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CULTIC - Blood-inspired episodic retro FPS

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I thought there was a Cultic thread already, but I guess not. Played the demo of it, noticeable Unity-itus in load times and the feeling of movement but it's not too shabby. Has a distinct over-reliance on hitscanning cultists but unlike Blood they don't have as much personality (Mumbling/groaning instead of screaming cultist-speech). The two non-cultist enemies you meet in the demo are some basic zombies that just fall over (Again, none of the personality of a Blood zombie with ranged hatchets or getting up again) and a chainsaw dude that throws a nail-covered stick of TNT or something for a ranged attack. Map itself was okay, tolerable pile of secrets in it and while it wasn't wildly creative if it's the first map in the game (I will hope so given the lack of enemy variety) then there's potential for a bunch of creativity and doing weird shit.

In brief, sure as hell no modern Blood, yet another retro shooter that isn't as good as Dusk, does look like it has potential to be decent at least and it's not a complete fucking mess like the Graven demo was/is. Also make sure you disable the god-awful texture filtering.
 
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lightbane

Arcane
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Dec 27, 2008
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Sure there are lots of retro-cones nowadays. Indie devs being creatively bankrupt again. Or perhaps shareware has returned with a vengeance.
 

luj1

You're all shills
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Blood inspired? More like Blood ripoff. Weapons are the same as Blood. Enemies are the same, color palette is the same.

Shameful lack of originality.
 

d1r

Busin 0 Wizardry Alternative Neo fanatic
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They better make sure to have catchy one liners, and some good sound design. I mean, it looks interesting, but if you go for "Blood"-inspired, then at least do this right too.
 

schru

Arcane
Joined
Feb 27, 2015
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The visual style is also some kind of fake 8-bit style overplaying how early 3-D looked. It's more like that Quake source port Super8, though it didn't take things that far. The sprites look very flat too, while those in Blood look almost like they have some volume to them when viewed at a lower resolution, which would have been the case on C.R.T.s.
 

passerby

Arcane
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Blood inspired? More like Blood ripoff. Weapons are the same as Blood. Enemies are the same, color palette is the same.

Shameful lack of originality.

Indietrash shit tier, of a "lets rip off an old game, but ironically don't even try to make any aspect of it as good as the original" variety.
 

Tacgnol

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I wish some of these 2d boomer shooters would use higher res art for weapons and enemies etc.

The sprites in Duke 3d and Blood etc never looked like that.
 

A horse of course

Guest
Looks like shit. I remember some shill spamming webms of this on /vr/ and everything about it was worse than blood, from the visuals to the way enemies reacted to explosions.
 

Hobo Elf

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Meh. Even if you look past the uninspired weapons and enemies (is it just cultists?), the weird ass pixel filter makes this an eyesore to watch. Also, 3D Realms really, REALLY love announcing games. Would be a surprise if they actually finished one for a change. Ion Fury's expansion being pushed back a year and Aeon being vaporware don't really inspire confidence.
 

Riskbreaker

Guest
The filter in question can actually be turned off in the menu. And thanks God for that for not only does it look atrocious, it actually impacts playability in that it makes some of the enemies blend into environment.

No idea how come that something like this is enabled by default. Since the dev got himself a publisher, you'd think this would've been tested by someone who would've pointed out to him that his hyper-retro, more software-renderer-looking than any actual software renderer filter is a bad idea. Which you'd think would be any human being in existence.

Ion Fury's expansion being pushed back a year and Aeon being vaporware don't really inspire confidence.
It's not just them. How many of those titles that were announced during the first Reals Deep last year got released even in EA in the meantime, or even got a release date? And how many others are still in EA? The devs of these neo-retro shooters generally come from mapping/modding scenes of Doom/Quake/Build and they tend to carry over the same approach to development or work ethics or whatever you'd call it into commercial game development.
 
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SharkClub

Prophet
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Strap Yourselves In
DUSK looking bad on purpose was shitty but this game is a legit eyesore with how ugly it is.

Also, 3D Realms really, REALLY love announcing games. Would be a surprise if they actually finished one for a change. Ion Fury's expansion being pushed back a year and Aeon being vaporware don't really inspire confidence.
Is Aftershock really pushed back until next year? What the fuck is everyone at 3DR doing?
 
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Tavar

Cipher
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RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In
I love Blood so I welcome more games like it but this looks way worse than Blood: Fresh Supply.
 

Hobo Elf

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It's not just them. How many of those titles that were announced during the first Reals Deep last year got released even in EA in the meantime, or even got a release date? And how many others are still in EA? The devs of these neo-retro shooters generally come from mapping/modding scenes of Doom/Quake/Build and they tend to carry over the same approach to development or work ethics or whatever you'd call it into commercial game development.

Yes, this is something I was thinking about. It's hard to conjure up enthusiasm for these new announcements when the previous ones are no closer to seeing the light of day, if they ever will.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
The visual style is also some kind of fake 8-bit style overplaying how early 3-D looked. It's more like that Quake source port Super8, though it didn't take things that far. The sprites look very flat too, while those in Blood look almost like they have some volume to them when viewed at a lower resolution, which would have been the case on C.R.T.s.

Yeah the visuals are weird. Looks very hard to read, unlike the original Build engine games.
 

Morpheus Kitami

Liturgist
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May 14, 2020
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Way to sabotage yourself before you even sell the game. Its obvious from the trailer that this isn't just a complete rip-off of Blood, the PC can kick, a regular pistol, a lever-action shotgun, for example. But otherwise this looks way too much like Blood, but worse, to be picking it up. Perhaps even close enough for a legal case. This is bootleg Blood. I hope if the guy doesn't get sued he does something to make it less Blood, because again, we have Blood, and Blood usermaps.
EDIT: Taking a look at some of the other material the developer has posted about his game it might just be different enough to be interesting. Unlike Blood, this seems to be 100% projectile enemies, as opposed to the more hitscan-heavy Blood.
 
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Tacgnol

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Grab the Codex by the pussy RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
I've said it before (and alluded to it in this thread), but I wish more boomer shooters would focus on the gameplay of the classics not the graphics.

Doesn't help they can't pull off the graphical styles of the originals very well. This is a prime example, Blood looked waaaaay better than this.
 

Ash

Arcane
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Oct 16, 2015
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DUSK looking bad on purpose was shitty but this game is a legit eyesore with how ugly it is.

Dusk was made by one guy. At least there's that exscuse.

This game seems to also be made by one guy?

Anyway, agree with nearly everything said in this thread. Still, it may look worse than Blood in every aspect, but that was made by a team of professionals with some experience on top of an existing FPS engine (Build/Nukem 3D). This is also early days for the game, while Blood is long complete. I remember early development days of Dusk wherein everyone said it looked like shit (gameplay and graphics) including me, yet now it is apparently a codex darling (I've not played it yet).

I say give the game a chance, however the lack of originality based on what has been presented to me thus far is troubling.
 

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