➤ Brawl between jellies 🎮

The Order: 1886 team decided to change course, which with De-formers, released only a few days ago, puts us in the shoes of gummy jellies that try to beat up equally caramelized opponents in a fun party game made of brawls, with completely crazy close fights, inside unlikely arenas.

Released in PlayStation 4, PC on Steam and Xbox One, De-formers has three main game modes: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Form Ball and it is possible to play up to 4 players on the same platform in split screen and up to 8 players online . Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch are two identical modes that differ only in being played by 8 players 'all against all', in the first, and by teams 'four against four', in the second; in this type of game you have to score more points than your opponents to win. Form Ball is instead a mode that is very reminiscent of Rocket League and in which, divided into teams of four, you have to throw a huge soccer ball into the opponent's goal and score as many goals as possible. There's not much more to say, the game makes simplicity and immediacy its strength and, in our opinion, its weakness, since already from the first game of Death Match you will have the feeling of being inside a visually very clean and colorful game but, at the same time, also extremely chaotic and difficult to master, completely missing any form of tutorial or mode in solo against artificial intelligence. There are some tutorial movies distributed by Ready at Dawn itself but they are not accessible from the game and you have to search for them yourself. The price of € 39,90 for a game that does not offer more than what is described, moreover, seems to us really excessive especially considering that, although with the coins that are earned by leveling up it is possible to buy both accessories and over 40 skins for customize our jellies (there are some really fantastic ones), to have them immediately you will have to open your wallet again and use the real money micro transactions system.

De-formers is a fun game of arena brawling between jellies but suffers from a rushed release

Class de-training

The Deathmatch, both in teams and free-for-all, catapults you into one of the eight arenas present and, before starting the actual game, allows you to choose the appearance, which allows you to use one of the purchased skins, and the class to which they belong. The classes that diversify your gelatinous counterpart are five: the Guardian, the Striker, the Ranger, the Marksman and the Speedster and it is possible to guess (remember that there are no tutorials in the game) their role and the difficulty of use only in the 30 seconds before the start of the game, by quickly observing the summary diagram.

The stars indicate the difficulty of using the class, while a small pentagon graph, on the tips of which are the characteristics of Agility, Shoot, Health, Ram and Size (actually the game is localized in Spanish but some parts, like features, mysteriously lacking in translation), helps you better understand the differences between the various classes. Before going into detail, it should be noted that there are various ways to take out your opponents: you can shoot them with the various bullets (called Tribs and also rubbery) scattered throughout the game arena and available by destroying the many objects present. , charge them as if you were a ram and lift them off the ground to launch them into the void, as every arena floats in the air. You can also defend yourself by turning into a large cube for a short period of time and thus becoming immune to charges and bullets, or struggling to free oneself once one is the victim of an opposing uprising. Returning specifically to the classes, the Ranger is the basic, the easiest to use and which, while not excelling in any of the skills, allows you to do a little bit of everything and is therefore suitable for new players. The Marksman is the class that has the highest rate of fire; the Striker has a greater charge and thrust power than the others; the Guardian excels at defending with a higher number of life points while also being easier to hit having the larger size and the Speedster is lightning fast.

De-formed physics

Within the game arenas and only in Deathmatch mode, various power ups appear that give advantages to the jelly or its team: the Magnet, for example, allows you to absorb the Tribs from a greater distance, or there are bombs that they stick to objects, opponents or those that explode after doing a couple of bounces (the Rebounds, even if it sounds like the name of a precooked to cook in a pan!).

Explosion detonates the area around you, while the Aura activates a circular surface within which you can heal your life bar, indicated at the bottom left of the screen, and that of allies. Meteor and Torpedo are powerful hits aimed at an area of the map, Fury temporarily empowers you by turning you into a big, violent jelly, and Concealment allows you to become invisible for a limited time. If the power ups are not enough for you, random Disasters also occur during the Deathmatch such as Spin and Tilt that make the game map turn and tilt respectively, Rise that bounces it up and down or Gravity that changes gravity and makes you float in the direction in which your thrust was applied when this is activated event (therefore also upwards causing an inevitable death), finally, Grumo could arrive, a destructive giant life form that rolls killing everything that stands in front of it. The Form Ball is quite another thing: forget all the power ups or disastrous events to enter the Ancient Arena, the only map, for now, suitable for this mode and from which it is not possible to fall since it is made in such a way as to have walls all around you and two doors with a lot of net inside which you will have to bag the mega ball that reaches the center of the field at the beginning of the match and after each goal. In Form Ball, destroying the opponent by shooting or charging him raises your score but above all has the ultimate goal of not letting him score or removing him from the boxes when he thwarts you during an attacking action.

PlayStation 4 Trophies

The trophies of De-formers are linked to both level advancement and the number of kills made in any mode, moreover, there are also many related to the Form Ball mode such as the number of Goals, assists and saves performed in the game .

Professional deformation

Let's start with a few sore points: the game controls are not configurable (apart from the inversion of the Y axis for the camera) and, although the pad of the Playstation 4 does its job very well, it is a bit woody in the management of the camera and the viewfinder for shooting (which move at a speed that cannot be changed with the right analog lever), moreover, it is not possible in any way to adjust the distance of the camera from the jelly. This last element is particularly annoying and adds even more confusion in the presence of arches or hills behind you; however, it is in the Form Ball that it has the most conspicuous problems, even losing polygons when rolling on the edge of the wall and trying to move the camera. Graphically, as anticipated, it is very clean and colorful and the many skins are the distinctive feature of De-formers: they range from animals to food (those of the piece of sushi and pancakes are brilliant), unfortunately, apart from four aspects available from immediately, both the skins and the accessories such as hats, glasses, backpack, special sound effects and graffiti for the landscape (like Overwatch to be clear) are paid, unless you want to play a lot to get the silver coins useful to buy them . Furthermore, the latter are not the only trading currency of De-formers: for the skins there is another type of currency, that is the filaments that are obtained only by advancing a level or paying with real money and which can be exchanged in silver coins.

It could be said that it is precisely the price that constitutes the real problem of De-formers and, having not had a boom in sales, the complaints of the community are flooding both on PlayStation4 and on Steam for PC due to games that are slow to start or starting with fewer players than expected, not to mention very frequent game crashes that force you to restart the application. Paradoxically a real applause goes to the musical sector with truly spectacular tracks that expertly use violins, banjo, harmonica and guitars and are well diversified among the game maps (we would say that they have spared no expense for the sound sector). De-formers is potentially a nice game and the inclusion of seasons and a competitive leaderboard (not yet active) only increases this potential but, even if Ready at Dawn will fix all the current problems with future patches, the feeling it is that of a rushed release which, at the moment, is not doing him justice at all.

Comment

Tested version PlayStation 4, PC Windows Digital Delivery Steam, PlayStation Store, Xbox Store Price 39.90 € Resources4Gaming.com

7.0

Readers (7)

5.8

Your vote

De-formers is certainly a missed opportunity, graphically and musically it is of very high quality and it is also fun to play but its few game modes, the absolute lack of a tutorial, the possibility of training against artificial intelligence or locally with a friend, the high price and in-game purchases prevent the title from taking off. Consequently, the lack of players ditches the situation even more: we hope it will be improved in the future.