DeepOcean
Arcane
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2012
- Messages
- 7,395
Okay, played the demo, overall I had a positive impression about it even if it had a few important issues.
I liked the music and sound design, the lighting is also pretty well done, game feels atmospheric and they had some nice enviromental storytelling going there with you waking up on a ditch filled with corpses, progressing into the forest, you get to understand where you are and what the places you are were used for and I always appreciate those little details.
The graphics, I like the color choices for the textures and ambient light, makes the game looking very atmospheric, I just think they exaggerated with the "retro" look and it wasnt necessary, the models and sprites are a little too low resolution, Blood certainly had alot crispier looking sprites this is important specially for the guns that look muddy as fuck on this game, initially I had difficulties trying to figure out if I was holding a hunting rifle or a shotgun because the sprites are indeed lower resolution. They could achieve the same effect they had with better sprites and assets. Some enemies like those pistol cultists wearing gray robes many times are almost indistinguishable from the environment at distance.
Enviromental interaction, typical Build Engine games, blow places with cracks, explosive barrels, can interact with toilers, push levers, break vents and crates.
The level design is indeed linear but not as bad as I thought, the first half of the demo is a little open while the mines section is alot more linear but there are closed doors for you to find the key and backtrack, there are loop arounds to return to a previous place, there are also secrets that I managed to find 5/10 typical stuff of an old school FPS to break the feeling of being railroaded and it isnt suffocating linear as I feared.
Enemy design and combat, hard to say here, it is a demo so I cant expect to face all enemy types and I cant know how they interact with each other on a chaotic fight, basically you fight three variations of cultists and weird explosive zombies right close to the end. I played on Hard and it was easy but it is hard to say as it is the first level and a demo so difficulty tuning is far from finished or it isnt representative of the whole game.
I have mixed feelings about ranged enemies and enemy placement, it could be because I wasnt playing on the last difficulty but you just find 2 to 4 guys, you just kill the ones using the pistols that are the only ones that are actually dangerous, the zombies and melee cultists are just shooting fish on the barrel of how easy they are and it wasnt that I needed to ration my bullets as I had plenty of them half way through, again, it is on the begining of the game and a demo so there are maybe more enemy types to make things more engaging and more balance passes on the final game.
I also have mixed feeling about the hitscan accuracy of the pistol cultists and how you sort of get a soft flinch and red screen effect being shot, they were the only actual enemy that was dangerous and without them the combat would be boring as fuck, they were extremely dangerous at close quarters because they could quickly kill you and this was nice but at the same time this might lead to peeking corners behavior and killing everyone at distance before entering a room to not die what isnt that fun. We will see how the final game balancing will be.
The weapons feel nice to shoot, have decent gun sounds even if I think they dont innovate much, they did the basic: pistol, automatic gun, shotgun triangle well enough at least in terms of shooting feeling, weapon balance is another story. Speaking of weapon balancing on a demo is sort of pointless because it will probably change alot but I will do it anyway, I felt that the pistol is a little too much the go to weapon and the other weapons hadnt much opportunities to shine on the demo, basically I killed everyone with the pistol that seems more than enough to handle most encounters and only killed two enemies with the rifle on the entire demo, the shotgun I only used to kill the zombies because they dont explode that way. The dynamite sticks I only used once to blow a wall. Maybe it is only the demo but if this is an indicative how the whole game will be, they need to rethink some things.
TLDR: Overall, I had the feeling that whoever is making this was trying really hard into making a Build engine game with influences from Blood, it isnt a cynical lets use Blood name for the marketing and while I liked the atmosphere, I still feel that they only partially were successful at it and it feels like a bootleg version of Blood with Blood still being cleary superior with far better encounter design and weapon design from the get go. It is a wait and see for me, I ended enjoying the playthrough, seems decent enough as a Blood homage even if it doesnt end being top FPS game design, I ended my playthrough curious to see where this is going what is a good thing.
I liked the music and sound design, the lighting is also pretty well done, game feels atmospheric and they had some nice enviromental storytelling going there with you waking up on a ditch filled with corpses, progressing into the forest, you get to understand where you are and what the places you are were used for and I always appreciate those little details.
The graphics, I like the color choices for the textures and ambient light, makes the game looking very atmospheric, I just think they exaggerated with the "retro" look and it wasnt necessary, the models and sprites are a little too low resolution, Blood certainly had alot crispier looking sprites this is important specially for the guns that look muddy as fuck on this game, initially I had difficulties trying to figure out if I was holding a hunting rifle or a shotgun because the sprites are indeed lower resolution. They could achieve the same effect they had with better sprites and assets. Some enemies like those pistol cultists wearing gray robes many times are almost indistinguishable from the environment at distance.
Enviromental interaction, typical Build Engine games, blow places with cracks, explosive barrels, can interact with toilers, push levers, break vents and crates.
The level design is indeed linear but not as bad as I thought, the first half of the demo is a little open while the mines section is alot more linear but there are closed doors for you to find the key and backtrack, there are loop arounds to return to a previous place, there are also secrets that I managed to find 5/10 typical stuff of an old school FPS to break the feeling of being railroaded and it isnt suffocating linear as I feared.
Enemy design and combat, hard to say here, it is a demo so I cant expect to face all enemy types and I cant know how they interact with each other on a chaotic fight, basically you fight three variations of cultists and weird explosive zombies right close to the end. I played on Hard and it was easy but it is hard to say as it is the first level and a demo so difficulty tuning is far from finished or it isnt representative of the whole game.
I have mixed feelings about ranged enemies and enemy placement, it could be because I wasnt playing on the last difficulty but you just find 2 to 4 guys, you just kill the ones using the pistols that are the only ones that are actually dangerous, the zombies and melee cultists are just shooting fish on the barrel of how easy they are and it wasnt that I needed to ration my bullets as I had plenty of them half way through, again, it is on the begining of the game and a demo so there are maybe more enemy types to make things more engaging and more balance passes on the final game.
I also have mixed feeling about the hitscan accuracy of the pistol cultists and how you sort of get a soft flinch and red screen effect being shot, they were the only actual enemy that was dangerous and without them the combat would be boring as fuck, they were extremely dangerous at close quarters because they could quickly kill you and this was nice but at the same time this might lead to peeking corners behavior and killing everyone at distance before entering a room to not die what isnt that fun. We will see how the final game balancing will be.
The weapons feel nice to shoot, have decent gun sounds even if I think they dont innovate much, they did the basic: pistol, automatic gun, shotgun triangle well enough at least in terms of shooting feeling, weapon balance is another story. Speaking of weapon balancing on a demo is sort of pointless because it will probably change alot but I will do it anyway, I felt that the pistol is a little too much the go to weapon and the other weapons hadnt much opportunities to shine on the demo, basically I killed everyone with the pistol that seems more than enough to handle most encounters and only killed two enemies with the rifle on the entire demo, the shotgun I only used to kill the zombies because they dont explode that way. The dynamite sticks I only used once to blow a wall. Maybe it is only the demo but if this is an indicative how the whole game will be, they need to rethink some things.
TLDR: Overall, I had the feeling that whoever is making this was trying really hard into making a Build engine game with influences from Blood, it isnt a cynical lets use Blood name for the marketing and while I liked the atmosphere, I still feel that they only partially were successful at it and it feels like a bootleg version of Blood with Blood still being cleary superior with far better encounter design and weapon design from the get go. It is a wait and see for me, I ended enjoying the playthrough, seems decent enough as a Blood homage even if it doesnt end being top FPS game design, I ended my playthrough curious to see where this is going what is a good thing.
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