Game News Decision: Red Daze sleeps out on Steam and GOG

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Decision: Red Daze; FlyAnvil

Decision: Red Daze has an Early Access release on Steam as well as GOG. It's clearly an actiony CRPG as it describes itself, but it's also a base building, recruit gathering, survival type game as well. Battle mutants in the wasteland of the dust bowl, collect loot, and play wasteland dress up! What more could you ask? Probably multiplayer, but that's not in there. Here's some info:

PLAY AS ANYONE
Even the lowliest survivor you find has the potential to lead his own squad, explore, make the wasteland safe, and shape their own destiny. It’s up to you to upgrade and specialize any survivor you find in the wasteland any way you see fit.

EXPLORE, LOOT, AND CAPTURE
While most of the buildings of the Dust Bowl are long abandoned and taken over by the undead, the loot and potential shelter is coveted by most survivors. During your exploration missions you’ll come across various farmsteads, factories and military installations full to the brim with monsters, loot, and most importantly, foundations that hold the potential to turn the long abandoned structures into sprawling and heavily fortified settlements.​

And for shits and giggles, check out the reviews on Steam. It's not pretty. Apparently most people are annoyed with the stamina mechanic in the game, which is a little unforgiving. If you have to sleep for 24 hours to regain stamina, you probably have mono. Recruit a doctor.

There's also a video from SplatterCatGaming if you're looking for some game play. He seems to like it.

 

[Late Bloomer]

This is one of those games that seems to not have a single redeeming value. Watched a couple of people play it just to get a better idea of what its about and its worse than the trailer, which is really quite bad. As you said, the Steam reviews did provide some laughs at the very least. For bonus laughs, Splattercat did a video on it and one of the devs responded. Its the top comment.

 

[Sin2x]

Brown Haze

 

[PompiPompi]

The connection between this game and RPG is a case of scientific research study.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

This is one of those games that seems to not have a single redeeming value.

Just going by the reviews, this seems to be one of those games that should work well but gets ruined by some poor gameplay design decisions. It's an "action RPG", okay fine. Kind of a curious choice for a game that allows you to recruit a party to tag along with you, which means you have to make a really decent AI for the recruits otherwise mob on mob combat is going to be annoying as Hell. That cropped up in the reviews. The way the stamina is handled apparently needs quite a few tweaks, since there's multiple people complaining they constantly need to sleep 24 hours to get their stamina back after some brief sprinting. There's nothing wrong with the idea of stamina in an RPG especially with a survival element. How you do it, though, is pretty key in terms of "fun". You can make something challenging but not punishing. There was one review which correctly pointed out that having to sleep so often cripples the "exploration" aspect of the game. You can't discover new things if you're staying in the bed for day after one skirmish.

There's a lot of decent things in their feature list, like scavenging and base building, free style character development, even the dress up thing is a plus so you can make your character not only be like you want but also look like you want based on the choices of how you outfit yourself. It's Early Access though, so we'll see if they take the reviews to heart and make the changes that will make the game challenging AND fun.

For bonus laughs, Splattercat did a video on it and one of the devs responded.

I saw that. I know SplatterCat said he only makes videos on games he likes, but he typically also points out things during his videos that he doesn't like. I haven't seen the entire video, but I did read the developer's post and I noticed there wasn't a mention of anything negative from the video. So, I can conclude that SplatterCat didn't notice the problems the reviews mentioned or the developer skipped over any cons SplatterCat mentioned. Given the nature of the reviews and how many of them mention similar things, I wouldn't mind seeing the developer say something to either justify the decisions made in the design or say, "Yup, that's true. That'll be patched."

 

[MrBuzzKill]

Crimsonland is also an RPG: it has perks, you can level up and gain new weapons

 

[Fenix]

Crimsonland is also an RPG: it has perks, you can level up and gain new weapons

Also Diablo, the lord of terror.

 

[PompiPompi]

Candy Crush is also an RPG, it has dialogs and boosts

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Crimsonland is also an RPG: it has perks, you can level up and gain new weapons

I played that for a bit back in the day. As the villains in Middleman say, "It's shear elegance in it's simplicity."

From what I've seen in the SplatterCat video, the character system in Decision: Red Haze is pretty much inspired from Elder Scrolls. You use things like med kits and your medic skill goes up. You dip and dodge around, your agility goes up. You fire a gun and hit something fleshy, your firearms skill goes up. If enough skills go up, you gain a level. Level ups apparently just give you an "across the board" skill bonus to everything.

 

[Galdred]

from the description, I hoped it was some attempt at making post apocalyptic Kenshi (I know that Kenshi is technically post apocalyptic, but it has katanas and no gunpowder...), but the reviews said otherwise... I hope they manage to turn it around, because I really like base building RPGs. The decision to go action RPG with companions is puzzling indeed.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I hope they manage to turn it around, because I really like base building RPGs.

I agree. I know a lot of people shit on sandbox CRPGs, but I honestly prefer them over following quests you get from NPCs exclusively. I don't mind getting quests in a sandbox, and do quests in those games that offer them. But I also like dealing with things that happen procedurally. I have way more incentive to respond to something that directly affects my characters than I do responding to an NPC that has rats in their basement. Kenshi does a great job of setting up a world, having the world go on around you and eventually mess something up of yours to where you need to decide how to deal with it. Mount & Blade does the same thing. I've had some crazy things just happen in both games just seemingly out of the blue. You're working towards something and then two factions collide and you're in the middle of it. In the case of Mount & Blade, you might be a vassal of a kingdom that suddenly decides to go to war. While you don't have a quest in a journal, you still know what you need to do, or not, depending on where you are and what your priorities are.

 

[luj1]

Idk if this game turned out to be fun, but the concept was actually pretty good. Crusader no remorse with zombies and multiplayer

 

[mediocrepoet]

For bonus laughs, Splattercat did a video on it and one of the devs responded.

I saw that. I know SplatterCat said he only makes videos on games he likes, but he typically also points out things during his videos that he doesn't like.

I haven't watched this video, but from what I've seen Splat tends to be very positive and even his complaints, he tends to either downplay or joke about, e.g. "Feels bad, man!" YMMV

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Crusader no remorse

I remember having this for the Saturn. I'd forgotten all about it. This is definitely one of those games that could use a faithful remake for modern systems.