There once was a day when playing action games had a prerequisite other than a screen and controller. What was this magical accessory, you ask" An imagination! Nowadays it’s easy to become immersed in amazingly well realized worlds, but things weren?t always so beautiful. Believe it or not, but at one point game designers managed to construct action games that only consisted of ASCII characters. Anyone who has been on a message board in the last decade knows the string of characters that look like Kirby, flipping the bird. Now just imagine that as the map for an entire game world. Those were dark, dark times. Well, it was actually just darkness with white characters, but you catch the drift.
These monochromatic masterpieces serve as a jumping off point for the cleverly named PlayStation 4 release, Brut@l. The top-down ASCII maps that acted as the inspiration for this unique new take on the roguelike brawler are still very much present, only with a bit of a twist. Retro perspective is used as a mini-map that players can use to help navigate the title?s randomly generated dungeons. Thankfully this viewpoint isn?t used for actually traversing environments. All it takes is a thumb?s glide across the PlayStation 4 controller?s touchpad to bring the world to life, in three dimensions.
ASCII, And Ye Shall Receive
Remember that moment in Grand Theft Auto 3?s introduction, where the game?s traditional top-down 2D perspective suddenly zooms in on the character from ab...