Laika: Aged Through Blood

Laika: Aged Through Blood is a grim and roaring adventure in the post-apocalyptic wastelands. Bombs have fallen. Most of the world has ended. The one in power is a harsh military bird dictatorship bent on fully wiping out everyone and controlling the world. You are Laika, biker and mom that only wants to survive along with the small town Where You Live and protect her daughter, Puppy. It’s up to Laika to ride out into the wasteland and gun down threats.

Also, everyone is an anthropomorphic animal. What’s better than a badass biker? A badass coyote biker!

Find it on Steam.

Laika (the game) is a hard game to play, in many senses of the world. It is a difficult game since Laika (the character) dies in one hit. That’s right, you have no health. Any enemy attack will splatter you. More than that, if you drive wrong and smash your head into the ground, also death. At least half of my deaths were due to unforced errors and just ramming my head into the ground. Helmets don’t help here. Another way the game is hard to play is that it is grim. The setting is bleak. Everyone is in various states of dying or depression. The opening scene is a harsh intro of gore. This game doesn’t shy away from dark topics, blood, and guts.

This game does allow you to feel like a rough and rumble biker. Due to primarily going around on a bike, the level designs include lots of jumps, loops and other cool stuff. Still, since you are on a bike, simple stuff like going up or down takes longer as you need to weave around on ramps and build up momentum to get up hills. You start off with a 2 shot pistol that you can upgrade. And you can find other weapons as well. Soon enough you’ll be armed enough to take out a whole horde of bird enemies.

Now you don’t reload normally. You perform backflips to reload. And you can use your bike to parry bullets, reflecting them back at the shooter. Angling your bike also allows you to block shots as only hits to Laika count. The bike is invincible. When you aim, time slows down allowing you to line up shots. I played using the controller, which was harder to be accurate with, but nothing too bad. Though the game might be easier with the mouse and keyboard.

There are a few enemy types, though most of them operate the same. Enemies don’t move around and will shoot at you when you get too close. They are in preset locations, and can be taken out in one shot. Since everyone hates the birds so much, their viscera are a form of currency. You can shoot dead enemies as they fly through the air and they’ll drop more viscera. Though that can also be annoying because while dead bodies are flying through the air, they also block shots you aim at other enemies. There are a good variety of bosses in the game. Most of them are watch the pattern and know when and where to hit them. The most challenging one for me was definitely the Caterpillar of Sadness.

The game doesn’t get too hard thanks to a generous checkpoint system. If you die, you’re rarely more than 20 seconds away, and you are raring to go again, breaking through that troublesome spot. Also, during boss fights, you don’t lose any viscera when you die, so it is a simple thing to try over and over. Some areas, especially mission-important ones, can be hard to navigate, and I constantly referred to the map to get around.

The story of the game is pretty simple. Birds are being jerks invading and killing people. You must stop their march of war. There is a lot of background information that doesn’t really come into play. The tone and vibe of the game comes in more through the various characters and quests you can do. While the side quests don’t exactly have good rewards, they do have good character moments. As Laika asks, what good is doing the small things when they are in such a dire situation? Why, it is the difference between surviving and living. Also, you can give your daughter, Puppy, gifts you find wandering around the wasteland.

Also, in game, Laika cannot die. Her bloodline is cursed so she’ll always come back to life. At least until it passes on to her daughter.

The music in this game is fantastic. Rather than having soundtracks for various locations, you instead have a tape player, and you can find more tapes throughout the game. The songs are sad, haunting melodies with beauty woven in.

The names of places in the game have a certain charm as well. They are simple and descriptive. The town you live? It’s called Where We Live. The place by the ocean? It’s called Where Waves Die.

If there are some things I would change, it would be reloading reloads all weapons you have instead of just the one you have equipped. As is, sometimes I would go through the same small bump multiple times just to reload up. It would make combat more fast paced overall.

Laika: Aged Through Blood is a grim and bleak game where the joy is in the small moments. No one really has hope, so they are doing the best with what they have. Gameplay is fun and different as you ride and gun your way through the wasteland. Gain some new abilities to reach new areas. Find some secrets. Do some quests for your friends. And spend some time with your adorable daughter.

Find it on Steam.