Sodaman Review (PC)

There is an animatic on the second planet where the titular hero of Sodaman helps out an alien lady by ‘deciphering’ some ancient stones (this is done by shooting them). As the lady departs he tells her they should explore the stars together some time and then calls her something like ‘Sweetheart’. The alien, who seems to have been a serious entity up until this point, replies coquettishly.

I’d not been paying too much attention to the plot of Sodaman, my impression was that he was supposed to be a satirical character with him even stealing his tagline (I am here to kick aliens and drink soda, and I am all out of soda) from Duke Nukem/They Live. This moment and its reception made me roll my eyes into the back of my head and wish I was playing something with a bit of nuance like The Return of Matt Hazard.

All hopes of this being an embarrassing but goofy moment were erased when the hero returns to his spaceship-cum-hub-area and one of his women crew members immediately highlights the flirtation and then acts jealous about it.

I am so tired of this kind of writing, it is every where but most prevalent in video games and it is made worse by the fact that I cannot tell if the dev team thinks this is hilarious, or a meaningful dynamic for characters to have. What I do know is that there is a certain type of nerd that has imprinted on Han Solo from Star Wars and missed the one of the key things about that character – that he was kind of goofy loser that got things wrong all the time.

The art also left me feeling a little uneasy, all of it felt just a little generic in the stills – a little AI-ish. I think that says something about the state of the games industry, generic images now cause suspicion.

But, well I checked Steam and the disclaimer wasn’t very inspiring:

“Concept Art: For the portrait designs appearing after the 2nd planet, AI was used strictly during the initial concept and ideation phase. All final assets were carefully refined and finalized by us to ensure strict visual consistency and match our artistic vision.”

Right, that is enough of that.

Sodaman is another entry in the Bullet Heaven genre. The player takes control of Sodman as he blasts his way through a series of story missions, spread across a number of planets.

Each mission starts with an objective that must be completed to unlock the next mission. Impeding progress are hordes of pixel art monsters. Sodaman starts off with a gun to defend himself, it isn’t super powerful but has a quick reload, and a dash to get him out of trouble.

Enemies drop crystals that level up Sodaman and allow him to pick from a series of upgrades, these can be to give his attack elemental damage, more health, extra dash charges, and even support creatures that can drastically change the battlefield. On top of this there are also cards that can add even more per-run ‘oomph’ to Sodaman’s arsenal with extra crit chance, more damage depending on health etc being added to a hand (which can be replaced when a player finds ones that better suit their play style).

On top of the main mission objectives there is an added optional objective, which is to survive a preset amount of time on each map and then trigger a boss. Beat the boss and Sodaman warps back to his hub area with a massive meta-currency bonus to spend on permanent upgrades. If Sodaman dies, he cracks one last soda and is respawned in the hub with less spending money.

The permanent upgrades range from upgrading/unlocking weapons, character equipment and blueprints.

The unlocks are deep and varied from Miniguns to SMGs, each of the weapons has its own distinct feel. The character upgrades are so numerous that I imagine it would take tens of hours, if not hundreds, to unlock.

The upgrades certainly help with beating the missions – and beyond – once all main and optional missions for a planet are completed a Chaos variant is then unlocked for extra challenge and high score chasing.

This is a wealth of content, the problem is that the pacing is off.

Within two runs I was already using screen melting configurations that made me unstoppable. I was rocking a healing-laser Gargoyle and a vomiting skeleton as companions, my shots spread chain lightening, and these shots also split into more shots on impact, whenever I reloaded hammers fell from the sky, and at intermittent points Sodaman would emit a blood shield.

It was awesome when I encountered this game-breaking build, and then I did another run and found another game-breaking build, and then another.

At that point it became a game of diminishing returns, because the dial was turned up to 11 all the time, it actually started to feel very flat. Yes, the screen was a cacophony of special effects but it ended up just feeling like noise.

It doesn’t help that the game doesn’t run well when this onslaught is in full swing. I played the majority of Sodaman on a handheld and, once I was mid-playthrough, the frame-rate was incredibly choppy. The ROG ally runs a lot of Sodaman’s peers with no problem so seeing this performance was disappointing.

Sodaman does a solid rendition of the Bullet Heaven genre. There is a lot of content but this is where ‘less is more’ mantra would be better observed.

Conclusion

Sodaman is not bad but it too excitedly front loads a lot of the fun, and when that has been exhausted there isn’t much more to discover. There is plenty of content, but it is more like gruel slopped into a bowl instead of a bountiful feast.

This game was tested and reviewed on PC (via Steam). All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by the publisher.