WRATH: Aeon of Ruin - new Quake engine game from 3D Realms

[Hobo Elf]

Alright. The roadmap image on the store was pretty vague. Final update is "Full Wrath Release", whatever that entails.

 

[geno]

I've found the music folder and it seems I can change it just renaming files but I don't know what would fit the game. Any suggestions?

 

[Boleskine]

 

[Gromlintroid]

Played an hour of this last nihgt, pretty neato

 

[Morgoth]

Inventory version is finally out. Will give it a shot tomorrow.

 

[Morgoth]

Played for an hour or so, and I must say the initial gleam darkens really fast. Too repetitive, too easy (on hard), mediocre level design and mostly boring enemies. The potential is there, but right now this doesn't even come close to DUSK.

 

[Curratum]

Right, I just played all of the EAccess content, on a pirated copy, of course, because screw giving money to people who already donated my money to trans rights organizations.

Here's all the reasons why you shouldn't give those people your money too, in no specific order, emphasis on particularly bad stuff with caps. I alt-tabbed and took notes as I played.

• Mouselook is terrible, horizontal and vertical sensitivity are completely detached from one another, yet there's no menu option to scale them equally. Horizontal is MUCH higher than vertical. A toggle for this is not too hard to implement, Amid Evil has one.
• Item pickup sounds are barely audible.
• Framerate issues all over the place, for no apparent reason, other than picking a shitty Quake port and general incompetence. I played all of Arcane Dimensions, which is often a lot more detailed than Wrath, and had less FPS drops there. Playing on an i5 and a 4gb RX 570, at 1080p.
• A lot of hitching on geometry, overly precise collision on world geometry, which in an engine like Quake is actually a bad thing because you get snagged on complex objects a lot.
• Movement feels weird, there seems to be a small but nasty amount of slower acceleration when you move and a bit of inertia when you let go of the button. Doesn't feel as precise and responsive as even original Quake 1.
• Groups of enemies spawn SILENTLY directly 2-3 meters behind you just as you approach a new batch in front of you. This is not much of an issue, as we'll see later, it's just bad design.
• Larger open areas that should work as multi-stage rinse-and-repeat arenas are poorly designed. Ambushes don't work if you circle the other way. Spawns are generally bad. You can circle and pick off random ambushes, the enemies don't alert and just stand there as you pick them off with the pistol.
• SUPER BORING LEVEL 1. The same generic, boring 3 hallways and rooms for nearly 30 minutes. Very bland design.
• GAME IS TOO EASY. WAY, WAY, WAY TOO EASY. No nightmare difficulty, started on Hard, beat all the EA content (2 large levels) in around 70-80 minutes, including some backtracking and looking for the way forward.
• Enemy AI is hilariously bad, across the entire roster. Hitching in place, because melee enemy is on a small ledge and can't figure out pathing to me, path to me is 10 feet behind him. Enemies walking into walls even while you've entered the room. Enemies tracking you through walls and pre-firing you around corners as you come in view, to bring SOME semblance of difficulty to this mess.
• Played on the highest difficulty, didn't die once, had topped up ammo for ALL weapons most of the time.
• Green goop gun is hideously overpowered and trivializes the few encounters where the game tries to lock you in some sort of arena and throw bigger enemies at you.
• Levels overstay their welcome pretty badly, there is not enough geometric or stylistic variety within a level, ala Arcane Dimensions, to warrant trudging through the samey environments for 30+ minutes, fighting the same boring, easily dispatched spawns over and over again.

"But it's only early access!" doesn't really cut it because both Dusk and AE had none of the terrible AI issues and the dull level design present here when they launched in EA.
So, in short, the game is pretty poorly made, at least so far, and can only serve as a reminder that we should be ever grateful for Dusk and Amid Evil and that 3DRealms and both their teams of otherwise good-willed hacks never really understood what makes a good retro shooter tick.

 

[Durandal]

Here's how to re-implement Q1-style movement and airstrafing to some degree:

1. Open up <wherever WRATH is installed>/kp1/default.cfg with a text editor
2. Go to the PLAYER header
3. Change or add the variables here so they contain at least the following:

sv_maxspeed 416
sv_accelerate 16
sv_friction 6
sv_maxairspeed 39
sv_airaccelerate -1

Hopefully the game should then move a little bit like this: https://streamable.com/xm09m

BONUS: To show the FPS and speed counter, under the RENDERING header in default.cfg add:

showfps 1
showspeed 1

Feel free to mess with the variables to your liking

 

[Curratum]

I find it so curious that a number of the same people who made those amazing Arcane Dimensions Quake maps you know and love produced this sort of bland nonsense, now that they're doing this as a job and getting paid for it, instead of a free mod on their own time.

 

[Jezal_k23]

Difficulty seems to be one of the most common complaints in their Discord server as well. No doubt they'll have to address this.

 

[Jenkem]

Yeah, even on Hard it is piss easy between enemy AI and numerous health pickups.

 

[Bad Sector]

Framerate issues all over the place, for no apparent reason, other than picking a shitty Quake port and general incompetence.

I was curious about this and according to Wikipedia "WRATH is built on the DarkPlaces engine, which features many enhancements to the original Quake engine". There is a reason that pretty much every (SP) mod nowadays uses Quakespasm (a Fitzquake derivative with Fitzquake being the most common engine for mods at the past). Also DarkPlaces is notorious for having issues that other engines do not have and i wonder why they went with that instead of Quakespasm, especially considering that DP hasn't been updated for years (and AFAIK the last updates were mostly minor stuff) whereas Quakespasm is still under active development.

 

[Jezal_k23]

I'm reading the complaints here and one thing that occurs to me is that if you want to help move the game in a direction you like better then you should make these concerns known in the Discord server. 3DR employees have been very active there and are actively reading people's opinions and quite often responding to them as well.

To give you one example of this, I just read someone complaining that the rooms have too many enemies, leading to you having to backtrack and enemies clustering up around doorways, making combat more grindy. Some guy from 3DR responded that this isn't easy to fix without locking players in, and he doesn't like to do that, so he needs a couple of days to think about it. This was just some random guy on Discord, but he managed to get one of the level designers to acknowledge his criticism and think of how to address it.

If you don't think the game is good right now and you have lots of complaints about it, then it looks very much like you have a chance to give them your feedback there, if you care enough about the game to do that. The game is in an early enough stage that what people say can make a big difference.

 

[Wunderbar]

I'm reading the complaints here and one thing that occurs to me is that if you want to help move the game in a direction you like better then you should make these concerns known in the Discord server. 3DR employees have been very active there and are actively reading people's opinions and quite often responding to them as well.

To give you one example of this, I just read someone complaining that the rooms have too many enemies, leading to you having to backtrack and enemies clustering up around doorways, making combat more grindy. Some guy from 3DR responded that this isn't easy to fix without locking players in, and he doesn't like to do that, so he needs a couple of days to think about it. This was just some random guy on Discord, but he managed to get one of the level designers to acknowledge his criticism and think of how to address it.

If you don't think the game is good right now and you have lots of complaints about it, then it looks very much like you have a chance to give them your feedback there, if you care enough about the game to do that. The game is in an early enough stage that what people say can make a big difference.

We have skacky , i hope he reads this thread.

 

[Curratum]

I believe he is very much reading the feedback here:



Too bad, though. I said I'm not giving any more money to 3DR after that hilarious shitshow with Ion Fury and Resetera and I'm sticking to my guns. Idealism aside, the game is just not worth the 20 EUR in its current state. Maybe a patch or three down the road, and with someone else making maps that are not so boring and dull...

I don't believe the first two maps in EA are skacky's work, though, the man has produced incomparably better layouts, geometry and set pieces in both Thief and Quake.

 

[Jezal_k23]

He's possibly talking about this guy as well.

Spoiler

 

[Curratum]

Well, I didn't know people did request bhopping many times during development, but yes, the game IS pretty dull and bland so far.

 

[luj1]

I've played the two available levels on Hard, and like I predicted this game is a massive borefest.

First thing, the maximalist approach to the level design is a massive detriment. The large level sizes result in a ton of dead space that serves no purpose and too many ez filler fights that kill any level pacing. On top of that, the levels tend to repeat certain visual elements too much (like catacombs going on for too long or seeing the same circular graveyard areas again) which tends to result in dejá vu.

Second, the game's way too easy. Most of the enemies you fight don't deal that much damage, and health/armor/ammo pick-ups are too plentiful, even on Hard. The game gives you items like health leech or temporary invulnerability in exchange for your health, but I never found myself pushed to ever use it. Most enemies fire projectiles of the easily-dodgeable variety, and none really encroach on your personal space. The only exceptions are the melee-charging and tracking Executioner--who is not used nearly as often as he should be, and the hitscan Invaders--who are never really placed in a position where they can pose a serious threat in tandem with other enemies. The game's too afraid of being a cheeky cunt and putting you in tricky situations where you're at an inherent disadvantage.

The single biggest level design mistake WRATH keeps making is that it rarely restricts your movement or locks you in; allowing you to just backpedal out of any room with enemies and then put up a chokepoint where you can safely kill enemies one by one, instead of forcing you to get right into the action. You always have too much space to dodge or retreat in. It gets old fast if you can solve most fights with the same strategy. The game will sometimes have big fights in large open fields, but aside from the Executioner it doesn't have any enemies that pose a valid threat in large no-cover arenas like Doom's Revenants or Mancubi or Arachnotrons, so circlestrafe city it is. The Invaders' hitscan blasts are consistently avoidable by strafing around them from medium range, for that matter, so they retain their lethality indoors while not being as anal outdoors.

Another thing that doesn't help the game is that the enemy pathfinding is plain atrocious. Enemies can not handle height differences at all and will often just move right below your feet where you can easily take potshots at them. This isn't helped by the fact that a lot of enemies are too damn big to pass through certain doorways or follow certain narrow paths to get to you. At that point it also becomes a level design problem, because if you know the pathfinding sucks and the enemies are too big, then you might as well make doorways big enough for enemies to pass through or to design the level geometry in such a way where you can prevent a situation from happening in the first place where the pathfinding shits the bed.

The weapons all visually look cool, but save for the Armblade are functionally completely generic; largely because the alternate fire modes are just laughable. The Coach Gun can fire one slug or three at a time at a slower rate, the former being more suited for sustained long-range fire and the latter doing more burst damage at a shorter range, but the triple-shot alt-fire is rendered completely redundant by the Shotgun which has a much higher damage output/range/penetration per burst. The Shotgun's alt. fire allows you to charge up a burst of ricocheting pellets once charged, with no extra ammo cost for that matter, but being able to fire rebounding shots around walls is largely useless. The spread is too inaccurate to properly kill something around a corner and the rebounding angle is hard to get right, at which point you might as well unload your shotgun in its face. To my knowledge a charged shotgun blast doesn't deal any extra damage.

The Fang-Splitter is a nailgun expy which can fire a stream of fangs, or alternatively fire three fangs at once at a slower rate. I have almost no idea what purpose this alt. fire serves, because I've found that the primary has a higher DPS and ammo efficiency over the alt. fire, and as far as I can tell the accuracy is the same for both. The only unique thing about the alt. fire is that it can stunlock Heretics (which makes them comically dance around), but what's doubly nonsensical is that the Fang-Splitter shots will nullify Heretic shots. So if you aim your primary fire at just the right angle where your shots will hit their mouth where they fire their projectiles from, they're already rendered no threat at all and you get to kill them faster than with the alt. fire this way! The Retcher is a grenade launcher that fires snot, and it does feel rewarding to hit enemies directly because of its firing arc. But all the alt. fire does is fire three grenades in quick succession (I sense a pattern here). There's no depth to it: you will always use the alt. fire to damage spongier enemies, and you will use the single-shot primary against weaker enemies who die to a single grenade anyways. In conclusion, none of the alternate fire modes for the guns really expand the game's depth.

The Armblade's main usage is that its alt. fire basically allows you to dash mid-air to cover long horizontal distances. It's definitely unique and a useful mobility tool, but the levels barely seem to do anything with this mechanic other than the most basic stuff. It allows you to dash into any direction mid-air, yet most obstacles that require you to use it are just simple long gaps that are impossible to fuck up. I didn't see anything that require you to do a sick 90 degree turn mid-air. The Mire had this cool arena at the end where several high-up platforms were separated by gaps you had to lunge over, and the lunge is useful for getting away from the Executioner's tracking, but otherwise the game doesn't play around with it too much. It feels like a lame replacement for the lack of airstrafing or bhopping or rocketjumping. I don't understand why there's no airstrafing, which does a lot to make jumping around feel more fluid and responsive. It's not like Wrath is a platformer game about high-commitment jumps like Castlevania. At the very least, Wrath should give you the ability to cancel all forwards momentum in mid-air by holding back like in Quake, which did a lot to make first-person platforming more accurate by preventing you from overshooting over platforms.

If there's one thing I should praise, it's the inventory system and its artifacts. Here we have a boomer shooter that finally eschews the cancer of savescumming in favor of limited save tokens; discouraging brutish trial 'n error until you luck your way through in favor of thinking before you act. Save tokens are one-time use and can only be found through exploration, which fits with the game's structure. Sometimes there are also save shrines which save the game and refill your health, but sometimes you might want to postpone using them in case when you need the health bonus later on, because shrines can only be activated once. WRAITH has a more unique take on the standard power-ups: instead of portable medkits you can carry power-ups which temporarily refill health for each kill, encouraging you to be a bit more aggressive in the process. Instead of the standard invincibility power-up, using them here sacrifices a large part of your health, so it's a trade-off to make whether you want to sacrifice some health to tank tons of damage that could kill you otherwise. The problem is just that because the game is so easy, I rarely saw any reason to use any of these artifacts or save tokens, leaving me mostly with maxed out stacks because the game's rather liberal with handing them out. Even if you are using them often you might find yourself with more than you really need, which kind of defeats the purpose of their scarcity.

Quite frankly, I don't imagine this kind of level design philosophy resulting in something much better down the line, and the enemy/weapon design is too weaksauce to do anything really interesting with. It's proving my fears right that in an attempt to one-up Quake: Arcade Dimensions people would instead just make long-ass meandering levels with half-hearted encounter design and try to wow people with things like visual detail and interconnectivity instead, even though exploration without a proper challenge just leads to a lot of aimless walking around.

EDIT: The Fang-Spitter alt. fire fires two fangs per shot instead of three
i can't count

Thanks for saving me time mate. As I've suspected, just like Dusk and Amid Evil before it, Wrath doesn't come close to Arcane Dimensions, the apex shooter experience.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

 

[RoBoBOBR]

 

[PrettyDeadman]

Zoomers STILL cannot believe it is THAT gud.

 

[Curratum]

I'm weak-willed, I bought it just so Skacky could stop crying about it. It's not like they will remove my discord ban, but still, this can be good eventually.

The version I just played on Steam seems like it has had a couple of tweaks made already. The horizontal / vertical mouse sensitivity mismatch is gone, yay!

Also, it seems to me that the invincibility window that enemies have after their model spawns in through the red portal FX has either been dramatically reduced or removed, which makes everything flow better - now if you can see the enemy's model has made it through the portal, you can shoot them without fear of wasting ammo or just missing the shot due to their invincibility.

 

[Smilecythe]

Here's how to re-implement Q1-style movement and airstrafing to some degree:

1. Open up <wherever WRATH is installed>/kp1/default.cfg with a text editor
2. Go to the PLAYER header
3. Change or add the variables here so they contain at least the following:

sv_maxspeed 416
sv_accelerate 16
sv_friction 6
sv_maxairspeed 39
sv_airaccelerate -1

Hopefully the game should then move a little bit like this: https://streamable.com/xm09m

Feel free to mess with the variables to your liking

Signed up just to say these don't work in current steam build unless you have an updated progs file that enables air acceleration.
In any case for future reference, when tweaking these cvars, you should know that maxspeed was set to 416/39 so that it matches the 320/30 proportions in Quake 1.
Despite these values being different, ground and air acceleration are equal in Quake 1. That's because air acceleration is multiplied by 0.09375‬.

If you want the same proportion for a new maxspeed value, use this calculation: maxspeed/320*30 or maxspeed*0.09375‬.
The physics don't break if you don't match ground and air acceleration, the point of it is to simply be equal.

 

[Boleskine]

https://www.pcgamer.com/wrath-aeon-of-ruin-feels-like-the-quake-successor-we-never-truly-got/

Wrath: Aeon of Ruin feels like the Quake successor we never truly got
By Rick Lane 6 hours ago

A gothic retro shooter that takes old-school level design to a whole new level.

The litmus test of a good shooter is always the shotgun. The crack. The kick. The splatter. At its best, a good shotgun is enough to make a person weep from the eyes, or the chest if they happen to be at the business end.

Wrath: Aeon of Ruin has a splendid shotgun. It cracks. It kicks, and Holy Moses does it splatter. It must be said, though, everything in Wrath splatters. The massive arm-sword you start out with, the three chambered-pistol you pick up next, the gun that fires blobs of bile known as the Retcher, which at the moment I’d argue splatters a little too effectively. Of all the retro shooters I’ve played in the last couple of years—Dusk, Amid Evil, etc—Wrath is the one that remembers the word ‘gibs’ the most fondly.

The litmus test of a great shooter, however? That’s a little more complicated. It lies somewhere in the interaction between complex, treacherous 3D spaces and a disembodied hand clutching a gun. It involves vaguer words like angles, momentum, feedback, geometry—that arcane overlap where lines of code and wire meshes are transformed into art. As for whether Wrath is shaping up to be a great shooter, that’s a little more complicated too.

Wrath is being developed by KillPixel games and published by the latest iteration of 3D Realms (who recently published Ion Fury, which became marred by controversy). Aside from the name of the publisher, one of Wrath’s key claims to retro authenticity is that it’s being developed in the original Quake engine. Or at least, the most recent, polished version of the original Quake engine.

The intent of Wrath is quite clear, to be the successor to Quake that we all imagined but never got. Whereas Quake II drifted off into industrial sci-fi with underwhelming guns and character movement akin to a slug crawling up a drainpipe, Wrath returns players to haunting gothic vaults prowled by shambling zombies and eldritch horrors, all at the pace of an antelope with a lion halfway up its arse.

Actually, that last part isn’t entirely true. Initially, Wrath isn’t the blistering assault on the senses that I had expected. You start out in a large hub-world that connects the game’s various levels, all gnarled trees and looming crags. It’s a moody place, and I appreciate how Wrath takes the time to build up the atmosphere. This approach carries through to the 'first' level (it appears Wrath will give you some flexibility in which order you choose to approach levels). The Undercrofts are a dark maze of stony catacombs that eventually open up to reveal a vast necropolis, its graveyards and mausoleums dusted with snow.

And it truly is vast. Whereas the average Quake level can be completed in minutes, it took me the best part of an hour to navigate the sprawling mass of the Undercrofts. And that was purely in search of the level’s end, no stopping for secrets or byways beyond those I immediately noticed (of which there are no shortage). It’s a breath-taking bit of old-school level design. So complex, in fact, that I’m not entirely sure I completed it. I got to the end portal that spat me back out into the hub-world, but I couldn’t help but wonder if I missed something that I was supposed to pick up on the way.

It’s a breath-taking bit of old-school level design. So complex, in fact, that I’m not entirely sure I completed it.

This leads on to my main concern with Wrath: Aeon of Ruin. A great shooter knows how to balance exploration-driven level design with a strong forward momentum, and I wonder whether Wrath leans a little too much toward the former. Don’t get me wrong, they’re very impressive spaces and I enjoyed poking around them, but there were several occasions where I became lost and my trigger finger started getting itchy. A DOOM-style wireframe map would help reduce some of the frustration. On the subject of frustrations, the save system is unnecessarily convoluted, giving you limited manual saves that you need to access via a menu, alongside manually activated 'Shrines' that act as checkpoints. Just let me quicksave, KillPixel. It was good enough for Quake.

Nonetheless, this is still a rock-solid FPS foundation. Aside from the overpowered Retcher, the guns on show feel great. I’ve made my affection for the shotgun clear enough, but my true favourite is the Fang Launcher, a delightfully twisted homage to Quake’s Nailgun that eats ammo with disgusting efficiency. Enemies are equally fun to blast. I particularly like the cyst-coloured fellows who explode in an astonishingly gross fashion when killed. Wrath even makes its floating enemies fun to fight, including a terrifying Cerberus-like creature that charges you with three-sets of jagged teeth.

There are only the two levels currently on offer, which make the Early Access price-point of $25/£20 a little hefty. That said, if the rest of Wrath: Aeon of Ruin can continue to provide those gigantic, nuanced levels while also building the momentum across the game, I think it could end up being something special. And even if it doesn’t hit that gold retro FPS standard established by DUSK, that shotgun and I are still going to get along just fine.

 

[Biscotti]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1000410/announcements/detail/1688218948650588544

Patch #1 is NOW LIVE!

It's been a month since Outlander was unleashed upon the world of WRATH. We've since been hard at work, going through the fantastic feedback we've gotten from our community.

Today we're happy to announce that the first major patch for WRATH! From the plethora of changes and addiots we have to definitely highlight of a new fourth difficulty option - "Outlander". We heard you screaming for something more challenging, so here you go! Also you can now center your weapon Quake-style and player air-control!

Dive in and let us know what you think!

Full Patch Notes below:


Due to the nature of the Quake engine, previously saved games are not compatible with new versions of WRATH.

GENERAL

• Added support for ultra-wide 21:9 resolutions
  
• Added option to delete player profiles
  
• Added option to toggle blood decals
  
• Sliders in options menu are now draggable
  
• Increased mouse sensitivity increments for fine tuning
  
• FOV limit increased to 120
  
• Improved skyboxes

BUG FIXES

• Fixed erratic mouse movement on some systems
  
• Fixed "invert mouse" setting not saving when game is closed
  
• Fixed crosshair setting not saving when game is closed
  
• Fixed player sliding while standing on sloped surfaces
  
• Fixed enemy attack damage being stuck at 50% regardless of difficulty setting
  
• Fixed mislabeled next/previous weapon options
  
• Fixed minor spelling error in difficulty menu
  
• Fixed instances of loss of mouse input when loading a save game
  
• Fixed monster count in journal being inaccurate in some instances
  
• Fixed bug that caused inverted z velocities with melee lunge

GAMEPLAY

• Added fourth difficulty option "Outlander"
  
• Soul Tether is no longer an Artifact but now a discrete item with a persistent HUD icon and quantity indicator
  
• Soul Tether activation is now bound to [F2] by default
  
• Soul Tether carry limit increased to 99
  
• Artifacts automatically re-equip same type if available
  
• Equipped Artifact quantity now displayed on HUD
  
• Increased time before death menu becomes active to mitigate misclicks and accidental loading of an undesired save slots
  
• Added buffered weapon switching to shotgun
  
• Amount of life gained from Life Siphon is now dependant on enemy type
  
• Increased item pickup bounding box size
  
• Ammo counter now displays '0' rather than nothing when empty
  
• Coffers now drop items into the world rather than directly into the player's inventory
  
• Added "full" message when attempting to pickup an item at max capacity
  
• Added "locked" message to locked doors and coffers
  
• Added player air-control
  
• Added option for centered weapon viewmodels
  
• Added option to auto-switch empty weapons
  
• Added new shotgun alt-fire mode
  
• Improved enemy AI pathing near corners and doorways
  
• Icicles can be smashed by both player and enemies to prevent them from getting stuck
  
• Added a feature that automatically uninstalls the game when attempting to play on easy
  
• Wraith damage increased
  
• Added fly and impact sounds to Wraith projectile
  
• Invader is slightly more aggressive
  
• Heretic projectile no longer slows player
  
• Improved Heretic movement
  
• Decreased Heretic pain chance
  
• Increased Widow attack damage and health
  
• Increased Fang Spitter damage
  
• Decreased Fang Spitter ammo carry capacity
  
• Fang Spitter projectiles have been slightly enlarged and brightened for greater visibility
  
• Retcher splash damage increased
  
• Retcher impact damage decreased
  
• Many various changes to both The Undercrofts and The Mire
  
• Many miscellaneous super secret tweaks

PREVIEW OF CHANGES COMING IN FUTURE PATCHES AND/OR CONTENT UPDATES IN ADDITION TO SCHEDULED CONTENT

• Further improved enemy AI
  
• Add date and time information to saved game menu
  
• Overhaul Coach Gun alt-fire
  
• Overhaul Fang Spitter alt-fire
  
• Overhaul Item pickup sounds
  
• Tweak the Executioner to be more manageable
  
• Add option for screen flash when picking up items
  
• Improve feedback of artifacts via screen elements and sound
  
• Add crouch sliding
  
• Performance improvements and optimizations
  
• UI scaling improvements
  
• Create Cyst pickup models that are distinct from Cyst projectiles for greater clarity
  
• Expand support for various display resolutions
  
• Change the lava texture so it looks like a different kind of pizza
  
• Add things that make WRATH mo betta

First major patch dropped. Some highlights include added air control, buffered weapon switching for the shotgun and a higher difficulty mode.
This has added a trickle of hope after my pretty poor experience with the game when it first dropped. Next up should be addressing the level design, which honestly bummed me out the most considering Skacky is on the team.