even a bit emotional.
As a game, it stretches itself way too thin in a way that keeps it from reaching the topmost shelf of Platinum's roster, to a point. But Astral Chain doesn't care. It stretches however thin it fricking wants, because it's that kind of game, like X-ray, who stokes itself way too thick with taurine just for the heck of it.
Let's abandon reason and give it a 10/10 just because the pride it takes in just being itself. Astral Chain is THAT game.
It tosses whatever it wants to toss at you and acts like it's obvious. Of COURSE it has RPG elements and upgradable weapons, and of COURSE you have a cute and dumb dog mascot for your police squad, and of COURSE do you collect toilets and since you have a huge fricking beast as a weapon why WOULDN'T you use your chain to platform jump?
This game is unique. Let's just leave it at that. It has a sublime artstyle bathed in sexy neon that I just simply can't get enough of. The combat and it's unique concept of having your typical attack-shoot-dodge-person team up with a pet tied to your chain, a chain which you can use to tie people up, is enthralling and engaging. The narrative is not afraid to stretch beyond stereotypes and grapple for a genuine, heartfelt story of family drama that tugs at you, in more ways than one.
And you can collect cans.
Just like I had to do when I finished the game.
Astral Chain.
Live it. Be it. Taste it.
Mmmmmm.
