In Like a Boss you start off controlling a monolithic monstrosity of epic evil proportions, slashing around you and destroying all sorts of minions attempting to steal all your treasure.
Unfortunately, you die horribly at the end, forcing you to make a brand new champion, finally allowing you to decide what kind of evil lord you want to be. Undead, some sort of Lizard thing or… something else weird.
From there, you start working your way through a variety of levels, destroying hordes of goodie-two-shoes heroes trying to stop you. Each level generally has some sort of ally of evilness to help you, encouraging you to smack around the minions.
Unfortunately, the gameplay feels intensely lackluster. You turn on auto-attack, making your character smack around the minions automatically. The only real decision making you have in combat is the special moves you can click on, giving you more damage or special effects. While this is certainly very pretty, each level doesn’t really give you any sort of satisfaction while playing.[sc name=”quote” text=”While this is certainly very pretty, each level doesn’t really give you any sort of satisfaction while playing.”]
Each level is essentially the same – the upgrades you can purchase with gold give you some different effects and moves, but again, nothing really changes.
Not alone in this inefficiency, the game requires – for some unknown reason – continuous connection to the internet. This connection doesn’t seem to have any kind of stability, frequently disconnecting and forcing the player to wait for no reason.
All of this combines to create a player experience based around frustration and waiting. You either need to wait for the game to actually load, or wait to allow the level to finish while you’re auto attacking everything to death. There isn’t really anything else.
Something in Like a Boss’s favour is the writing – the story of the game, while pretty empty of actual meaning, is written with a lot of humour. The characters have a lot of jokes and zany comments to make, alongside the heroes themselves periodically saying quotes straight from MMO voice chat. Though the actual combat in the levels is exceedingly boring, hearing the people you’re killing complain about their “useless tank” is very satisfying.[sc name=”quote” text=”Though the actual combat in the levels is exceedingly boring, hearing the people you’re killing complain about their “useless tank” is very satisfying.”]
Like a Boss is a game that attempts to cultivate an in-depth, tongue-in-cheek and complete RPG, filled with people to smash apart, levels to explore and things to develop. It even manages to invert the steroytype of being the hero, this time giving you control over the bad guys.
All of this should spell great news for the game but, sadly, the gameplay just isn’t there.
A game can have the greatest ideas, the greatest setting and even the greatest story, but if the gameplay isn’t there, no one is going to want to play it.
If you wanted to watch a badly animated movie, you’d do that, not play a mobile game without any real gameplay.
[review pros=”Decently funny writing style. It can feel satisfying to smash enemies.” cons=”The isn’t really a lot of gameplay, it’s just watching a movie progress.” score=5]
[appbox appstore id1055347265]
[appbox googleplay com.versusevil.likeaboss]
