All of the action in Not a Hero is precipitated by Bunnylord, an anthropomorphised purple rabbit that wants to win elections by fighting crime. Well, by your fighting crime on his behalf anyway, with ‘fighting crime’ meaning ‘kill every single criminal you see anywhere.’ Bunnylord lives in a world of absolutes and, as his agent, so do you.
Not a HeroDeveloper: Roll7Publisher: Devolver DigitalPlatform: Reviewed on PCAvailability: Out now on PS4 as well as Windows, Mac, Linux. Vita version cancelled.
Not a Hero is a game about shooting criminals in the face. It’s a 2D shooter on two planes: characters move and shoot in the forefront, and take cover in the background. The style is an oblique projection, so the environments give an impression of depth but are never visually confusing about which plane the moving parts are on.
Such clarity and precision are the hallmarks of what on the surface looks like a blood-soaked murderthon. Not A Hero certainly is the latter, but the system underpinning it is about speed and finesse – tapping A on a 360 pad moves into cover, X shoots, and Y is for special weapons. Interactive busywork like setting bombs and picking up ammo is smartly automated with a proximity timer, concentrating everything down to these three core options which, 95% of the time, are really only two.