Vicious Attack Llama Apocalypse Reviews

WE GOTTA PROBLLAMA! ITS A LLAMACIDE!!!

Hello, and welcome to my review of VALA, or "Vicious attack llama apocalypse".
VALA is a twin stick shooter, with a few interesting (and a few annoying) mechanics. Its also incredibly luck based, chock full of llama puns, and skirts the line between rogueLITE and rogueLIKE, due to its game play mechanics.
How does it hold up as a game? Well lets find out.

STORY
Llamazon (Yes, you heard me) wants to ship their products world wide, with the help of their army of mind controlled Llamas.
An ex employee gets allamaingly annoyed, and hardwired their mind control devices to cause said llamas to rampage.
Its up to you, a Llamazon employee, with the help of your twin gunned assault mech, to paint the town red, red with the blood of the llamas.
...
That's it, nothing else to really add. Who needs a solid reason to shoot demonic llamas, though?

GAMEPLAY
As stated above, you have a mech. You have three abilities, an energy shield, a slam jump, and a slamming dash, all using energy, dropped by kills.

The game is spread over 3 districts, each with 10 "levels" to them, each level somewhat randomly generated, culminating into maze like ends at the 11th and thus final floor of said area.

Llamas come in several varieties, from a llama that spits acid, to one with horns like a bull, from llamas that scream and attract the attention of the other llamas on the level. While there is a small variety, the challenge comes in the ever increasing waves, not the types of enemies at times. Your whole screen full of screaming llamas? I sincerely hope you don't have dual pistols.

The mech has two guns, interchangeable with what you unlock as you kill llamas, or destroy parts of the city (mail boxes, lamp posts, llama shanties). You gain perks occasionally, gained much the same way as the weaponry.
You have a few classes of weapons, guns like rifles, energy weapons, a water hose for examples and different types and styles of perks, from certain abilities using less energy, to a ring of fire around you as you reload, to a partial health revive should you fall.
You can see what you have unlocked, along with the conditions to unlock another gun or perk in the menu between missions.

Your mech, though...
Can't be healed in most cases. Any damage sustained is thus permanent, bringing you one step closer to death. Fall in block 9 of a district, for instance, and you need to start from scratch.
At the same time, the perks and weapons that drop for you are chosen at random from what you unlock. The more guns or perks you unlock, the lower chance you have of a certain something dropping.
Guns need kills in their chosen category, and perks need certain conditions met to be available, such as slamming 100 llamas, or destroying 100 mail boxes.
Both of these add an incredible factor of luck into the game. Many times you won't get the perk to fit your weapons, or the weapons you need for a situation. You won't be in an area you can unlock a perk, or you'll die partway through, resetting said progress on perks (gun kills required stay, however).

At the very least, if you are a fan of puns, this game delivers in SPADES. If not, sound the allama because at least there is a way to lower or remove said puns in the settings.

CONTROLS
You aim with the left stick, move with the right stick, and fire your left gun with left trigger, your right with, well, right trigger. The bumpers are used to swap weapons you find, again L/L and R/R.
X is your energy shield, A is your slam attack, and B is your dash attack.
In a coop game, up on the D pad revives a coop partner should they fall, though at the cost of some of the revivers health.

There isn't much to memorize as you can see. The set up is simple, and I found no problems with the responsiveness of the controls.

GRAPHICS
The graphics aren't too bad, they are up to date for the time of the games release.
Its a good thing your own explosives don't hurt you because special mention goes to the clouds of dust that can fill areas you are violently destroying. Fun, few times did it get in the way, but that's about it. Much of the ground will be drenched in blood as you play. Otherwise, Its graphics aren't much to right home about.
Special mention to the achievement "momentary peasantry" though, which requires you to slow the game down due to overloading its framerate, either by having entire swarms of llamas on the screen, or an incredible number of explosions going off at once.

SOUND
Here's where things take a major turn.
Lets put aside the sllama dunk that is this games humor.
The game has *One* rock soundtrack. That it replays once it finishes. It gets stale, fast.
That's all the game has to try to go with gunshots, explosions, and shouting/screaming llamas.

At times, I played muted with music going on due to youtube, if you want my full disclosure.

DIFFICULTY
7/10, easily, even on casual. Higher if you aren't a fan/good at twin stick shooters.
The waves of enemies steadily raise, from 100-200 in the first area to potentially one to two thousand, at a time.
The roguelite nature of randomized unlockable weapons and perks, against several enemy types, and the inability to heal outside of a single perk (that you can't choose on your own) makes the game incredibly difficult at times.
The rogueLIKE nature of death meaning you start all over, no perks, wave one, no checkpoints, makes the luck based nature that much harder. If, say, you get tons of perks but only level 1 weapons drop for you, you simply can't win.

COMPLETION/SCORE
Hooo boy. Difficult.
As touched upon above, you need to do things, such as freeze x number of llamas, while having an active perk chain (simply meaning you get an order you can unlock perks.) which requires getting the gun to drop. This can take areas, or multiple runs.
You unlock guns by getting kills with a gun (pistol unlocks into rifle, unlocks into shotgun, water gun unlocks into freeze gun) which, again, requires the dropping of the weapon.
Both of the above, understandable, but not every gun or perk works for every situation.

On top of the game itself being rather difficult, some achievements take quite a bit of patience to set up, and then the skill required to stay alive. I admit I struggled at many points in the game and while stating it is couch coop, I can add that said coop can make the GAME easier, but it doesn't help you unlock its guns or perks, in fact making said grind actually LONGER.

I have to give the game 2 stars for "ease" of a 100%, and 3 stars as its overall review.
It sits as a game that requires roughly 25-40 hours of game play to 100%, luck playing a HUGE factor in your time.
It has a few unique ideas, though some are poorly executed, and the simple fact you can't HEAL in most situations makes cheap deaths just a major headache.
I would thus only recommend this to somebody who either highly enjoys tough twin stick shooters of a roguelike/lite nature, such as Enter the Gungeon or The binding of Issac, or somebody who likes roguelites/likes in general and is aiming for something new. Otherwise, this is just a frustrating experience.
But hey, at least you get to shoot thousands of bloodthirsty llamas.

3.0