Obey Me is self-described as a ‘holypunk brawler’ so get ready to mash away at those buttons while you fight against mutant monsters in an all out heaven vs hell war!
The game opens with not much information about Vanessa, the character you play. After some clunky dialogue with a big boss and a secretary, it then lands you into one of those awkward frenemies dynamics as our two main characters finally get a scene. To be honest, I’m not really feeling endeared to these characters.
The cutscenes have still frames with voice acted dialogue, sort of like a throwback to 90’s games and comic books. But for all the lengthy dialogue, I don’t feel like the game has told me much, as most of it is just bickering between the characters. I want to like them, their visual designs are great. Their script however, is not.
Unfortunately for me, the game story did not hold my attention too well as I look for deeper stories and mysteries these days and I was not really feeling compelled to move forward into another cliche scene.
Obey Me is an action game, so the gameplay is fairly straightforward. Attack, Heavy Attack, Ranged Attack, Warp. However, the game insists on annoying tutorial pop-up screens in the middle of combat, which really ruins the flow. The same goes for every new item pickup and power up. Finally getting past all the jargon and into the action without interruption is a relief. Some enemies die with satisfying splat piles and explosions, which is always fun.
As you advance through the game, there are a myriad of abilities to upgrade and combos to unleash, as well as teaming up attacks with your hell-hound partner, Monty. This game supports offline co-op so you can have a friend jump in to play as well. This functions quite nicely as you can quickly toggle co-op mode on and off via the pause menu. Monty is somewhat tethered to Vanessa and cannot advance the game screen. He will warp back to her if you wander too far. It also seems that he has no health bar, so your younger sibling isn’t going to hold you back when you give them player 2!
This game has that dark and gritty setting that is lit up by neon colours, it’s like a love letter to Diablo and the 90’s edgelord genre in general. The character designs have a very western comic book feel to them and if you are really digging this game, there is also a short comic book series available! While this game does look visually nice it does have a bit of frame rate loss making action scenes feel a bit choppy sometimes, but not every player will notice this.
If you are looking for a fresh button masher that feels like a throwback to the 90’s with couch co-op play, then this game will probably scratch that itch. This is not a groundbreaking game, but Obey Me sits in its chosen genre just fine.
