Review — Drawn To Death

Drawn To Death

We sit down and review Drawn To Death. It’s a new shooter/brawler that take place on a teenager’s notebook of doom. Here’s our review of Drawn To Death

Today is the last day that you PS Plus members can pick up Drawn To Death and then it flows on out into the purchase arena for everyone. Given that fact, we thought it would be high-time to throw together our review of the game and how Bartlet Jones has done with it all over the last month so you can figure out if it is worth the time and money to add it to your PS4. We also wanted to make sure we took our time and watched as Drawn To Death grew and evolved as a good multiplayer title must to keep the fans happy. To say this is the same game we saw so long ago at PSX would be wrong, but let’s just dive right into our review of the game so you can better make you choice at the end of the day.

Story

More or less, you take on the role of one of the characters, currently six, in an all-out fight to the death stemming from the mind of a teenager and drawn on his notebook during class. Each has a place in the artist’s real world but has been deviated and altered through his own adolescent and warped way of thinking. Maybe more angsty than warped but it’s hard to tell given the little given up front for it all. This isn’t a story based game after all it is a shooter/brawler so any story you can pick up is just icing on this cake.

Hated

While I have seen this part of Drawn To Death go from very basic to where it is now, I’d have to say one of the bigger issues I had with the game had to be the learning of the characters and how they work. Up front I know Bartlet Jones has been about having players experience and learn the characters as they play the game, but it seems odd to have that and then focus the tutorial all on one character from the start. At least at the time of this writing it seems like that is the focus and that we are supposed to learn the rest from watching short videos and trying things out during matches. The only issue there is that the matches are so frantic sometime, in a good way, that it is easy to forget all of the extras each character has. This has led me to sticking to one that I have since Drawn To Death was in early access and was easier to get to understand instead of trying to branch out and enjoy everything the game has to offer.

In addition to that, and not as much, this goes along the same lines as the weapons in Drawn To Death. There is a “shooting gallery” to get some practice with all of the guns that are in the game, but given how some of them work it is hard to learn the nuances and tricks when not in battle or at least against truly moving targets. Maybe it is a learning curve that hasn’t been seen before in shooters/brawlers but it makes it hard to want to branch out when also trying to win the match. Unless you have a bunch of friends who are cool with running and gunning around in friendly matches, which I don’t, it is hard to get a feel for them all while trying to stay competitive. Maybe allowing for some AI bots at some point down the line could help clear this up, but for now the option is to take some hits to your kill to death ratio.

Lastly, and this only started up here recently, has to come down to the matchmaking in Drawn To Death and how long it takes to actually play the game. It started out relatively high once the flood gates were open, then as things progressed it became easier and easier to get into a match were there was more than one player and during slow hours of the day. Now we are currently back at the wait time of four to five minutes on my end to be able to get in during peak times of the day and even then I’m lucky to find more than one player in the match. This always seems to be the issue with multiplayer only titles and I am starting to see Drawn To Death suffering from it which of course placed this in the Hated section. Hopefully it will improve, but only time will tell for now.

Loved

While I have found it hard to get to learn each of the characters of Drawn To Death in the heat of battle, I will have to say that they are all some of the most unique and interesting I have come across in games like this one. You can tell that the Bartlet Jones team took their time with each to make them all feel unique and interesting once you get the swing of them all. They are by no means clones of each other with new skins and slightly different abilities as I’ve experienced time and time again in other titles. That would have been the easy way out for Drawn To Death if it was only the weapons that felt completely different in the game but it is everything and that makes for a wider array of possibilities and harder to figure out how a player is going to play given the options. Sure there are some things that can be assumed once you see the characters everyone is going to play as, but with the options so varied it is a task and sometimes not easy to guess.

Also, while I will say it is a lot harder than many other titles when it comes to learning a specific character and weapon in Drawn To Death, once headway is started it is a fun experience. I am a huge fan of Alan and almost exclusively use him when I play currently. Part of that is because of the gripe I had above, but part of it is that now that I have forced my way through and ignored any of my rankings, it is fun to try the many different options out there. I guess this would be the other edge of that sword here. Trying to perfect the character on your own terms in Drawn To Death is in its part another game to have here. Even with the relatively low extra abilities and styles he has I have never felt bored with trying out many different things. They don’t always work, but the fun of exploring the options is there for each character and something I know I finding a lot of enjoyment out of.

Finally here I would have to say that I love the different modes we have here for Drawn To Death and am excited to see what else is to come. So far I have run the gamut on them all and have my favorites, but each one offers up a truly unique experience instead of just being a deviation of Deathmatch. That gets old fast and usually is why I don’t go back to play multiplayer games or modes in many other titles. Sure, Drawn To Death has that mode as well but it changes things up more than just who can get the most kills in the end. I’ve won matches with the most deaths because I happened to find a good streak of kills. It’s the randomness factor mixed in that make each that extra bit of enjoyable. That’s not even going into the Brawl and Organ Donor modes that are a one on one death match and a truly unique version of “Kill Confirmed” respectfully.

Overview

At the end of the day Drawn To Death is not going to be for everyone out there. If you are looking to run and gun and rack up the highest number of kills, then this is most likely not a game for you. If you want a fast paced kill-fest with quick kills so you can quickly gloat about virtually killing someone, again, most likely not for you. Drawn To Death is a game for those who like more tactics in their multiplayer as well as a few of the stagnant practices in the industry turned upside-down. It offers many unique characters, maps, and modes that makes it stand out from many other multiplayer titles. It is a “thinking man’s” arena shooter of sorts even though the toilet humor would suggest otherwise. If you want something other than running and gunning then Drawn To Death is worth a try. The rest can go back to playing their Call Of Duty and crying when the game is the same every year. I find Drawn To Death completely worth the time and money but I fully understand it is not for everyone.

I give Drawn To Death 47 Fucked Up Taunts on the Fucked Up Taunt scale.

Drawn To Death was developed by The Bartlet Jones Supernatural Detective Agency and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for the PS4 on April 4^th, 2017. A digital PS4 copy of the game was downloaded via the Free PS Plus listing.