Lou’s Revenge review

Lou’s Revenge puts players in the shoes of Satan’s son, Lou. Hell has been overrun by the vilest dark hideous evil of the world: People. They turned Hell into a madhouse and it’s up to Lou to go on a killing rampage in order to bring order back down to Hell save your princess.

Lou’s Revenge is an isometric view action RPG where players go around killing enemies and opening doors. As you explore every area, you’ll find additional firepower such as shotguns and also find side-quests to accomplish such as freeing dwarfs or collecting ingredients so an NPC can cook something up.

In order to rid Hell of humans, Lou has a few aces up his sleeve. While you start with a typical gun, you can pick up a shotgun, machinegun, rocket launcher and a BFG. Each weapon has a standard attack and an alternate attack. Then with the money earned, players can upgrade each weapon through the merchant by buying upgrades such as increased power.

Along with the aforementioned firepower, Lou can also pick up tokens that will allow Lou to launch a special attack such as a protective bubble or being able to summon imps to help him in battle. The shop also has up for sale various support items such as milk which allows for Lou to refill his health, item that lets Lou use a special attack twice; among others. The items are very expensive so don’t expect to buy everything from the get-go as your wallet slowly fills up earlier on. Interestingly enough, the weapon upgrades are more affordable.

As you kill enemies, they will drop money, ammo and red orbs. Picking up the red orbs slowly fill up Lou’s Rage meter which allows him to fire a huge laser that can quickly eliminate enemies or does a decent chunk of damage to a boss. Lou can also level up. Once you level up, you can assign an XP point to one of four upgrades: health, ammo, rage and the number of bottles of milk.

The same formula applies across the complete game of Lou’s Revenge; enter an area, enemies will appear, once you’ve massacred them all, the “spell” over the door will vanish and allow you to progress further. Sometimes, it’ll open a door where you’ll need to find a switch to open the real door that will let you progress through the level. An annoyance aspect though is that sometimes after killing the enemies, you’ll be able to use the switch to open the door; and once you’re about to go through the door, a mysterious spell blocks your path and you have to kill more enemies. Why make me do this twice in a row?

Lou’s Revenge looks great; the levels are well designed and it looks hellish with its orange-ish color pattern. There’s also a decent enemy variety; from small little imps to huge bull-like creatures. The soundtrack is as you’d expect; hard rock/metal score as you massacre everything in your way. There’s nothing special about it, but it’s enjoyable for what it is. Although, the game does suffer from minor performance issues; long loading in between levels, stuttering when the level loads to the point where Lou moves slowly twitches around. Also having an isometric point of view can be problematic because doors can be sometimes difficult to spot.

The best way to describe Lou’s Revenge is that its Diablo-lite with guns; but that doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. The game feels boring and tedious; levels can become annoying to navigate, loose shooting, it will struggle to sick its teeth into you. It can be fun in short bursts and it’s not a bad experience as a whole, I do feel like this would’ve been even better as a 2D run n’ gun game or an FPS.