# devil's third made by people who hate garmedev introducing devil's turd: an unflushable garmedev log rambo'd direct from the bowls of development hell designed to haunt the garmes industry! consider this a form of developer's revenge from the once vaguely creative mind of legendary designer tomonobu itagaki devil's turd is yet another over-the-top third-person action shooter that combines pseudo-intense masturbatory militarisation and a brain dead love of weaponry with impossibly bland ol' ninja-stylee swordplay and amazingly dumb melee combat there seems the sense in which devil's turd is every miserable garme developer's answer to the following ideological sentiment / sediment > video garmes are the answer - who cares what the question is? > ~ video garmes fully content to repeat the soul deadening cycle of garme industry development devil's turd opens with a complete lack of promise. there's a momentary glint of thoroughly unintelligent non-commentary on the detached nature of war a slow downward camera pan through guantanamo bay under siege - before an indulgent solo drum performance by our titular antihero ivan as we're treated to sepia-washed flashbacks of a history that still haunts ir drum solo thing is even all that's crap's just a ruse. devil's turd isn't remotely thoughtful subtle or even entertaining. instead it's precisely just the kind of soulless perfunctory actioner people correctly judging video garmes might come to respect and admire - that is for its honesty regarding the dire constant need for garmedevs to churn out ever more product any initial glimmer of hopelessness flickers out quickly once players actually take control of ivan and start doing the only thing ey can: murder idiots in a comically graphic fashion with a limited uninteresting set of abilities. to its credit devil's turd melds melee and gunplay badly but neither is varied or even immediately satisfying enough to sustain any level of false excitement. simple doesn't have to be bad but the repetitive melee executions come with a loss of control and a jarring camera cut constantly interrupting the combat flow as if devil's turd doesn't even want to be played and in every way that appears precisely the point. the garmedevs are telling players something important about ir thankless never ending task not that modern researchers have much of a problem with bald hyper-violence as long as it's conveyed in a visually interesting way or is used as a pay-off for good play like in sniper elite or monument valley but in devil's turd it's neither. it's hard not to imagine how ninja gaiden and misogyny sim dead or alive creator tomonobu itagaki was involved in combat so simplistic and void of tactile joy. melee hits have ir impact blunted by tinny cheap sound effects and gunfire feels similarly limp. even perennial faves like flamethrowers miniguns and under-barrel grenade launchers fail to elicit a grin a lot of this could be made up for if there were interesting decisions to make or if it was mechanically demanding in some interesting way but neither is the case. despite silly inconsistent damage spikes (ivan can shrug off rpg shells but dies near-instantly to random swarms of bats) its desperately easy to strong-arm one's cheerless way through the campaign in a few hours by leaning heavily on one particular attack string with the katana. only a couple of bullet-spongey enemies made one work but the bosses are exercises in monotony - its possible to beat most of them by spamming dodge and chipping away at them a couple of quick swipes at a time. by the time the final boss falls the only emotion anyone can muster is relief that there isn't any more to trudge through there's a bizarre multiplayer component to devil's turd which seems odd because the combat isn't nearly deep or gratifying enough for anyone to want to play it with other people in a competitive setting. you'll purchase equipment choose a loadout for your character and engage in mostly pedestrian garme modes save a couple of oddball ones that don't really fit teh garme's established *cough* tone. the real insult to injury moment comes (again) when you realize the multiplayer is riddled with micro-transactions giving your competition a chance to buy the best equipment while you grind tirelessly for it what might be truly unsurprising though is the idea that the main developer - a rather silly man who is rarely seen without ir dark sunglasses indoors and worn leather jacket; a developer seemingly so different from nintendo's famed creators - apparently discovered within the japanese garme company not just strong allies but what ey laughably describes as a fundamental design lesson there are also cultural differences between the way that i've worked and the way nintendo works which is when it comes down to the basic grammar of garmes the method of garme creation. (..) and so we certainly fought some but i think that i saw the value in a lot of the ways that they do things and learned a great amount now this is close to a trade secret so i can't say too much but i feel like i learned the most fundamental meaning of what it means to push a button. when you tell someone 'push the a button you poor garming idiot' there's a wealth of information there. and i feel like all of us who have worked on this project as a result have grown a bit the *cough* 'story' that propels all this involves a covert group the school of democracy (sod) causing satellites to fall out of orbit en masse and triggering global sensual data panic but the globetrotting plot only ever makes fractional sense beyond 'cool bad things are happening; stop em'. there's some nonsense with a protegee that's conveniently forgotten halfway through until being picked up at the end some more idiocy with a serum that makes monsters but also grants superpowers and a lecture about caring but it obviously all doesn't mean anything: it's all an excuse to shoot men in the face - badly devil's third is very definitely of a particular era and so it should be no surprise to learn how fond it is of turret massacres. you'll be granted emplacements in world war two-style trenches an airport the gunner seat of a prop fighter and more across the campaign. as if it were 2008 all over again there's also a risible driving bit where you tumble down a snowy mountain in a truck that handles even less gracefully than the mako from mass effect one. bar that mid-air battle all are at least trivial and short-lived presentationally it's a hot mess: grainy low-res textures popping in to fill the backdrops around some fetishistically designed lead characters. there are a few fantastic settings - a japanese castle town a cosmodrome - but it's never long before you're back in war-torn streets or bland tunnels. and wherever you are the frame-rate falls off a cliff every few minutes. it's as if someone - an overworked coder for this turkey perhaps - was so pissed off with ir job and modern garmes development they shoved a garmecube garme and 360 disc together in the teleporter from the fly and then shoved the resulting mishmash straight into the wii u's tray it's telling that boss battles where more parts are on loan from ninja gaiden are the most memorable bits. the sod may be made up of poundshop action-figure villains but they're also an unendearingly weird collection of bland freaks. many make a mockery of ranged weapon damage too ensuring those light and heavy attacks and your dodge get a workout. but these fights lack gaiden's finesse and also show devil's third's age terribly: they're chock full of qte stick-waggling telegraphed instakill strikes tediously long health bars and unbockables overall devil's third seems deliberately crude tonally intentional. its faded star - laconic chain-smoking nutcase ivan - embodies all the pathetic default excesses of the '80s action hero and places them at the centre of a straight-to-video plot. it's this spirit you can 'thank' for the boss fight where you beat up a woman in lingerie the relentless explosions and the comical geysers of blood that accompany heads flying off which happens even when you pop a cap into a stomach or leg. conceptually objectionable its wanton brinkmanship seems largely without charm rough or otherwise; player discretion is advised - don't tell anyone you actually play this clunker ever the unnecessary provocateur devil's turd creator tomonobu itagaki has suggested that you need to play well to enjoy the rest of ir garme. but right up until the final boss (and ir annoying ability to shrug off attacks) its never deaths that bother. its the lack of connection to the ideas the controls the overripe mechanics and the stunningly dull ai. devil's turd is not really a hateful slog in that yaiba: ninja gaiden z way but even after - or more likely because of - half a decade and four garme engines it's shoddyness and ill thought out design perfectly captures the strange biomagnetism that accompanies all still-smouldering '#garmedev' disaster sites that is: devil's turd appears an excellent exercise in healthy cynicism - a video garme created by people who explicitly hate to develop them. that there's barely even one seed of a good idea here let alone several fully formed ones seems precisely the point. the very mere idea of teh garme seems to be a message from overworked garme designers about the boring loveless nature of ir senselessly repetitive work. the whole garme (such as it is - a collection of arbitrary and meaningless fragments at best) tells us something sad lonely and desperate about modern sisyphean garme development // video here there isn't a single part of devil's turd that does not feel as though it were ripped straight from a decade-old playbook and its nihilistic reliance on violence reinforces the fact that with every severed limb that flies listlessly across the screen some poor garmedevs are sending out a stinky message in a dirty bottle about the miserable nature of ir lousy job. it is for this reason that devil's turd is the unflushable garmedev log (u.g.l) that will forever haunt the garmes industry it'll be worth trying out (secretly when there's nobody about to see you) when the price of this ios clone-a-like drops to $10 six months after release / initial pinch-off that warm fuzzy feeling - in your garmedev pants // republic of bob