In most shooters, a player is rewarded by earning upgrades to their equipment making them more powerful, even if the enemy stays weaker. But what if that system were flipped on its head and you became weaker as you went along? DeGrade is an arena shooter that puts that idea to the test. Your (unexpectedly cute) bear protagonist can be moved using [WASD] or the [arrow] keys, and fires all of his weapons simultaneously when you hold the mouse button. After each wave of enemies, whatever weapon caused the most damage in that wave will be downgrad— sorry, degraded. Sometimes your weapon simply weakens a bit, sometimes you lose it entirely. After several waves of enemies, you'll get a much needed upgrade before entering the next world... and losing everything again.
We really like the game theory-ish idea of becoming weaker as the game continues, forcing you to play with more skill rather than more firepower. If you're careful, you can force a certain weapon to be the next one to degrade by making sure it does the most damage, which adds an extra layer of strategy to the game. Unfortunately, there is a flaw in that if you're constantly moving, you'll take very little damage and the game becomes significantly easier, and the game's main conceit loses its edge. However, DeGrade is still an interesting illustration the ideas you can create when you take the Overused Game Mechanics Handbook (2nd ed.) and toss it in the wood chipper.
Is anybody else experiencing problems where the bullets are doing no damage?
Cool idea, really bad implementation. Since all your weapons fire at once, actually controlling what degrades basically impossible. On top of that, the game itself is really rough. Enemies just pop into existence on top of you, the different enemies don't really do anything, and overall it just feels like it was rushed.
I liked it until my computer started to lag on it due to how many enemies were appearing on screen (I have a decent computer) And with now way to change the graphics or ease it I end up getting "covered" by an enemy and can't seem to hit it while it can't seem to hit me until i run into a piece of scenery that I thought i could run past.
It's a nice blend, but I do agree that you can control some weapons like the flame, but others it more of a gamble on what will de grade.
I noticed too that collision detection with bullets seems to be... lacking. Bullets and rockets are just flying right over targets, with maybe one in 10 actually hitting anything. And this goes both ways: enemy projectiles aren't hitting me any more than I'm hitting them. Very frustrating.
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