Fortune's Run - retro FPS inspired by Quake, Deus Ex and E.Y.E - now available on Early Access

[orcinator]

Hopefully they'll correct this issue in Early Access and add more rape.

 

[Be Kind Rewind]

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Ah, yes. Just what I want from a quirky FPS game. Rape.

The game's seting and art seems imo to be inspired by old sci-fi euro comics like Metal Hurlant
And in those stories, sexual violence wasn't an uncommon subject matter

 

[Be Kind Rewind]

Ah, yes. Just what I want from a quirky FPS game. Rape.

The game's seting and art seems imo to be inspired by old sci-fi euro comics like Metal Hurlant
And in those stories, sexual violence wasn't an uncommon subject matter

It's that weird American SJW neo-puritanism rearing its ugly head with these complaints. Métal Hurlant had no issue dealing with anything, and from what I saw neither did its American counterpart Heavy Metal, but these days the American progressives don't just fear the female form, beauty and male sexuality, but they are scared to even include mentions or depictions of slavery or rape, which is such a large part of human history you'd think they were hatched in a reality bubble, which they are. It doesn't even matter to them if subjects like "racism" are depicted as a bad thing even, they are so scared of it they'd prefer not to ever see it in their game, unless it is their own brand of racism which they don't call as such.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Steam testers also being unable to finish the tutorial is more funny than cringe tho.

did they keep that guy who testes Episode 2 and made some puzzle brain dead simple? Or got lost in simple maze?
Still "working" here?

 

[deama]

So, how's the game?

 

[Infinitron]

So, how's the game?

This game will unlock in approximately 5 hours

 

[Lyre Mors]

So, how's the game?

Early Access, so might as well not exist until its actually released.

 

[Be Kind Rewind]

It's out! Anyone who doesn't buy this has no right to complain about the goyslop decline they're being served elsewhere.

So, how's the game?

One of the best games of the decade, easily, at least if the rest of it is as good as the demo. If there's anything particular you want to know about it I'll be happy to tell you in a couple of days when I've burnt through the early access content.

 

[antimeridian]

Purchased, game looks based but I'm expecting lots of bugs early on since it seems like they really rushed it out the door. Can't play it right away though. How's the voice acting, competent enough? I'm worried since they posted they were recording lines the last couple days.

 

[Be Kind Rewind]

How's the voice acting, competent enough?

It doesn't make you want to kill yourself, which is all you could really ask for when it comes to two-person dev team indie games with a budget of next to zero. It's also not AI text-to-speech that SpaceBourne 2 had IIRC, nor is it worse than Resident Evil. I don't think it's fair to compare it to AAA games so I won't.

 

[antimeridian]

It doesn't make you want to kill yourself

Sounds as good as can be expected then!

 

[Be Kind Rewind]

So some early impressions from the EA are in order despite that I haven't gotten far into it yet, because of reasons that will quickly become clear. The demo started you out in a basketball court and got you into the action quickly after a brisk tutorial, the full game however starts out much more slow and I'm sure some players will be put off by how long it takes to get to what the game does best. I had no idea how right I was in comparing this game to Prey because now the game starts out with an alien fascist terrorist training you in martial arts and stealth in a semi-dream sequence. One of the issues with this is that by the time the game opens up new players will probably have forgotten some of the minutia and despite it being much extended, so the game now takes longer to get going and I'm not sure players will be all that better for it.

There's then a gap between the tutorial and your first mission, with a decent introduction and a brief spacewalk (which is kind of jank). Once you get into the space station in your first mission however, holy shit, the game doesn't fuck around. Combat is more intense than I remembered from the demo and it really opens up. The big bad in this game is a communist space federation, basically Star Trek humans viewed in a different light, and your Yukio Mishima mentor that taught you to wall-jump in a dream version of your ancestral homeland dies with honor in the intro, in what I presume is a raid against them.

RIP

One thing that is in the release version that wasn't in the demo is space stations with curved floors that spin to produce gravity. It's a small thing but in terms of being a science fiction game it slams Starfield into a school locker and steals its lunch money. Once you get to the space station the game kicks into gear and you get multiple objectives and can finally put all the systems the tutorial taught you about into use. You can also flush toilets and play B-ball so this is the inheritor to Deus Ex and that strain of highly interactive shooters that died out in the late 00's thanks to consoles.

So far it's GOTY, it better not shit the bed later on. Early Access might be too unpolished for some though, due to not having skill issues I accidentally went out of bounds several times during the tutorial with my ninja moves exploring and there are a couple of micro issues here and there. Core gameplay, interactivity, shooting, melee, sneaking, and all that however is great and feels polished.

 

[Beowulf]

So some early impressions from the EA are in order despite that I haven't gotten far into it yet, because of reasons that will quickly become clear. The demo started you out in a basketball court and got you into the action quickly after a brisk tutorial, the full game however starts out much more slow and I'm sure some players will be put off by how long it takes to get to what the game does best. I had no idea how right I was in comparing this game to Prey because now the game starts out with an alien fascist terrorist training you in martial arts and stealth in a semi-dream sequence. One of the issues with this is that by the time the game opens up new players will probably have forgotten some of the minutia and despite it being much extended, so the game now takes longer to get going and I'm not sure players will be all that better for it.

There's then a gap between the tutorial and your first mission, with a decent introduction and a brief spacewalk (which is kind of jank). Once you get into the space station in your first mission however, holy shit, the game doesn't fuck around. Combat is more intense than I remembered from the demo and it really opens up. The big bad in this game is a communist space federation, basically Star Trek humans viewed in a different light, and your Yukio Mishima mentor that taught you to wall-jump in a dream version of your ancestral homeland dies with honor in the intro, in what I presume is a raid against them.

RIP

One thing that is in the release version that wasn't in the demo is space stations with curved floors that spin to produce gravity. It's a small thing but in terms of being a science fiction game it slams Starfield into a school locker and steals its lunch money. Once you get to the space station the game kicks into gear and you get multiple objectives and can finally put all the systems the tutorial taught you about into use. You can also flush toilets and play B-ball so this is the inheritor to Deus Ex and that strain of highly interactive shooters that died out in the late 00's thanks to consoles.

So far it's GOTY, it better not shit the bed later on. Early Access might be too unpolished for some though, due to not having skill issues I accidentally went out of bounds several times during the tutorial with my ninja moves exploring and there are a couple of micro issues here and there. Core gameplay, interactivity, shooting, melee, sneaking, and all that however is great and feels polished.

I remember the demo being rather linear, is it still the case in the EA release?

 

[Lemming42]

Playing this now and it's extraordinary, there's not really anything else like it. It'll almost definitely be GOTY of whichever year it finally fully releases in.

Still not 100% sure about the writing though, could be very good but could also descend into boring pretentious-y shit. Hard to say at the minute. Haven't seen anything outright bad so far, though, just feels a little artsy, which probably says more about me than about the game. Not looking forward to the sexual violence stuff which is apparently a "core part of the game" (according to the popup on the main menu), I know the devs say they're writing from personal experience and want to convey the horror and revulsion of such a thing but I'd rather just not have to deal with the topic at all while I'm trying to have fun - they did, to their credit, put in the option to disable it, but I have no idea if that'll leave you without key plot points.

Otherwise, though - gameplay is superb, level design is good, soundtrack and aesthetics are exactly what they need to be. And yeah, the combat is very brutal and unforgiving, which is fantastic.

Only criticism thus far is that levels are maybe a little bit too linear to let you fully play with all the systems, but maybe I just suck at finding alternate routes. And I'm only on the space station at the start of the first proper mission, so still in near-tutorial territory.

 

[Be Kind Rewind]

I remember the demo being rather linear, is it still the case in the EA release?

It's not an open world game, if that's what you're asking. It firmly sits somewhere between one of those open ended mission games, like Thief, Deus Ex or Hitman, and traditional FPS design from the Doom/Build period.

 

[Be Kind Rewind]

After finishing the EA content I have both good and bad things to say about it, but before I get into it I should probably outline what sort of game it is and why the core gameplay wipes the floor with the competition.

Why the game is worth supporting and playing, and why it is great moment to moment

The game is meant to be played similarly to Deus Ex with a blend of stealth and action, the combat is lethal and on the harder difficulty modes you die quickly if you just rush the enemies without thinking. The game features the limb damage system from Deus Ex, with your legs being hurt reducing your mobility, your chest being hurt reducing your maximum health, your head being hurt making your vision worse, etc. I haven't gotten my legs blown off yet so I don't know if you crawl around without them like in Deus Ex too. On top of that there's an armor system.

It does take some cues from more modern games, the melee system has a surprising amount of depth, if you're skilled enough you can parry bullets with swords and daggers, and it has the drop kick from FEAR, instantly knocking most enemies down. The kick also has a dedicated button just like in Duke Nukem 3D or Dark Messiah, you also use the kick in combination with crouching to slide around. There's also a slow-mo mode, but it's very limited and unlike in FEAR it doesn't decrease the difficulty by much, no fight is trivial.

There's plenty of imsim elements, with computer terminals to use and emails to read. It also has the cooking mechanics from Arx Fatalis, letting you physically put food in a pot to cook it for extra health gain, after you've lit a fire under it, or nuking instant noodles in microwaves.

There are of course also dedicated lean buttons, a mantling mechanic that has more depth to it than any other recent game if you pick the advanced mode. Generally you have multiple ways to approach every encounter, many of them you can skip entirely if you're clever and although I haven't tried it I think you can stealth past most if not all of it if you're a skilled taffer.

Within missions you also get bonus objectives that you can complete if you want to, and in some areas there's dialogue.

Early Access right now

Playing through the Early Access was a blast, I think I found five ways into the space station from the outside and there are many different approaches you can take to each section. The encounters are nice and challenging, it's stylish, the music is great, the lore is compelling and it delivers an experience you can't get anywhere else. Now there is just one letdown which is that the first is that the EA version now, days after release, I'm sure it will change within a couple of months or so, is that it ends after the space station and they haven't integrated the demo content. You can still play it, it's just not attached to the EA content. Which is a huge shame, since it was nice and meaty, the length of a small game by itself. Only playing the EA content by itself, not touching the demo and being familiar with the game already I clocked 7 hours. Which is about the time it takes to finish Half-Life 2 mind you, I'm not sure how many hours I spent with the demo, but it was quite lengthy from what I remember.

I thought what they had done was to build a proper introduction, which they have, and would then bridge it with the demo content, and then perhaps add something to the end, a new cliffhanger. Sadly they did not and this is the one flaw of the game right now, players will want more content after finishing the EA intro and the very substantial mission, it's not like they can't play the demo content, but they should have been funneled into it right away seamlessly.

Is it still the Game of the Year? Without a doubt. The game right now has enough content to be the length of a traditional shooter, with the demo content it's probably around 10 hours or so, longer or shorter depending on playstyle and if you do optional content or not.

 

[Jenkem]

shill

 

[Lemming42]

There are of course also dedicated lean buttons, a mantling mechanic that has more depth to it than any other recent game if you pick the advanced mode. Generally you have multiple ways to approach every encounter, many of them you can skip entirely if you're clever and although I haven't tried it I think you can stealth past most if not all of it if you're a skilled taffer.

It'll be interesting to see someone do a stealth playthrough. I'm trying my best to avoid encounters but I fuck it up about 98% of the time.

Definitely possible in a few areas but there's some places like the cargo bay that you have to place the teleporters in where there's almost definitely no way to get through without a fight.

There's also a couple rooms where you can get through without actual combat by doing the Dishonored chokehold on everyone, which is cool.

 

[Be Kind Rewind]

I forgot to mention that you can grab enemies and use them as human shields.

 

[Star Citizen]

Looked sorta cool till the gameplay started, that's a console game.

 

[Be Kind Rewind]

There's also a few areas where you can get through without actual combat by doing the Dishonored chokehold on everyone, which is cool.

There's multiple ways to bypass mini-bosses and entire sections, often by using a blowtorch and heading outside, or going around entirely. The optional growth pods you pretty much have to stealth or get annihilated in. The lizard machinegunners are also a menace if you don't manage to sneak up on them. Then there's those huge guys that take a beating from anything, I haven't figured out the best way to deal with them, you can sneak up on them and try to choke them or punch them in futility, they block guns and using knives isn't very effective. I only started punching at the end of the EA content (best way to deal with the final boss), so maybe using your fists is the key, or using the environment, like electricity, explosive gas canisters or fire from the oxygen pipes.

Looked sorta cool till the gameplay started, that's a console game.

I don't think this could ever be directly ported to consoles, with the lean buttons, the dedicated hotkeys for everything, the actual computer terminals, they'd have to dumb it down a lot.

 

[orcinator]

I still liked it though it's starting to drag a bit due to the limited enemy variety on the space station (Around 200 enemies on Hard, though I'm not sure if that counts the wasps); they all have the same behavior as well, save for the big punch guys, so that doesn't help.

I forgot to mention that you can grab enemies and use them as human shields.

Corner camping by mashing M1 and F is often more effective than camping with a gun since your fists don't reload and the human shield can protect you from the next guy in line.

Also they put the Dubbie Guy next to the Deux Ex number and not a code with Repeating Digits, disgraceful.

Oh, almost forgot, no rape in the early access portion, guess it'll be the next prison activity after handball.

 

[Be Kind Rewind]

 

[Be Kind Rewind]

Oh, almost forgot, no rape in the early access portion, guess it'll be the next prison activity after handball.

The game is segmented into missions, as you know from playing it, and the demo portion was rewritten slightly to work as an introduction. I haven't checked out the demo mission in the release version yet so unless it's in there and it's changed up, or something they are working on right now and will release soon, it would be weird to make such a fuss about it otherwise. I was going to play the demo mission to check it out, but Ion Fury is getting released so that takes priority. I'll also make note of the enemy variety in the demo chapter, I think I remember guys with shields but I might be wrong. The only problem with this game is that there isn't enough of it, I want more missions, more enemies, more story, more music and more items. Which means the game didn't shit the bed.

The full release version is planned to have eight (probably a subject of change, might increase or decrease) of these several hour long missions and if they can achieve that it'll be one of the best games of all time.