Grand Prize In The Skies

HIGH Solid airship combat where choices matter.

LOW The orb enemies I have to shoot with a pistol.

WTF Why am I collecting sky squid eggs again?

I’ve always wanted to be on a game show. The chance to test my skills against others for riches and prizes is a rare opportunity. While I may not be able to do it in the real world, Tribetoy’s Bow to Blood: Last Captain Standing gets me close.

The PSVR hit Bow to Blood sails its way onto the Nintendo Switch in a non-VR port. Captain your ship through an immense competition where. Bow to Blood is a fine, fun title with some minor niggles. The combat is good, though somewhat tricky to get used to, but the alliance system offers something interesting and unique that elevates.

Bow to Blood is a roguelike actioner focused on an airship combat contest. Players take control of a fresh challenger who will be required to think on their feet and adapt to obstacles in order to earn points and eventually become champion.

As the competition goes on, players will have a chance to interact with opponents, and after each round, one of the two captains with the lowest point totals will be voted out, slowly whittling down the pool of contestants. Each run is its own campaign — the opponents don’t change, but the players might get a different set of missions or have different interactions with opponents.

Flying the airship can be a bit daunting. Players take the helm in first person and steer through aerial combat arenas and shoot broadside cannons or a front-facing laser turret. Players also control when to raise shields and when to use an engine boost to escape fights or dodge incoming fire.

Steam rise of venice tour dates. If this sounds like a lot to mange, it’s lucky the player has two AI assistants who can be placed on the ship’s systems. Placing one on the shield station will make shields regenerate faster and be stronger when using them, or placing AI in the front turret lets them shoot anything that comes near. In a pinch, players can have an AI fix systems mid-battle if critical components of the ship need to be patched up.

While AI assistants help, the visual noise of dogfighting with enemy ships means that Bow to Blood sometimes fails at telling the player when enemy drones are attacking. Drones invade the deck of the ship, and the player must shoot them with their pistol, taking their attention away from vital stations.Missing these drones will incur systems damage, and players will need to be quick on their feetto restore the ship to full working order.

Past the combat, Bow to Blood puts much emphasis on on choice and reputation. between rounds of flight, players are presented with choices like whether to give an opponent a cache of points to make them friendlier and more willing to assist later, or antagonizing them by making them fight an extra set of enemies.

Choices like this are key because the player may find themselves in an arena with that opponent, both fighting waves of enemies. Players can choose to leave after any round and take half of the accumulated points, or the full amount of points if both player and opponent work together for all four rounds. The quality of the relationship can alter how many rounds they remain and fight, and the effort I put into cozying up to one competitor allowed me to survive and get to the final match of the entire competition.

Visually, I noticed some blurry edges around the screen, which may be due to the VR integration. While not required to play Bow to Blood, I suspect that it would benefit from it. However, I didn’t have an opportunity to try the VR mode to confirm it.

Aside from the occasional lack of communication and visual blurriness, I enjoyed my time in the arena. It’s refreshing to see an action title where the choices players make have a significant effect, and each playthrough brings new interactions and scenarios for players to test their skills. It might not be The Price is Right, but Bow to Blood: Last Captain Standing is a virtual competition worth entering.

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Tribetoy. It is currently available on PC, Switch, PS4, and XBO.This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS4. Approximately 8 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Violence. The game is just ship-to-ship combat. Things explode in glorious fashion, but no humans are killed in the process

Colorblind Modes: There are nocolorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Much of the game’s text is voiced, but the game does not include subtitles for all instances of voice. Interactions that the player will have with the other competitors will be in text boxes, but text is not resizable. There will be occasions where the announcer will tell you what to do in the scenario, and while some are more straightforward than others (go to waypoints and shoot things) it could be confusing for those who can’t hear the directions. There are some visual aids, but they aren’t perfect. This game is not fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Controls are not remappable.

Eugene Sax

Latest posts by Eugene Sax (see all)

• Pokemon Sword and Shield Review - February 6, 2020
• Indivisible Review - January 20, 2020
• Alder’s Blood Preview - January 19, 2020

Screen Rant – Privacy PolicyWe respect your privacy and we are committed to safeguarding your privacy while online at oursite. The following discloses the information gathering and dissemination practices for this Website.This Privacy Policy was last updated on May 10, 2018. Legal OwnershipScreen Rant (the “Website”) is owned and operated by Valnet inc.

(“us” or “we”), a corporationincorporated under the laws of Canada, having its head office at 7405 Transcanada Highway,Suite 100, Saint Laurent, Quebec H4T 1Z2. Personal Data CollectedWhen you visit our Website, we collect certain information related to your device, such as yourIP address, what pages you visit on our Website, whether you were referred to by anotherwebsite, and at what time you accessed our Website.We do not collect any other type of personal data. If you are accessing our website through asocial media account, please refer to the social media provider’s privacy policy for informationregarding their data collection. Log FilesLike most standard Web site servers, we use log files. This includes internet protocol (IP)addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, platform type,date/timestamp, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user’smovement in the aggregate, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. Bow to Blood's sharp design and unique concept can't overcome poor controls and repetitive gameplay. It's fun for an afternoon and not much longer.An ominous group known as the Overseers is putting on the greatest show in the universe: 'Bow to Blood' where eight airship captains compete over various stages and worlds to determine who will be the last captain standing!

Though this might sound like the latest game, courtesy of the craze populated by PUBG, and, it's actually anything but. Bow to Blood: Last Captain Standing is only a single-player experience, and that might be its biggest fault.The original Bow to Blood released as a PSVR exclusive late last year, and the tropes and trappings of virtual reality are evident right away. The game's controls are slow-moving and have a lot of lag to them, making the maneuverability of your massive airship incredibly cumbersome. And though the graphics were improved for this non-VR port, the HUD text and design could have used a touch-up; there's some MS-paint level graphics here, with a hard-to-read all-caps font to boot. However, a few additions from the VR transfer are delightfully welcome: the addition of a hard mode for seasoned veterans of the arena and a bunch more types of enemy ships to duke it out with players. Related:And duking it out is the name of the game here. (Actually it's Bow to Blood a terribly ill-fitting name for a light-hearted reality show romp.) The game has no traditional campaign, instead featuring a randomly generated 'story' involving the player as the latest entrant in the 'Bow to Blood' tournament. The season of the show involves seven different events, each incorporating a couple different challenges.

At the end of each event, the highest ranked contestants vote to eliminate one of the bottom two players in. It's sort of like a futuristic Survivor if all the reality stars were space pirates. It's up to the player to earn as many points as possible to stay out of the bottom two and avoid the culling. Depending on the challenges of that particular event, points can be earned by discovering secret caches of loot, destroying enemy ships, or beating a rival in a race to the finish. The first round of an event allows the player to choose their destination and the main event, but the second round is always chosen for them.

Once players look past the polish of different world appearances, they'll quickly see that there's not much variety to the gameplay. It's a lot of pilot there (slowly) and shoot that. But the game still has a few tricks up its sleeve. In addition to the rote piloting of their vessel, players also must manage their crew positions among several stations. Moving one of their two crew members to the engines, for instance, will allow the ship to pilot at a greater speed than if no one is manning that area. Additionally, shields can be recharged, but only when the crew is attending to them; they'll fall pretty quickly in massive fire fights. Don't worry, if even they fall all the way and the hull of the ship loses all its health, the game doesn't end.

Players still retain whatever points they accrued that event, and their ship will be ready to go for the next 'episode.' Of course, that's only if they survive the culling.

The strategy element of crew management is both fun and decently challenging, allowing players to navigate difficult areas easier with the knowledge of which stations to man. Fans of simulators like FTL will catch on quick to this mechanic, but for the seemingly intended audience of casual players, it may take a bit of practice. It's a shame that this organizational element isn't paired with more deftly made piloting; perhaps in VR these controls were more intuitive. Bow to Blood overall still has the essence of a VR game, one that is being explained to you by the developers as you play it at the local con. After flying around for a while, collecting points, many of the other AI competitors will approach the player with offers or threats.

These are random each play through, making for nearly endless replayability for those that find that the game's charm out ways its flaws. A captain may warn you of a bomb he planted on your ship and demand points to deactivate it. Another might offer the location of a cache and split the reward with you. It's up to the player to decide what to do in these situations that are very often (near) life or death.

It's important to keep in mind that these will be the same AI voting to keep you in the game or not if you're in the culling, so players should always have at least a few allies. The entirety of the campaign takes about three hours or so, each event lasting somewhere from 25-30 minutes. It's fast enough that with the Switch's portable mode, you might be able to make it through a campaign on a plane or bus ride. But playing Bow to Blood, it is hard to shake the feeling that there should have been multiplayer or at least co-op incorporated into the game. The premise alone: making alliances and betraying them, then working together against a massive boss to see who can land the final blow; joining a real-life friend in battle would not be out of place in the slightest.For those players looking for something new and original, Bow to Blood certainly hits all those marks.

As a single-player experience, it manages to overcome some of its weird quirks to be fun enough for an afternoon. It just needed a bit of polish to truly captivate. Ty Sheedlo is a games and (occasional) movie contributor to Screen Rant. He has been writing for the site for several years in the form of lists, interviews, set visits, news, and reviews. When he isn't analyzing them, Ty can be found playing video games for fun (mostly Super Smash Bros.) and sometimes looking outside the window to enjoy the year-long LA summer. He's a huge horror fan and comedy nerd; legends speak of a mythical horror-comedy genre that lives at the intersection of all Ty's interests. He can be found retweeting and rarely expressing his own opinions on Twitter as (at)needs4sheeds and 'hearting' movies on Letterboxd as tygonjin.