Butcher Demo

Rail shooters have gone extinct a few ages ago, back when computers were a tad too slow to support anything more realistic. Pointing a crosshair across the screen in order to shoot the incoming monsters may not sound like too much fun nowadays, but anything featuring something else than the classic platformer point of view was welcomed back then.

Butcher is an arcade shooter that can be compared to a guy who arrived a bit too late to the party and everyone is already too drunk to notice him at this point. Everything the game’s based on is old and obsolete, with no real reason to be displayed on modern monitors. Not only that, but it would also be considered terrible if it came out at the right time.

To start off with, the name ‘Butcher’ should be suggestive enough to give you an idea about what your purpose is throughout the levels. In essence, you have to use a small variety of weapons to destroy the monsters that appear on the screen, while surviving the onslaught for as long as possible in order to achieve a high score. There is no story or characters to talk about, so you can pretty much pick it up and play it without a care in the world.

Except, you might only be able to continue doing so for a few minutes at a time, because that’s all you need in order to see everything the game has to offer. Each level features one kind of enemy and they all come in repetitive patterns, which can be learned after only a couple of minutes. You still cannot shoot them all anyway, because the mechanics do not allow you to move quickly enough to do so.

Visually, the graphics may try to trick you into believing they are in three dimensions, but they are most certainly not. The levels are also devoid of any detail and you mostly have to focus on the same enemies running into the same patterns for minutes at end. Not even the creatures themselves received too much care when it comes to quality, so you probably won’t be able to tell what they represent most of the time.

In the end, Butcher also comes with the option to have two players playing on the same screen at once, in order to increase your survival chances. However, even this component is flawed, because the cursor is pretty difficult to control using the keyboard and not a lot of controllers are supported.