Guts and Glory Review (Xbox One)

STAFF REVIEW of Guts and Glory (Xbox One)

Thursday, August 30, 2018.
by Josh Morgan

Ever wonder what it would be like if Goat Simulator and Trials had a very ugly baby? Well, you can give Guts and Glory a try and see for yourself you sick freak...but you may want to read this before you spend your hard earned $15 on it.

I’ll start it off by saying Guts and Glory is stupid fun; it’s the type of game that you can turn your brain off and just goof around in. I LOVE games like this, a little more than I should. As we grow older our lives can be full of serious issues and stress, so it’s sometimes nice to jump into our favorite hobby and not have those same feelings.

You’re not going to be getting a serious experience here. There’s no multiplayer, no story, no leaderboard (that I could find), no collectibles and no reason to replay each level other than to show someone else how you can make this old man on a makeshift jet chair fly across the level and explode into a bloody mess on the ground. You simply do one challenge and move on to the next.

The main objective is to get from point A to point B, all the while pretty much everything on the course is trying to kill you. These hazards include spinning logs, glitches, arrows, cannon balls (both fired and rolling), glitches, the physics, saw blades (both on the end of sticks and shot as projectiles), glitches, mines... and did I mention glitches? It’s important that I explain here how the glitches are part of the experience and I honestly believe they do not hurt the game at all, in fact, in most cases they are pretty hilarious. Stay with me here.

I know as hardcore gamers we expect a level of polish when it comes to our games. We are spending our hard earned dollars on something and we expect it to be perfect. But when you’re screaming downhill on a bicycle dodging people, trees, arrows, saw blades and then a very large wrecking ball hits you so hard that your game freezes and you get booted to the xbox home page, you really have no other choice but to laugh it off. That’s an extreme example and it only happened once, but when stuff like that happens, you just treat it as a death or a failed attempt, because let’s face it, you were probably going to get hit by a saw blade 10 feet later if that wrecking ball missed you. There were many, many smaller glitches that happened during my play time and only a few actually resulted in a death, so really, no harm no foul.

There are 9 different challenge groups, and each one has about a dozen or so tracks within, and each track should take you a few minutes to complete if you make it through without dying (you won’t). There are so many things that can go wrong that YOU WILL DIE numerous times before completing it. Luckily the load times are only 5-8 seconds, so dying isn’t much of a hassle at all. Just hit up on the D-Pad at any time and you’ll start at the last checkpoint. In the easier more simple levels you can just blast full speed hoping to make it through to the end in one piece, but some of the harder levels, labeled meat grinder, take a bit of strategy to complete. You’ll have to brake, lean, or even adjust your angle mid-air to make it through some obstacles, and this is where the game admittedly starts to fall apart.

The controls just aren’t tight enough to be that precise with your movements. Small movements are almost impossible to perform because the controls are so loose, and that frustrated me more than any glitch. There’s one level I couldn’t complete and I blame it 100% on the controls. You are an older woman on a motorbike colored like Evil Knievel (USA! USA!) and you have a very narrow path to navigate. It’s a straight shot track and you’d think that would be simple, but there are boost spots on the ground like Mario Kart, causing you to accelerate to speeds above 200 mph. Oh, did I mention there are cacti all over the place? Sometimes there are 3-4 standing next to each other and you have a gap no bigger than your bike to fit through. I attempted it easily 50 times before I threw in the towel. It was fun at first to watch the old lady splatter against the wall, or lose an arm to a cactus, but when it’s the game that’s causing the death and not your skill, it starts to get old pretty fast.

I’m not going to focus much time on talking about graphics or sound because I don’t think the developers did either (ba-dum-tish!). Graphics are very simple and so is the audio. It looks and sounds like the early days of Goat Simulator. What I would rather focus on is the character models and physics when it comes to interacting with the obstacles.

I keep a gaming journal near me while I game most nights. I use it to jot down notes, keep a list of objectives, or I use it to remind myself of places to avoid or see in the games I play. On my list of notes for this game I had a lot about the deaths, some glitches and some of the humorous things that happened, but I had one line that simply read “Physics?”, and that pretty much sums it up for this game.

The physics in Guts and Glory are so hilariously inconsistent that it has to be intentional. You can bounce off a wall going 40 mph without a scratch, but fall from a ramp 5ft off the ground as you explode into a puddle of blood on the ground. There’s times when you’re just riding in an open grassy area and you’ll hit a small bump and fall off the bike having to reset the track. Then, in the next run, you’ll be pedaling along dodging arrows and a cannonball that hits you dead on, and you just shift over about 5 feet and keep going as if nothing happened. Physics are real hit or miss, but I think that’s part of what gives this game character.

Now, picture this; you are an adult male and you want to take your special girl on a bike ride in the city. Problem is, she doesn’t have her own bike. What do you do? Well the obvious answer is to get a small baby seat and strap it above the back wheel and have her sit in it right? Oh, there’s more. How about an old man pulling his special lady behind him in a wagon? A young man on a hoverboard? A redneck on an ATV with bottles of beer and a rifle in the back? A Spanish gentleman (his name is Pedro, don’t @ me) and his two associates riding in the bed of a pick-up filled with cocaine? Wait what? At first maybe I thought they were delivery men but then I saw the license plate “YEYO” and, now I’m no NARC, but they aren’t delivering for Amazon.

The point is, there are a ton of hilarious characters to choose from. They all have their own grunts, growls and howls as they get pelted with arrows and bump off objects in the game. The best part by far is when those characters get hit by saw blades. Limbs fly, blood shoots out like a sprinkler and... sometimes you keep going! I’m serious, I finished one track with one leg and one arm left. How do you peddle a bike uphill with one leg? I don’t f****** care, I made it to the end and nobody can take that away from me. That’s the best part of this game hands down, watching how the characters bounce and flop about as their arm gets chopped off by a saw and they just keep pedaling along to victory.

Guts and Glory is glitchy, it's ugly, the sound is bad, and the gameplay is pretty awful, but it’s fun to play and that was enough for me. If you can snag this game on sale, or as part of Gamepass, I fully recommend giving this game a try one night when you’re in the mood to sip a tasty beverage and show off a silly game to your friends. At its current price of $15 though, I just don’t think there’s enough reason to purchase it, unless you are Pedro with a pickup truck full of nose candy and money to burn.

Overall: 7.5 / 10
Gameplay: 5.0 / 10
Visuals: 5.0 / 10
Sound: 5.0 / 10

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STAFF REVIEW of Guts and Glory (Xbox One)

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