AMID EVIL - Heretic/Hexen-inspired FPS from the creators of Return of the Triad mod

[Curratum]

I almost thought the post was about Black Labyrinth coming out, but at this point I'm considering all boomer shooter expansions or upcoming releases vaporware.

 

[Riskbreaker]

You are being awfully inconsiderate as to the hardships inflicted on these indie devs by the Covid pandemic, what with the time they were forced to stay at home by their PCs away from their day jobs which obviously retards the game development the ongoing Ukraine crisis.

 

[HumanTotemPole]

Just finished this after picking it up at Eyestabber's recommendation a while ago. Been using it as a palate cleanser for other titles.

Very good looking game with some excellent visual design. Cool levels too though sometimes to the detriment of actual gameplay. The Void levels look great but can be a pain in the ass to fight enemies in. Favourite area was the Forge.

Think I enjoyed Dusk more overall. Something about Amid Evil's core combat never fully clicked. Lots of things were just a little bit off for me e.g. hitboxes can be little inconsistent or player movement is a bit slippery or some levels really fuck up enemy pathfinding.

That said had fun with it more often than not. Would recommend.

 

[Hobknobling]

Got this from the Humble Bundle deal and finished it yesterday.

Random thoughts:

- Level design is gorgeous, but I guess someone did not get the memo about first-person platforming. I do not mind a little bit of it, but I think there was a section in the Forge where it was almost half an hour of solid platforming with very little shooting in-between. The wonky physics of the game do not help. No where near being hard, but just boring and tedious.

- Like with DUSK, I get the feeling that the skills of the creators dramatically improved during the making of the game. This leads to a situation where the level and enemy designs flip-flop around when episodes progress. I guess this brings some needed variance to the game, but this also leads to a dilemma where the game doesn't build on skills and tactics you already learned in the previous episodes. Some of the strong early game weapons become almost useless when the levels become more grand. Many people probably like this, but I don't.

- The enemy designs are the weakest part of the core gameplay. It is commendable that they managed to create new enemies for each episode, but many of the designs don't really work. The game loves to show it's balls to you and there are so many spherical enemies in this game that it becomes distracting. Pathing and physics issues make some of the enemies too erratic. The Solar Solstice episode has multiple annoying and sometimes glitchy enemy types that effectively ruined the episode for me.

- I wonder if they abstained including the liberating movement of DUSK into this game because the physics scripting can't handle it. Including it would be even more fun here because the levels are larger, but I suspect you would get stuck all the time. Even with the slower movement, I managed to create some odd physics interactions and also ran into some haphazardly placed invisible walls.

- The UI is disappointing. It is hard to determine your status by quickly glancing at it. DOOM already had a good if not a great solution to this issue ages ago, but for some reason both DUSK and Amid Evil abstain from including a portrait health indicator. Amid Evil relies on "BLOODY SCREEN SO REAL" which is not a good solution. I would also prefer if the "soul mode" -powerup thing was displayed by a slight shimmer in your weapons instead of blocking the player view with a post-processing effect. The game also has some view effects that have no transparency which is strictly haram in my books.

- Boss fights were mostly garbage.

Overall, I recommend playing this one for the visuals alone. Gameplay is above average too but lacks the final touch to make this a classic.

 

[Curratum]

Yep. that was a nice summary. Amid Evil is one of the more competent retro shooters in terms of gameplay, definitely above the average in this regard. The visuals are unmatched and compliment the gameplay really well, to the point where you might find yourself enjoying it as much as the greats, lulled in by the greatness of the art and level design in terms of spatial design, colors and shapes, it's just quite a sight.

 

[Boleskine]

 

[Rocket-Propelled Game]

I actually like Amid Evil more than a lot of the recent boomer shooters because while a lot of the others clearly are trying (perhaps too hard) to ape their inspiration AMID EVIL feels sufficiently unlike Heretic and Hexen despite clearly being inspired by them both. And the music and psychedelic visuals are a royal trip (and also way different from Heretic and Hexen's dark fantasy vibes).

 

[Baron Dupek]

 

[Ivan]

 

[SharkClub]

Took them long enough, geez.

 

[Jenkem]

so how is it?

 

[Israfael]

I've finished it, quite short but rather decent if you liked the base game. New weapon is too OP though, it literally clears whole screen without any need of aiming (the spaghetti thing still required some aim)

 

[Falksi]

Finally got around to playing this, and I'm digging it big time. Gameplay wise I'm not really finding much fault with it as a few others have, everything seems to feel on-point to me and I've never felt skanked once yet, it feels like all hits/misses/deaths etc. are all down to my decisions and actions.

Early stages did feel a bit mundane (I've only finished 4 episodes so far), definitely too easy for too long, but once it gets rolling it's great. Music is fantastic and the visual style is just incredibly refreshing.

Looking forward to playing more tomorrow.

 

[Falksi]

Sunk 25 hours into it now, just finishing things up.

So yeah, it's another low-key game which puts AAA studios and publishers to shame. Even though it isn't without it's flaws, Amid Evil is a ton of fun and does a lot of things right, and for the most part I've had a right blast. Most of all though, it's not only a good game, but it's one which feels remarkably fresh too.

Fans of Heretic and Hexen will instantly feel the inspirational vibes from those games here, but without a doubt Amid Evil draws from those games whilst also doing it's own thing too. I'm not one who really gets stoked by aesthetics, gameplay is king for me, but here everything feels SO unbelievably fresh, polished and unique that it's hard not to fall in love with them. The music in particular is superb; this is definitely a game to play with headphones on.

But that's all backed up by great gameplay too anyway. Everything feels on-point, and the enemies come with some fantastically crafted attack pattern which force you to stay on your toes. It's fast, snappy fun which flows great. Feeding into that is the fact that each weapon remains relevant throughout the game, and are all useful against different types of enemies. A lot of playtesting and effort has clearly gone into this game, and it boy does it feel well balanced in the combat department for it. I also don't think it's that easy either past the earlier stages; I died a fuckton in the Forges! lol, and it didn't take much of a slip up to end up dead there. So, whilst it does start very easy, kudos on the overall difficulty curve.

The stage design is mostly positive too, with thematically lush stages crafted excellently to offer a nice blend of action, puzzles and secrets. None of the puzzles will tax you for long at all, this is nowhere near as complex as games such as Hexen 2, but they serve their purpose and the devs get very creative with some stages, throwing a lot of verticality into the mix. At it's best Amid Evil feels like a real adventure which isn't tight with it's "whoa!" moments either.

What does hinder the game though is it's pacing. Whilst the game's elements themselves are excellent, sometimes they are portioned unevenly and it can make the journey a bumpy one. Some stages are tipped far too much either way with their balance of action, puzzling or platforming. Like I say, those elements themselves are still all executed well, so in isolation they aren't an issue, but there were definitely stages were I was thinking "I've had enough platforming/puzzling here now, give me some action" and visa versa, but then said stage carried on with the same approach which it had already been throwing at me for 10-20 minutes previous.

To extend on that, I'd also say that a few stages just felt a bit too long; each world is broken up into 4 stages, and some of the latter stages probably could do with being sliced up slightly to form a 6-stage setup instead IMO. It's taken me over a month to grind out the last few stages, simply because I knew I was having to find a 45-60 minute slot of the day to run through a stage, and for Popamole action that's just not a good portion size IMO. I know that'll reduce significantly as I master the stages, but honestly most stages past the half way mark should have been reduced by 20-30% to offer more bitesized portions - Popamole games being portioned like adventure/RPG games is a real display of modern dev naivety.

Also, and this is probably just a me thing, but I really wish there just wasn't any mana in this game, or at the very least some item which makes it irrelevant after the early stages. The endless cycle of loose mana...hunt mana...loose mana...hunt mana just grows tiresome, and there's no real need for mana here either as the enemies prompt you to change up weapons anyway (so you the drive to switch doesn't come from being mana-dry). I really hope any potential sequel ditches the mana angle, gives the game secrets which give you special items or player upgrades instead, and maybe even introduces Hexen 2 style characters.

Final minor gripe is that there are sections which are obviously there just to prompt you to activate "overdrive" mode. It just feels a bit cheap. "Overdrive" is way too readily available throughout the whole game anyway, and personally I think they should have made items which make this the core focus for exploration rather than mana, and restricted it to a far rarer event. Make a big deal of it next time! Feed the power-trip!

But these are minor gripes with what is otherwise a great blast. I thoroughly enjoyed my run through on the default difficulty, and fully intend on rerunning it on harder settings down the line.

 

[Ivan]

Finished the DLC, I found it enjoyable, but reinforced my opinion of the game feeling a little muddled. I love the look of the game, the level design is varied and otherwordly, the arsenal looks great too, but it's something about the combat that doesn't feel right to me. The weapon switching is slow, and it's easy to encounter bugs with weapon firing animations (especially with the trident and the planet/rpg). Maybe it's the audio design, but I don't find the combat all that satisfying in this one. Not sure if I crave more gibs or feedback, but I usually get the sense that I'm just pew pewing and backpedaling. Maybe I fucked up by playing on the hardest difficulty, but still, it's an easy recommend if you're starving for a combat heavy Hexen/Heretic. It doesn't scratch that Quake itch for me, but that's on me I suppose.