Don't Stop, Girlypop! review

Humanity has a complex association with closeness. We feel close when we love someone or something, and we want to remain as close as possible, usually for as long as possible.

But if you're too close for too long, you miss the bigger picture. I'd wager that's what happened with Don't Stop, Girlypop!, an Action-FPS with fast-paced movement inspired by games like DOOM, but is unapologetically girly.

It's obvious Funny Fintan Softworks loves this game, but there are so many bizarre balance issues and unjustifiable missing features that could have been avoided just by stepping back and thoughtfully observing the games that inspired them. Let's start with how you can't connect deeply with the characters because there's no character development.

It seems like the developers want you to have an interest in the characters based on the frequent dialog. There are charismatic personalities, but your relationship with them remains superficial. Take Imber, the translucent being you control with customizable arms. You will never know anything about her except for the glorified bullet points presented at the beginning of the game.

Your guide, a human, immediately speaks to you, but never bothers to introduce herself. I think her name is Adiuvo, but I'm not sure if that's her name or the flip-phone manufacturer she speaks through. Auctus, the main enemy, is part of a larger corporation that is trying to steal The Love from this nameless planet you're saving. Why? It's not clear. And it never becomes clear.

The reason why Super Mario Bros. can consistently get away with its simple premise is because the details are inherent in the premise—evil person kidnaps good person. That's clearly bad.

Stealing love is bad, but love is far more complicated than kidnapping, and the characters, story, dialog, and the monologues are so collectively incoherent I can't tell if DSG is only aiming for satire or if it's just bad.

Before I delve into more problems—of which there are many—I want to acknowledge what's good. The movement and shooting in DSG feel very good and covers a multitude of sins. It feels addicting to run around and leap over everything. It's so good, it feels like that's where the majority of development time went.

DSG includes several guns you would expect to see, like a shotgun or sub-machine gun. Others guns, like the magic wand, are a pleasant surprise. Guns fire with a satisfying burst of power (the sound effects and dying enemies sadly don't amplify that power, and the magic wand is too strong—sorry, I'm trying to be positive right now), and each gun has fun alt-fires to engage with (but they don't noticeably do anything).

The soundtrack is catchy. The theme song of the same name was stuck in my head all day, and the music for each level solidly enhances the action. But the rest of the game is a mish-mash of gameplay mechanics that function but don't work together.

The obvious goal of Don't Stop, Girlypop! is to keep moving. You start slow and build speed as you move. The faster you go consistently, the higher the score you get at the end of a level. But there are strange gameplay quirks that undermine how good it feels. DSG says to keep moving to increase your speed multiplier. But even while you're moving, you'll randomly and inexplicably lose speed.

The game doesn't tell you that there are tiers to speed. The highest tier is 15x. Basic movement only gets you to 10x. Grappling and dashing get you anywhere between 11x-13x. Why the range? I don't know. The unpredictability makes it harder to have control over the multiplier. But wave hopping gets you to 15x. And once you reach 15x, you'll still lose speed even though you're moving. You must wave hop to maintain 15x.

I wave hopped for nearly 7 hours. My brain enjoyed the sensation of bouncing my fingers on the keys to maintain the wave hop, but my fingers were exhausted and without much to show for the effort. Allowing movement to keep your speed and using enemies or other traps to be the means to slow you down would make a much more interesting and less laborious game. The current system makes the best mechanic exhausting and undermines other plausible mechanics like grappling.

Unfortunately, wave hopping has its own problems, too. I started inputting the commands too fast. The sequence is ground pound, jump, dash. After ground pounding, if I jumped too quickly, it wouldn't register, costing me speed and denying my proficiency. Let me wave hop as fast as I can physically do it. I also felt slower after dashing. It subtly stunts your momentum instead of allowing you to smoothly land into the next hop.

I mentioned shooting feels good, and it does, but I couldn't figure out how powerful the guns were. The SMG uses explosive bubblegum as an alt-fire; stick it on your enemy and shoot it to explode, but it never felt like it did more damage than just shooting. Another weapon fired a laser, but it was hard to tell if it pierced enemies and sometimes it one-hit KO'd enemies, other times it didn't. I couldn't figure out why.

I found the magic wand to be the most powerful weapon. There's nothing like magically grabbing objects around the arena, like Portal, and chucking them at the enemies for one or two-shot kills when other guns had longer time-to-kill or long reloads.

There are other combat mechanics, like parrying, that aren't useful during normal play because you're going so fast. To use something like parrying would cause you to slow down, which is not the point of Don't Stop.

Other oddities pepper DSG that range from graphics to performance. As your speed increases, a pink color filter covers the screen and darkens shadows and camouflages similar colors. It's so intense Funny Fintan Softworks needed to add star markers on the enemies so you know where they are.

One level featured swinging axes, slamming pistons, and industrial fans you had to jump through that were not only one-hit kills but were absurdly fast. I have no idea how I made it through some fans and died to others. It felt like luck, and I can't believe this section made it through testing.

Other strange omissions related to PC operation: You can't change the keybinds. You can't invert the Y-axis on gamepads. The minimum requirement for RAM is 16GB; not even GTA V Enhanced needs a minimum of 16GB. I have 32GB of RAM, so it performed smoothly, but I fear for anyone who has less and dares to try this game.