Malicious Review

While playing Malicious – the PlayStation Network exclusive action game from Japanese developer Alvion – my feelings ebbed and flowed. I didn’t like it at first, only to ease into the experience after a bit more play time. But by the time I reached the last boss, I gave up, confused and frustrated. This array of conflicting feelings sums up Malicious wonderfully, because it provides gamers with something seemingly likeable, but ultimately bogged down by sloppy gameplay and design that lacks any sort of rhyme, reason, or even basic explanation.

Malicious revolves around your character, the Spirit Vessel, as it sets out to fight five different bosses in order to gain access to the big honcho at the end of the game. That’s right, there are no stages to work your way through, just boss fights. In Mega Man-esque fashion, you can undertake these boss battles in any order you desire, and you’ll receive weapons and other special powers and abilities from defeating each boss. Newly acquired weapons and powers can, in turn, be used on your remaining opponents to make things more manageable.

For a $10 downloadable game that’s bite-sized and focused, Malicious seems like a pretty good offering. It's undoubtedly short – skilled players can crank through to the last boss in only a couple of hours -- but its brevity doesn’t amount to much of a problem. Rather, Malicious suffers from some serious flaws regarding its gameplay, camera, and story that overshadow its pretty graphics and unique approach. And even though it can be purchased on the cheap, a slew of superior games much more worthy of your time populate the PlayStation Network at an equal price-point.

The third-person combat of Malicious will pit you against endless streams of various lesser enemies that accompany each boss, but make no mistake: the boss is the target. The ancillary enemies only exist to build up chains and feed your character aura to make you more powerful, as well as to distract you from the task at hand. The aura you build up can also be used to heal and sustain yourself, which is important considering each boss battle is timed to last a maximum of 30 minutes. You’ll need to prepare yourself for the long haul during each battle in Malicious... unless you're skilled enough to take out the game's various bosses rapidly.

But when you take into account Malicious’s borderline-broken camera, one that constantly gets stuck, moves around randomly and acts completely wonky at virtually every moment you dare lock-on to an enemy, the fun from combat is largely removed. For such a fast-paced game predicated on consequences (you have a limited amount of lives to get through all of the bosses and face having to beat the rest of the game with one life if you mess up), players should expect combat – and especially a camera – that function much better.

Making matters worse, the developers seemed to have used the streamlined focus of Malicious as an excuse to skip-out on the exposition necessary for players to understand both the story and the game’s mechanics. Answers are there if you look for them, but that’s the point: you shouldn’t have to search around for information on what’s going on or how to play. You shouldn’t be thrust into an experience as if you know what you’re supposed to do without any sort of tutorial. You shouldn’t have to read nearly 40 pages of in-game text spread across four chapters to understand a game’s story. Such a tactic isn’t only sloppy and ill-conceived, but comes off as a cut corner.

There are some positives worth focusing on, however. Malicious packs slightly-dated, but pretty graphics. Character and enemy designs underwhelm, but its vivid color palate pops. Likewise, its soundtrack is limited but pleasant. Even the premise behind the game – a Shadow of the Colossus-like singular focus on boss battles shrouded in deep mysticism – is something I can get into. It’s just poorly executed.

Should you choose to spend some time with Malicious, you’ll find more options apart from a mere handful of boss battles and some equippable weapons. Free Play Mode will unlock when you defeat the five bosses, and further unlockables, like Time Attack and Score Attack modes, and even an online leaderboard are there for you to acquire, too. I just couldn’t bring myself to try to sort out the nonsensical last boss battle and get most of these extra perks, and I guess that’s the point. Playing the game at various times over two days broke my will to see it through.