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CULTIC - Blood-inspired episodic retro FPS

Bad Sector

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Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Game just proves to me making a good FPS ain't a 1 man job.

Hands of Necromancy and Hedon have great level design[0], Zortch has some great feel to its movement and even though i only played the demos both Arthurian Legends and HROT also seemed very good. All of those are made by single developers (HROT and Zortch even use custom engines). These are from the top of my head, i'm certain i forget a bunch since there are lots of boomer shooters nowadays.

[0] if you are into Hexen-like level design (and gameplay, especially for HoN)
 

Be Kind Rewind

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and Hedon have great level design
Hedon is lacking in the weapons department but it does have good level design. Both Hedon and HoN are also made in the Doom engine so they do get a lot of features for free, making it easier for a solodev. The idea isn't that a single dev can't make good levels, but that it's very unlikely for them to be great at making every part of the game all by themselves. HROT might be fun to play, I don't know, didn't check it out yet, but it's a very ugly and brown game, like a parody of what people said Quake looked like. Even Chasm had a larger color palette. In Cultic's case the dev sucked at mapping, encounter design and good shooter combat.
 

Bad Sector

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Hedon is lacking in the weapons department but it does have good level design.

Yeah TBH what i remember from Hedon isn't the weapon or even the enemies, but the level design and how it always made me wonder where to go next and explore the maps. There have been several boomer shooters that claimed to be "Hexen-inspired" but Hedon and Hands of Necromancy are the only ones IMO that actually have levels that gave me a Hexen (i include Hexen 2 here) feel. Ironically Hands of Necromancy also has large maps with overlapping areas, adding a lot of verticality, despite being made in a Doom engine derivative.

The idea isn't that a single dev can't make good levels, but that it's very unlikely for them to be great at making every part of the game all by themselves.

Well, sure but IMO not even the 90s games made by what at the time were the equivalent of today's AAA companies had every part be great. I remember Blood 1 for example being criticized (in magazines) for still using an "ancient" engine and running under DOS when its competitors moved to Windows and used full 3D engines.
 

Fedora Master

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The tiniest rifle:
Clipboard02.jpg



The game has the same issue all these modern "horror" "boomer" shooters have: Haha you get no ammo so enjoy killing dudes with melee, that makes our game hardcore right?! ;)
 
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Just beat Chapter 1... GREAT GAME!

Some of the level music and repetitive sound effects were annoying, but that's all I don't like about this game so far.

Also, the final boss battle is a bit of a letdown.

However, everything else, especially the pixelated graphics, were amazing.

My favorite level was The Crypts, which was genuinely creepy.
 

Lyric Suite

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The tiniest rifle:
View attachment 42645


The game has the same issue all these modern "horror" "boomer" shooters have: Haha you get no ammo so enjoy killing dudes with melee, that makes our game hardcore right?! ;)

I'm sorry but are you actually supposed to be able to make up anything in that unholy blurry mess? The fuck is this i can't tell what the hell it is i'm looking at.

Look at the gun. Is that a giant hand with a thumb holding a tiny rifle?
 

Nikanuur

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I'm sorry but are you actually supposed to be able to make up anything in that unholy blurry mess? The fuck is this i can't tell what the hell it is i'm looking at.

Look at the gun. Is that a giant hand with a thumb holding a tiny rifle?
I had the same horrible feeling initially. Ended up glorifying this game.
What can I say... If you give it a chance, it'll likely grow on you. The environment changes too, the map layouts and encounter placements are witty, sending lover letters to ingenious gaming designs of old.

As for the melee and no ammo, etc. That is true only during the very early stages of the game. Later on, using melee is mostly only about an optional 'have at you' dimension. Ammo comes in sufficient quantities, allowing the player to kill everything without a single melee hit and still have some reserves left.

I say sufficient because the game emphasizes the usage of appropriate weaponry for particular situations, utilizing head-shots and barrels, bottle-necking enemies to dynamite them en-masse to smitereens, etc.
Going all-Rambo is certainly possible too, but only every once in a while.
A very slight spoiler: there are two or three passages where the latter is actually the mission's objective. For a change, ammo and power-ups are lying everywhere, and you are supposed to go absolute Doom on your foes appearing in crowds.
 

Avonaeon

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I enjoyed it quite a bit over christmas. I turned the god awful color filter off though, which there thankfully was an option for.
 
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I'm sorry but are you actually supposed to be able to make up anything in that unholy blurry mess? The fuck is this i can't tell what the hell it is i'm looking at.

Look at the gun. Is that a giant hand with a thumb holding a tiny rifle?
I had the same horrible feeling initially. Ended up glorifying this game.
What can I say... If you give it a chance, it'll likely grow on you. The environment changes too, the map layouts and encounter placements are witty, sending lover letters to ingenious gaming designs of old.

As for the melee and no ammo, etc. That is true only during the very early stages of the game. Later on, using melee is mostly only about an optional 'have at you' dimension. Ammo comes in sufficient quantities, allowing the player to kill everything without a single melee hit and still have some reserves left.

I say sufficient because the game emphasizes the usage of appropriate weaponry for particular situations, utilizing head-shots and barrels, bottle-necking enemies to dynamite them en-masse to smitereens, etc.
Going all-Rambo is certainly possible too, but only every once in a while.
A very slight spoiler: there are two or three passages where the latter is actually the mission's objective. For a change, ammo and power-ups are lying everywhere, and you are supposed to go absolute Doom on your foes appearing in crowds.

I played all of Chapter 1 on maxed difficulty, and I didn't run into too many situations where I didn't have enough ammo.

I'm also pretty uncoordinated when it comes to accuracy in solo campaign shooters, I go through ammo pretty quickly.

There are at least two points in Cultic that make you think you don't have enough ammo to beat the specific encounter, but I assure you that there is a strategy to do it.

If you get stuck watch a walkthrough on YouTube, that's what helped me beat the endboss.
 

Jenkem

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Make the Codex Great Again! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I helped put crap in Monomyth
It's a good game but outside of the fact that you fight cultists it's absolutely nothing like Blood and I don't know why people keep repeating it, especially those who have claimed to have played it to completion.
 
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It's a good game but outside of the fact that you fight cultists it's absolutely nothing like Blood and I don't know why people keep repeating it, especially those who have claimed to have played it to completion.

You play Bloom yet?
 

Valestein

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It's a good game but outside of the fact that you fight cultists it's absolutely nothing like Blood and I don't know why people keep repeating it, especially those who have claimed to have played it to completion.
There's general similarities such as the setting, cultists, supernatural enemies and certain weapons like the sawed off double barrel shotty.
 

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