Convoy | Xbox One Review
Convoy, from Convoy Games, is a roguelike, top-down vehicle shooter first released on Steam back in 2015. The game has now made the leap to consoles for 2020. Given the structure of the gameplay, and the controls overall, this game should have never made the leap. It is even hard to figure out how it got traction on the PC side.
What a Lovely Day
Convoy takes the models of FTL and Mad Max, with a top-down strategy shooter. You begin your quest as a group of survivors, who have crashed on a planet looking for parts to repair their ship. They need to escape this desolate planet covered in different factions of rebel travelers looking to hang onto their land and their wares. You pilot a MCV and escort vehicles of different types to traverse the lands.
Your map guides you via a beacon to your destination of goals that are usually major parts you need for repairs. Along the way, you encounter pods of the different factions that you can either barter with for gear and fuel, something you’ll find that is scarce and can’t get very far without. Or you can fight for higher rewards, but increase the risk of destruction. If the mood suits your fancy, you can try and pick a fight with all three factions in an attempt to eliminate them. However, I would only recommend this option as a last resort, as it cranks up the difficulty to 11.
The Good, the Bad, and the Frustration
The soundtrack and graphics throw the gamer back to an 80’s style reminiscent of Zork, with its massive amount of text that lends itself to the only action on the map screen. The text being small is a little bit of an annoyance due to some pretty unique and funny dialogue hidden in the game. On that map, you do need to pay attention as the speed of your travels will depend on the elevation of the terrain you are moving along. Unfortunately, that’s where the positivity of this review ends.
Speaking of the text, it is small and, in large parts, irrelevant. It tries to tell a story over extremely dry gameplay when considered on the console level. The battles are very tedious in the beginning and take a lot of work to get up and going. They can come across as dry and repetitive. When your escorts are destroyed, and it will happen often, your MCV is dead in the water. You are also dead in the water until it is destroyed which, based on the health of the MCV, can take quite a while with less than stellar enemy IQ that fires slowly and sporadically. Quite possibly the only way around being single-handedly wiped out quickly is making sure to deploy upgrades you find along your travels to your MCV. As the player, you would be better off restarting the game and traveling elsewhere. Better yet…leave it be.
For a game that is marketed as a roguelike, this game doesn’t feel like one at all. It takes an incredible amount of time to gain a permanent upgrade, and when you do receive one, it is in the form of a new vehicle. These vehicles don’t feel like upgrades at all. They are mostly cosmetic changes to your loadout with slightly different slots for upgrades. These upgrades are usually in the form of a weapon (red), utility (yellow), or MCV specific (gray). While having a variety is a nice touch, if you cannot survive long enough to gain them through battles they feel more or less useless.
Convoy Final Verdict
Our motto at The Gaming Outsider is that “There’s no such thing as a bad game, just games that aren’t for you.” This game walks a VERY thin line to hold true to that motto. This game was certainly not for me. While the game does have a fairly large following on PC, the jump to console does not translate well and makes the battles harder. Many times I found myself struggling to keep pace due to lack of a keyboard and mouse. If you were to try this game out I would recommend playing it where it was originally intended to be. It has a good throwback vibe with the graphics and music, but it fades in two microseconds and sours with gameplay that should have stayed in the 80’s.
To hear me talk more about Convoy, be sure to check out Episode 291 of The Gaming Outsider Podcast around the 1:42:26 time stamp.
This review is based on an Xbox One copy of Convoy provided by Evolve PR for coverage purposes. It is also available on PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Windows, Linus, and Mac.
Convoy
$14.99
Pros
- Catchy Soundtrack and Graphics
Cons
- Little Action
- Luck Plays Too Big a Part
- No Satisfaction in the Gameplay
