ComixPlay #1: The Endless Incident Review

With all these interactive novels flying around like wasps around an overfilled bin (and I say that lovingly), it’s no surprise that one would arise in the form of an interactive comic. It’s a great premise in theory. Comics, especially ones about superheroes are full of excitement, action and some damn good plot. So I had high hopes for ComixPlay #1: The Endless Incident.

Upon loading I was very excited because one of the characters looked almost exactly like Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride - no really - boding well for things to come. There are three different difficulty levels, easy, medium and hard which you can select at the beginning. You can edit this during the course of the game but only during battles, which I’ll get to later.

For some unknown reason all my usual sense left me and I decided to launch forward on medium difficulty which is unheard of for me because I am, at my core, a casual gamer. I guess I was feeling particularly headstrong, no doubt spurred on by the Mr. Montoya doppelganger.

ComixPlay is set in a fantastical future where the human race has expanded beyond Earth, and its solar system in fact, into a large galactical empire where certain people have evolved to the point of becoming “special”. The game is focused on these mutants, specifically the ones in The Solar Defenders, a team tasked with, you guessed it, defending the solar system. It’s all very X-Men-ish, but it’s not unpleasant.

The game itself works very simply. It’s essentially a comic reader with battles thrown in. The reader alone is pretty damn awesome. You view the story one panel at a time, moving forward with a simple left-click of your trusty mouse, and just as simply you can “rewind” by hitting the right mouse button. You can also use the left and right arrow keys, if you so wish but let’s face it, the hand’s natural resting place is on mouse not the keyboard. Then, if you’d like to go crazy and view the whole page at once, you can totally do that, by holding down spacebar. It’s all very seamless and enjoyable, leading to a nice little immersive experience. That is until the battles.

Listen, it’s not that the battles come at awkward moments. They don’t, they make utter sense popping up in the plot whenever they do, it’s just the transition between the reader and the battle screen is... jarring. You suddenly jump from the nice, pretty reader to a loading screen saying “GET READY FOR BATTLE” and into the sort of 2.5D turn-based battle system I’d expect in an online TCG. The characters make a couple of comments sure, but the whole thing takes you totally out of your immersion bubble. I don’t know whether I’ve been spoilt by the fantastic integration of action into interactive novels from the likes of Telltale but it just seems like this could have been done in a much better way. In this sort of genre, being consumed by the plot is probably one of the most important factors, it’s certainly why I’m generally a fan, so to see something fail at that is very disappointing indeed.

On the positive side, it does still look very nice. The characters are well drawn, the scenery detailed and the attacks are deployed with cute animations. The battles themselves are very easy; you can click on enemies to attack, yourself to perform a special move like a heal or a boost, or a teammate to do the same. You can also play around with formation a little, or tag out for another person with a different set of moves. Everyone has their own benefits so it’s a case of picking what works best for the situation, much like an old-school RPG but to be honest in the early levels you’ll just find yourself clicking a bunch of times on the baddies until they run out of health.

Each encounter will consist of waves of enemies that you’ll need to defeat before you can continue on with the comic, and if any of your team die during a particular wave, they’ll be revived for the next, provided they have enough revives left. If you’re experiencing a more difficult battle there’s a handy save feature in the top right of the screen that you can use to your advantage. That’s it really, no fancy frills or tricks up its sleeve. Fight waves, boom, done, carry on.

There is music, as well as some SFX alongside both the comic and the battle system, but honestly, the music is so annoying that I had it turned off very, very quickly. Think, repetitive, electronic and trancey, who knows, it might be right up your alley. The sound effects themselves aren’t bad, so I deemed them worthy of staying on, although they don’t add much, just a little stereotypical oomph.

You can ultimately skip battles, or just use the reader to go through the comics, which to me was the most appealing feature. It is a shame because the two halves that make up ComixPlay, aren’t awful, the reader in fact is very good, it just doesn’t seem like they amalgamate well together. If you’re a comic fan, for the price, it’s got a strong, sci-fi plot, and it’s probably worth checking out, although you might find yourself skipping some battles. If you’re not a comic fan then this probably doesn’t really have much to offer you, it’s a bit hit or miss.