This was a breath of fresh air! Short, sweet, fun as hell, and still managing to have one hell of a great sucker-punch, and all for the price of free? How can I not say to step inside and have a look at it?
Story: It starts with a pretty direct premise. You step out of the elevator and break down the door to the offices with your mallet and step inside. Within these walls there are creatures you are here to exterminate, and your boss is telling you to get it done faster. Of course there is more to this tail, but it is a single massive twist that while hinted at, is easy to ignore until the game slams you in the face with it. And to give that away would be to ruin it's impact... and I refuse to do that.
8/10
Graphics: Perfect Vermin is very much a retro-game in it's style. You will see the world win large chunky pixels and low volume of polygons like you might expect from the late 90s or on the old school Playstation. And since almost the entire game happens in a series of offices, this works exceptionally well. Everything is detailed as one would expect from this type of setup and fits the environment greatly. And when things get bloody (and they will) you can expect it to fit the style.
In much the same feel, your boss is done in a very retro style 2D artwork that does nothing to hide his own horrific transformation throughout the game. It's nothing that is going to floor you for technical feats, but it looks great delivering the exact impression it's meant to.
8/10
Sound: Perfect Vermin really doesn't do much in the sound department. You will be introduced to the title screen with an eerie alien sounding tune that suggests a creepiness all it's own, but you wont get much more for music through the experience. Rather, all you will hear is the background noises of the office you are in, the smacking of your hammer against whatever you are hitting, the collapse of whatever you break, and the groans of pain when you find and destroy one of the vermin the game is named for. Do not get me wrong, this all sounds absolutely great, but it is a much more silent game then many, sticking to a complete ambiance when you are not doing anything... well, almost.
When your boss is speaking, he is not so silent, but rather when speaking says random syllables, sounding like something akin to pig-latin (oo-say obably-pray understand-ey is-they) though his words don't actually mean anything.
And finally the game will bring a rather ominous sound track to the grand finale which just enhances the impact at the end brilliantly. So in short, the sound work is great if a small amount.
8/10
Gameplay: This is actually a very simple game to play. You will move through the offices in first person with a massive hammer in your hands. There is no running, ducking, or jumping. All there is is moving, looking around, and hitting things hard. And while just about everything in the game is destructible, you are aiming to kill the vermin. These pests mimic the other furniture in the office, but when you smash them, you will see blood and guts as as well as their furniture looking shell shattering. In the upper left-hand corner of the screen, you will have a counter of how many are left. Kill them all and you can move on.
But the game will not stay that simple, adding complications to the mission, starting with a timer, requiring you to find them all in 90 seconds and incrementally getting more difficult to give it a descent amount of challenge before you are done, despite the deceptively simple gameplay. It's tight, efficient, and really rather fun! Of course if you want to remove the timer you can in the options, but it adds that much more to the game.
But do not expect to be at this game for a long amount of time. It was designed to be a single session game, and it shows with one of the achievements being to speed run the game in under 4 minutes and 30 seconds. For me the game lasted about 40 minutes from start to finish, so its a good time, but don't plan your whole night around it.
8/10
Bugs: While I personally experienced no issues playing this game, there are reports of Intel processors having a problem where it can crash on Intel based PCs.
Score: Perfect Vermin is a short but fun and destructive romp that will satisfy you while playing, and leave you with a sucker punch to the gut on the way out. You will enjoy yourself, you will certainly remember your time with it for a long time. True it is a fairly short game, but it what is here is masterfully done, and when you add in the price of the game is "free" you have very little to lose playing this game. This is a game I would recommend most people at least play with.
8/10
System Requirements:
- 2.5 Ghz processor
- 8 GB RAM
- NVIDIA Geforce 470 or AMD Radeon 6870 HD
- 385 MB hard drive space
- Windows 7
System Specs:
- Ryzen 7 (2700) 3.2 Ghz
- 16 GB RAM
- Nvidia Geforce 1660 (6GB VRAM)
- Windows 10 (64 Bit)
Source: Steam
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