--The King of Hell, Army Corps of Hell
Sometimes experience with and reflection on entertainment of low or mixed quality can help one appreciate entertainment of high philosophical and artistic quality all the more. In this way, even wholly mediocre or abysmal entertainment can accomplish something besides displaying the laziness or incompetence of its creators. Army Corps of Hell is example of such a work that at best straddles the line between the two back and forth. Whether someone enjoys it will depend on their personal tolerance of or pleasure found in extreme repetition in gameplay, but Army Corps of Hell is lackluster in its "variety" of environments and attacks, utterly shallow in its story, and awful at representing the graphical power of the PS Vita. It does almost nothing with what could have actually been the basis of a lore-rich, diverse gameplay experience.
Production Values
From the visuals to the sound, Army Corps of Hell is relentlessly repetitive, and not repetitive in qualities that are good. The graphics look like they were from a generation of handheld game systems from before the Vita, blurry, lacking in detail, and only getting utilized to show a series of very similar floating landscapes of hell one after the other. Of course, graphics alone do not make a game excellent, and even games with stellar visuals for their time and system of release can become worse by comparison to later games. It is just that these graphics were never good by the Vita's standards even when the system and the game were first released very close to each other. The soundtrack itself is also hyper-repetitive, playing a few metal/rock songs over and over, all without any audio dialogue in between. Otherwise, only things like the grunts made by the goblin underlings and the sounds of combat greet one's ears while playing this game.
Gameplay
Matching the visuals and story, the gameplay of Army Corps of Hell is at best blandly monotonous and of a distinctly low quality compared to both the system's capabilities and the potential of the game itself. The limited three different kinds of goblins that can be equipped with different elemental gear or gear with higher or lower characteristics of the same few categories are thrown at enemies--or just launch elemental bolts at them in the case of magi--are launched with little to no variation at various monstrosities as they fight through hell. The boss fights, like the level design and general game mechanics, are also used more than once in some cases with just the color of the boss or the number of them changed (some bosses appear in pairs). That a game on a platform like the Vita could squander the chance to portray combat between mystical beings in hell and make it so mundane is an artistic travesty of sorts!
Story
Some spoilers are below.
An unnamed demonic entity is cast down from his station in hell, enraged by his loss and eager to forcefully claim his desired status of the ruler of all hell. He uses an increasingly well-equipped army of goblins divided into soldiers with swords, spearmen, and magi, with whom he attacks the many creatures of hell that could threaten him or stand in the way of total dominion over the realm, some of them being demonic creatures that far exceed him in size.
Intellectual Content
Expect nothing of philosophical substance with this game. Sadly, what could have been a glorious premise for a game, with a demon king that explores the nature of power much more thoughtfully and deeply, is not utilized for its conceptual depth at all. Even the King's own motivations are never explored beyond brief, mostly still-frame cutscenes where he repeatedly talks about his subjective infatuation with power and dominance. In fact, as far as the story goes is just the King of Hell irately observing possible threats to his planned reign and occasionally having brief conversations, all communicated by subtitles, with the goblins he only cares about as a tool by which he can secure unfiltered power. When the gameplay itself is so undeveloped and not even the lore and production values are strong, what a waste it is for a game to be philosophically shallow to this degree!
Conclusion
The PlayStation Vita could have been handled much better than Sony treated it, and it also called for a much better kind of game to showcase its strengths and even just the components of a quality video game. Uncharted: Golden Abyss was a far superior launch title for the Vita at its worst than Army Corps of Hell is at its best. However, not to trivialize the mostly excellent Golden Abyss in any way, but anything with more than the most minimalist kind of story and the barest level of characterization already towers above Army Corps of Hell. This game would have benefitted from making it seem more like a title at home on the Vita instead of one that seems almost like it might have been initially intended for the PSP and happened to be released for the Vita later on. Even then, the PSP had far better system exclusives (at the time) and multiplatform games than this. Army Corps of Hell is a perfect example of nothing more than superficiality.
Content:
1. Violence: At least the violence is something the developers put effort into. Especially when special group attacks are used and enormous amounts of blood are thrown out as enemies burst, this is a very violent game.
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