Has-Been Heroes

While there's something to be said about "growing old gracefully," there's nothing graceful about these aged adventurers in their confusing, convoluted last hurrah. The game is a jack of all trades but a master of none. It tries to combine the lane defense of a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) with the nonstop action of an endless runner. Toss in the procedural randomness of a rogue-like dungeon crawler and the tactics of a turn-based strategy, and you start to get what the developers had in mind. The problem is, none of these pieces come together in any coherent manner. Instead, the whole thing is a jumbled mess.

One of the fun things about games, especially difficult games, is the feeling you get when you overcome a seemingly insurmountable challenge. You feel like you've learned something and improved your overall skills. The problem here is that too much of the game is based on luck instead of skill. One minute you might breeze through a few rooms before facing down a wave of foes that easily overpower you in the next. You might luck out and find some cool items to use, but you have no idea who's best suited to use it. Worst of all, you might stumble into a boss fight you never got a chance to prepare for. And since defeat equals permadeath, you'll end up having to start the whole thing over again … and again … and again. Plus, since each instance is randomly generated, you don't even get a chance to learn from your mistake, assuming you even made one to begin with. Has-Been Heroes isn't so much a challenge but rather a string of bad luck.