Army Corps Of Hell Review

Back in 2001, Nintendo released Pikmin, the story of a space traveler stranded on an alien planet. To escape, he enlists the help of the Pikmin, a race of the planet’s indigenous lifeforms, and they work together to defeat much larger enemies and repair his ship. Both Pikmin and its sequel were well-received due to their cute story, inventive puzzles, and novel concept. 

Army Corps Of Hell is not Pikmin.

They start similarly enough. The Devil King is cast down from the world above into Hell. There he finds a beleaguered race of Goblins, which he promptly enslaves before beginning his conquest of Hell.

The story itself is told via a series of oft-repeated painted stills and gibberish voiceovers which do little to further any kind of plot and serve as little more than trite comic relief.

Each stage begins with the Devil King choosing the composition of his army from among three types of Goblins. First are the Soldiers. These sword-bearing Goblins leap onto the enemies at close range and latch on. When there are enough of them, they can perform a team attack that is usually able to take down any non-boss enemy in one shot.

Next are the Spearmen. They are the long-range attackers and only stop charging when they hit the enemy or the edge of the arena. Moreover, they are able to squeeze through narrow spaces between traps that the rest of the army can’t fit through and attack the enemies therein. The final type of Goblin is the Mage, capable of hitting multiple large targets at mid-range, or many smaller targets with rapid fire.

While at first this seems like an inventive setup with each type of Goblin fulfilling a specific role, it isn’t. The Spearmen are largely useless outside of their introductory stages as Mages can simply fire through any trap barrier and do far more damage per hit than the Spearmen.

The boss designs range from the classical, like dragons and minotaurs, to this strange abomination, the Queen Mouth.

Thus the tactics for Army Corps Of Hell become this: if the monster is big, use the Soldiers. If it’s protected by magic or traps – or if there are many small monsters – use the Mages. Other than that, the only important thing to remember is to walk over the bodies of your dead Goblins to resurrect them.

In battle, Army Corps of Hell is, of course, a lot like Pikmin, but it also has strong puzzle and shoot-’em-up elements as well. Each level of the game is split into five to ten square platforms of varying sizes.

Each of these is filled with a different combination of fire traps, which explode when touched, and lightning barriers, which permanently kill any Goblins that touch them.

Then waves of large and small enemies spawn in at the strategically best locations given the traps and begin their attack. The puzzle of each platform is deciding how to defeat each enemy, in what order, and how to avoid the traps as you do so.

However, in the second half of the game, it feels much more like a shoot-’em-up as the traps become secondary to dodging the dozens of small enemies, exploding enemies, lasers, fireballs, and large demons mowing down your Goblins in mass.

At the end of each battle, in an increasingly time-consuming process, the Goblins can gather rare materials by devouring the enemies’ corpses.

These materials are then used in between each level to make new weapons, items, and armour for the Goblin army. There are also red orbs scattered about which can be used to purchase said upgrades, as well as replace any dead Goblins mid-level. Which is a necessity, especially before each boss.

The still art frames used for cut-scenes are easily the best-looking part of the game. 

The bosses themselves are challenging, inventive, fun, and truly one of the game’s few highlights – the first time you face them anyway. They range from giant spiders to dragons to eldritch abominations, and each is a puzzle requiring a mixture of timing and using the right type of goblin for the right job.

But all too soon the same boss appears again and again, sometimes with a few waves of enemies included or sometimes with an identical twin.

Visually, Army Corps of Hell is just plain ugly. While the static cut-scene images look nice enough, the same cannot be said for the in-game graphics.

The color palette is bland while the textures lack detail and are equally uninteresting. The battlefields are just square arenas that look almost identical to every other square arena in the entire game, and the same monster sprites are used over and over as well.

As if to make up for the uninspired visual design, enemy attacks are flashy and chaotic, often making it hard to see what’s going on, where the enemies are, and even whether your current target is alive or dead.

The music, on the other hand, is truly a thing of beauty and is hands down the best thing in the game. Like Tim Schafer’s Brütal Legend, Army Corps of Hell sports an entirely heavy metal soundtrack that perfectly fits its demonic landscape.

However, instead of licensing songs of well-known artists, the Entersphere team used local metal talent from the area around their offices in Tokyo. Frankly put, amateurs or not, these bands can rock – though the songs, like everything in this game, are reused to excess.