It was a premise that was mildly fascinating before I knew anything about the actual content within, and despite having a couple of sturdy hands to play, it sadly falls a little bit flat for a few reasons.
Set within the Victoriano Estate, you control the Keeper, an enemy from the main game who you frequently encounter throughout. The very loose story is based around tracking down your daughter, who is lost in the STEM and is calling for help to be saved. This is unrelated to the first 2 DLC packs, so the story is completely standalone.
The plot is very explicit in it's lore. A number of test subjects occupying the STEM are holding the Keeper's daughter back, and the only way to free her is to go round various rooms within the Victoriano Estate killing these subjects - Which turn out to just be regurgitations of various characters and bosses from the main game.
It effectively just boils down to being a gauntlet mode. You progress through the environment slaughtering enemies until you reach the end, and that's pretty much it. The lack of depth is very obvious and it's about as linear of an experience you'll get.
You can find a little bit of additional novelty through being able to earn memory tokens from defeating enemies. These are used to unlock different weapons, of which there is a healthy selection. However, tactically, all I found myself doing was upgrading the hammer to the highest damage level and wailing on every enemy that stood in my way, so the game does a poor job of promoting the arsenal it provides you. The only reason I had to use anything else was to fulfil some of the Torment requirements, tied to a separate trophy which requires you to fulfil each of the 18 different Torments.
The handling of the Keeper also leaves a bit to be desired. I don't expect him to be fluid. He's a big, clunky character by nature, but the movement feels overly sluggish and combat is very basic. You have a single attack button to use your equipped primary weapon, and you can also use a dash attack, but it feels like every fight you get into is reduced to dumbed down, button mashing thanks to the limited move set. I just didn't find it that compelling or fun.
There are 10 trophies available, which I earned across 3 separate playthroughs of the episode. You will need an initial, casual playthrough, which serves 2 main purposes.
Firstly, the "I Might Close Early" trophy, awarded for Purchasing all items in the Shop, requires a fairly large sum of memory tokens that will need to be accumulated across multiple playthroughs in order to unlock all 10 available weapons. This includes a couple of rewards which can only be purchased in New Game+ mode.
Secondly, you'll need to unlock New Game+ mode for the purpose of a couple of other trophies. The "Cruel and Unusual" trophy, awarded for Completing all Torments is one of these. Torments are specific challenges you can fulfil alongside natural progression and Torment 18 requires you to beat the final hidden execution chamber, which is only available in New Game+ mode.
Further to this, there's also a hidden trophy for opening up a secret portal to a special boss battle, which is also exclusive to New Game+ mode.
The third and final playthrough was reserved for the "I've Got Box of Steel" trophy, awarded for Clearing The Executioner without taking any damage. On paper, this reads like it should be fairly challenging, but there are a couple of things to be aware of that can make this task much less troublesome.
The most important point is the fact that, any time you take damage from an enemy, you can just reload your most recent save point, and this won't negate progress towards the trophy. You can easily clear with trophy within 30 minutes, so your last save point will never be too far back.
The winning tactic is to just load up the rocket launcher and kill everything with a small handful of rockets. It makes light work of most bosses you'll encounter. The rocket launcher also allows you to dispatch enemies whilst maintaining a safe distance at all times and you'll also be able to take full advantage of the unlimited ammunition unlock, since you've beaten the mode a couple of times already. Load it up, spam the rockets without worrying about running out of ammo and it's a fairly fool proof method when you run it this way.
You are also allowed to bypass hidden execution chambers. If the trophy required you to clear these without taking damage too, we would have a significantly harder challenge on our hands, but this is not the case. It only took me 26 minutes and 57 seconds to run through the whole episode without taking any damage using this method.
With 3 playthroughs, this brings together a total completion time of around 4-5 hours. I definitely preferred the story-driven DLC. This just felt a little bit token and, despite being an interesting idea, just got in it's own way a bit with the execution. At least it was an easy completion though.
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