Not A Hero’s New Slant On The Cover Shooter

With OlliOlli, Roll7 quickly established their credentials in creating a near perfect 2D skateboarding game. The Vita exclusive absolutely nailed a trick system that, although it took getting used to, seamlessly blended simplicity with depth.

Not A Hero looks to be pulling almost exactly the same trick as it heads to next-gen consoles, PC, Mac and Linux this autumn. This time they’re taking on the cover shooter genre, transposing it into an angled perspective 2D world and with slick and fast-paced action. Just as with OlliOlli, everything can go wrong in a fraction of a second, but rather than seeing a mangled corpse flying across a level because you mistimed your jump, here you can pop back into cover and heal up after catching some bullets with your face.

Each level sees your chosen non-hero – Steve for the build on show – dropped off at some crime hot spot by the BunnyLord, a big purple rabbit from the future who wants to be the mayor of the city. He has a helicopter. It doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t need to; it’s just part of a light and humorous veneer applied to another blend of addictive gameplay.

At its heart, it’s also very simple, but deceptively so. Playing the early alpha build on a keyboard, running around the “2¼D” side-scrolling world was handled on the arrow keys, with further keys to shoot, reload, use an item and take cover. Tap the cover key and you snap behind the nearest object whenever you’re not shooting, nicely indicated by putting you into the shadows, but hold it and you slide forward until you want to let go and snap to cover.

It’s a control scheme which is simple enough to get started, but once combined with fast paced action and quite minimal recharging health, I was finding my fingers tripping over themselves as my brain failed to keep up. There’s a few little wrinkles to the system at this time which felt like they might be a shade obtuse and will want to be looked at, from the obvious of having to manually reload when your clip is empty but not having a prompt to do so, to the exact necessary layout of the controls. Then again, it shouldn’t take too long to learn.

But even as I was learning, it played into the hands of an addictive “one more go” style game. There are some notable similarities to games like Hotline Miami and Gunpoint, where you will want to think your way through a situation before engaging with Vanquish-esque sliding around. Elements of trial and error then see you learn your way through a level and find an optimal route.

However, with recharging health, it manages to be ever-so-slightly more forgiving of your mistakes. Yes, just a few hits will take you down, but there’s more of a chance for you to make that mistake and then turn it into a hilarious success story almost completely by accident. When you start to see windows as entry points, start sliding into and then gorily executing felled enemies or sending cats off to deliver land mines, it really encourages you to try and play as that ballsy action hero, even if you’re going to fail time and again.

Yes, I did say that you can use cats to deliver land mines, because although stuck with a single gun for this build – the full game promises to have different characters with weapons from shotguns to katanas – Steve can pick up certain extra items within a level. You might end up with your own landmines to place, but those little pixelated, explosive delivering kitties are just another little hint at the nonsensical humour which seems to be simmering under the surface.

Where OlliOlli could potentially end in frustration, demanding absolute precision to deliver a worthy high score, Not A Hero seems to be just as addictive, just as mean and difficult, but with a wry smile and sense of humour to lessen the blow as you die for the 13th, 14th and 15th time in succession, while trying to perfect a particularly daring assault.