Absolum

2026-04-03
The minute-to-minute joy of tag-teaming some roided out boss, repeatedly bouncing 'em off the edge of the screen over and over so they're stun-locked like an armored beach ball, is fan-tastic. Especially so when you're seated on the couch in-person with your homie like it's 2004 and the games industry hasn't banished couch co-op to a niche interest.

But christ on a bike the rest of the game is manacled to a boulder of roguelite tedium that meant I was constantly looking down at my watch to see how much time had been wasted by the game.

Our goal: make it to the final boss and kill them for the crime of destroying the world. Or whatever. Along the way we beat, beat, beat the shit out of a million little guys. But each encounter really boils down to: did you make any mistakes? If you did you lose some health. And health restoration is not common. So that means you are dying a death by a thousand cuts. You show up to the first boss stumbling, boots filled with pools of your own blood, one eye sealed shut, take one step forward and are promptly skewered by the boss in one move.

And I come out of the boss like JK Simmons at the end of Burn After Reading:

"And what did we learn?"
"I don't know, sir."
"I don't fucking know either."

I'm back at the start having learned that the first boss can kill me. And I start the process of cleaving through the same generic baddies over and over again, hopefully making fewer mistakes, so I can last another 10 seconds longer against the first boss if and when I get there in 20 minutes.

But don't worry, there's randomized loot and meta-progression systems to string you along. To what end? Is this a game about mastering the combat system and winning because I make no mistakes or is it a game about banging my head against the wall until it cracks open and I'm allowed to progress? At best it feels like a game that contradicts itself with competing systems and at worst, a game that just wants to waste my time.

Maybe it's a me problem because I don't like side-scrolling beat-em-ups enough. Lord knows I tried. Or maybe it's that I'm sick of every game clumsily ham-fisting roguelite elements into anything they can get their mitts on. Either way, Absolum is an absolute whiff for yours truly.