Mortal Shell (2020) [PS4]
8 min read
“All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.”
“Innovation” is something of a buzzword these days. It’s the idea that we’ll be stuck in place unless we come up with something new. You’ll hear it all the time in industry, in media and, of course, in video games; what we’ve had and what works isn’t enough anymore, so we need to try something different. Don’t be afraid of change and all that.
A lot of the time, though, innovation is just that – a buzzword. What we’ve had and what works, well…we’ve had it and it works. It’s familiar. It’s proven. Doing something that’s been proven to work isn’t going to get anybody fired. It’s probably going to move some product because it has in the past. That’s the reason that while we talk a lot about innovation and doing something new, the vast majority of creators prefer playing it safe.
Games like Mortal Shell are a great example of playing it safe. This is a “Souls-like” game, an action-RPG characterized by a somewhat more punishing take on the genre. These have been popular since Dark Souls came out and shook the gaming landscape up a decade or so ago. It’s something we’ve had. It’s something that works. Making a game similar to Dark Souls probably isn’t going to get anybody fired or left destitute if it’s competently done, and that’s what Mortal Shell is – it’s a competent Souls-style game that stays close to the template but makes a few changes here and there. If you want to innovate, that’s probably the way to do it. Change some smaller things up, then take what works and go from there.
How does that turn out for Mortal Shell? Let’s take a peek.
Visuals: 7/10
Mortal Shell’s overall aesthetic owes as much to Dark Souls as anything else. It’s your now-standard dilapidated wasteland, represented by a swamp and several dungeons. These are populated by the kind of enemies we’ve come to expect from Souls, including bandits, stylized monsters and the like. Really, the most interesting thing about Mortal Shell from an aesthetic point of view is your own character, a creepy, wraithlike creature that inhabits corpses and forces them to move; the game proper essentially opens with you finding your first Shell and going from there. It’s a little disturbing to see your character inhabit a new Shell, initially yanking them about as if they were puppets on strings before getting a handle on how its new body works, and this ties into Mortal Shell’s overarching themes of memory, loss and what’s left over when someone is gone.
From a performance standpoint, by the way, you’re better served with the PC version for this one if you’ve got a decent machine. The PS4 version struggles a little, particularly when it comes to battles involving multiple opponents. Mortal Shell’s combat system is heavily timing-based, so that can prove to be an issue.
Audio: 8/10
Mortal Shell’s audio is one of the high points of its design. The crunchy, bony sounds that highlight the movement and actions of your character set the stage for the game as a whole, establishing the concept of a world left behind in time. It’s a desiccated place where the waters of life no longer flow, where there’s nothing left but stagnant filth. Expressing this sort of idea is a tall order for sound design alone, but somehow Mortal Shell manages to make it work.
Gameplay: 9/10
Mortal Shell differentiates itself from Dark Souls largely by reducing your options in order to focus a smaller but more concentrated number of character and weapon chocies. You’ve got four Shells (balanced, speedy, beefy and magical) and four weapons (a sword, dual weapons, heavy mace and heavy sword) to choose from, as well as a ranged weapon that can be used with any of these. Shells obtain new perks from upgrades, which tend to be nice but not essential, while weapons increase in damage and gain new abilities as you find components for them.
The combination of Shell and weapon determines how your character plays. The faster shell, Tiel, might make sense paired with the dual weapons. That can absolutely work, but you could also go a different direction and use Tiel’s speed to shore up the weaknesses of the heavy mace or blade. Likewise, players who enjoy using special attacks might want to give Solomon a shot, since he can generate large amounts of the Resolve resource consumed when using those attacks. Finding what works for you as a player is great fun; further, since there aren’t any “builds” as there are in Dark Souls, you’re free to switch around and experiment with different options as you’d like.
Of course, this isn’t the biggest way that Mortal Shell differentiates itself from Dark Souls. Unlike that game, you can’t block in a traditional manner since there aren’t any shields. Instead, your character can harden their Shell, temporarily becoming a statue frozen in whatever position they were in when you hit the button. Attacks that connected while you’re hardened do no damage and often knock the attacker off balance, allowing you to get in a hit of your own. Hardening is governed by a cooldown, so Mortal Shell’s impenetrable combat becomes a little more clear when you realize that the ideal is to dodge in, get some hits, harden to absorb the enemy’s counterattack and then dodge out while waiting for your cooldown. This stick-and-move style of fighting feels great once you’ve got a rhythm going and it gives Mortal Shell an identity as something other than just another Dark Souls clone.
Narrative: 5/10
Don’t get me wrong, I understand the appeal of a story told primarily via item descriptions and environmental details. Personally, though, I definitely miss the days when games were happy to just tell you what’s going on. Leaving the particulars of a game’s plot up to the little groups that run fan wikis never sat well with me, as would leaving the particulars of any aspect of a game up to the fans. Mortal Shell sticks closely to Dark Souls in this sense, as it prefers a more vague and self-directed style of storytelling. Whether or not you’re into this will determine your thoughts on this game’s narrative.
Accessibility: 5/10
I’m not sure if I’d call any Souls-like game particularly accessible. That’s part of their appeal, after all. As we’ll discuss in a bit, Souls games set expectations for the player to live up to rather than trying to bend to the player’s expectations, which can come off as a game that’s not really interested in being played. New players probably aren’t going to be ready for that twist on the game/player relationship and, as a result, will probably find Mortal Shell a little impenetrable. They’d be better off cutting their teeth on somewhat more flexible Souls-like games such as Nioh, Code Vein or even the Souls series itself.
Challenge: 8/10
This is a tough game, but you probably came into it expecting as much. It’s tough for much the same reason as other Souls-likes that alter the basic gameplay are tough: they abuse the reflexes that long-time fans of Souls have built up by subverting expectations. You cannot “block” in Mortal Shell, you can only harden, and coming to grips with that means that you’re going to spend a whole lot of time eating hits because your hardening cooldown wasn’t up.
That’s not a complaint, of course. One of the finer points of this sort of game is learning to cope with a rigid system that demands respect. You need to learn to work with Mortal Shell and, really, any Souls-like game rather than expecting it to work with you. That’s unusual, particularly in modern gaming, which is where people get the misconception that these titles are punishing deathfests. In truth, you need to learn to work with what the game gives you in a way that the game expects. That style of play may not be for everyone, but it’s pretty rewarding regardless when you figure out how things work.
Uniqueness: 5/10
Well…it’s not like Mortal Shell doesn’t have anything to distinguish it from other Souls-like games, as we went over above. It’s more that it stays closer to its source material than pretty much any other game in the subgenre short of Lords of the Fallen. You’ve got a dark fantasy adventure full of knights battling horrible monsters, with the biggest change from a thematic perspective being that you are, in fact, something of a monster yourself. Regardless, it looks like Dark Souls, it sounds like Dark Souls, to a large extent it plays like Dark Souls…so unique probably isn’t the term we’re going for here.
Personal: 9/10
As I mentioned before, we value innovation in the gaming space to some degree, sure, but personally I’m fine with titles that take an established concept and add their own refinements. That’s what we’ve got in Mortal Shell. It’s a Souls-like game that wears its inspiration in its sleeve. That’s not necessarily wrong, though. It’s clear that the developers understood what made the original game tick and why it’s so beloved even now (hint: it has nothing to do with the difficulty, though Mortal Shell and Souls alike certainly are pretty tough) and fans of the subgenre owe it to themselves to give this one a shot.
Thank you to Cold Symmetry and Playstack for supplying us with a copy of their game for this review.
Aggregated Score: 7.0
Cory G. believes the pen is mightier than the sword…well, depending on how sharp the pen and sword are. A child of the ’90s and a prolific writer, he strews his work about like Legos made of words, just waiting for your brain to step on them. He enjoys a devilish challenge, so when it comes to talking about some of the more difficult games out there, you might just run into the Infernal Accountant Mage. Some advice: hold on to your soul around this guy, and don’t sign anything. Read more at popzara.com.
