Recent reviews by penis_

Alright, positive out of the way first

Combat is as fluid and hectic as you'd expect from the engine's capabilities and the levels are sprawling and jam-packed with secrets

The aesthetic of the game is pretty outstanding and most of what I wanted out of it, I got

however, there's a list of perplexing mistakes which justified my refusal to get this game in early access:

-lots of interactivity as with most build games, but misses obvious expectations (no mirror dialogue?)

-more missed opportunities with dialogue options, feels very subdued in contrast to its cartoonish plot

-enemy attack variation is all over the place, but a lot of them feel interchangeable, making their silhouettes useless for prioritizing

-weapons are tightly designed but have some confusing foibles and limited specialization

-minimal hud options

-trading a quick kick/melee with a switch to electrifryer button is somewhat annoying and should be optional

-melee itself feels sticky and most of the time you'll secondary fire if you want it to be useful

-no autorun toggle, stuck in always run

-opengl rendering is broken not because my machine can't handle it but because the .exe points to the integrated graphics in a way that i can't physically stop it from doing (ignores nvidia control panel override)

-alt tabbing breaks the game

there's probably more that i've forgotten

I understand this was probably meant to be both a departure from the legacy of duke but also an homage to that particular era in gaming, but it's missed a lot of cues from the community in the meantime on how to fit in its own shoes in a way that only the devs could've made happen

Can't recommend for the current price of $26 USD

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Edit: they've fixed a lot of my quibbles since this review, so cheers to the devs on that one
keeping it as-is for posterity

I was intrigued by the premise. Games such as XCOM, Hard West, Underrail and the HBS Shadowrun series all offered their own stylish spin on turn based combat, so I thought this would be something similar. I was wrong.

I could excuse the use of UE4 and then inhabiting it with six directional 2D sprites, or even its bland, grey-green landscapes covered up with post processing, if it gave me even half of what it promised.

Insipid combat and writing, confusing mechanics and level design in general (thanks procedural generation), a replay button to watch the same two or three dudes fall over while particle effects flash around (?)
All these were barely held aloft by the adequate soundtrack in the 17 minutes I played.

It felt unfinished as a whole, and played more like something you'd click around on occasionally while working on other things, never really bringing it into focus.

Despite all this, I really think it had some good ideas, but lots of people at once just decided to blow their loads too soon after it left early access, as is tradition.

All in all, when it touts inspiration like XCOM, Syndicate, even SUPERHOT, yet fails to bring the least bit of panache of all three, you have to wonder if the devs were playing some other game instead. Refunded.

Despite not being adept at any of the multi-genre stabs it takes, it managed to hook me and left me wanting more. Better when played blind.
Worth a look if on sale.

A few neat ideas marred by lackluster execution.

Between the absurd pooling of health per monster pickup, unimpressive and often confusing gunplay (did that shot land or didn't it?), and dead servers, this game doesn't have much going for it.

Not as terrible as given credit for, but the bit of light that this game allows to shine through is thoroughly overshadowed by clunky design and exposition choices that ruin the pace of the game rather than enhance it.

Lack of checkpoints, broken physics launched me 10 feet in the air at times, the whole intro being entirely needless if I was just going to get shot anyway (the skip button was a good feature), the voice acting is competent yet dull and even included a couple clips where they obviously did three retakes but left it in anyway.

Besides the game standing in its own way at times, being able to spot the guy before I knew what was going on was a little satisfying, as was the mindset the game thrusts you in whether you like it or not. I'm not gonna lie, survival with nothing but 6 shots in a revolver, a radio and a monocular is a pretty big rush, though the monocoluar can eat a ♥♥♥♥ since it never centers on what I'm looking at.

The sound design, visuals and even just the homicide intro were perfectly fine, and if the dev finds a way to tighten up (or better yet, drop) the whole backstory thing, unkink some of the other issues and maybe use something not Unity powered, this game could stand to benefit from it.

For the bargain bin price of 2 whole dollars, it surpassed my expectations for a standard FPS
Challenging combat, nice presentation, good selection of weapons.

At times it can be confusing as to what the game wants from you, do you arena shooter strafe n blast or tactical cover whack-a-mole? It leaves the otherwise satisfying combat entirely unbalanced and sometimes scatters your chances of survival to the winds if you're going in blind.

That and the somewhat unoriginal premise aside, it's a fantastic deal at 2 dollars and a fair deal at 20, worth a look.

also to those saying its too difficult: git gud, this is pretty basic difficulty as far as the genre is concerned, even on hard mode.

Somewhere under the surface of incredibly obtuse design choices and engine glitches is a fairly well-made mod that breathes a bit of life into the old DX, but for those who wanted something a little more true to the original, you're better off with just the GOTY w/ HDTP.

I dig the new OST though, it does do a nice job of adding a comfier spin on the original's peppy tracker music.

I can't tell if this game is trying to be Killing Floor or Doom, but it's well worth the $1.95 I spent, check it out.

Do you feel like a hero, yet?

It certainly wishes to present itself as an original product, except neither giving credit to nor showing the same level of effort put forth as its progenitors (RS6 and SWAT series). It even feels like a very bad Rainbow Six 3 mod.

Perspective of the models is laughably skewed from weapon to weapon, animations feel borrowed from the aforementioned games with less understanding of how they're actually supposed to work, the touted features can be found in every 'tactical shooter' but are expected to somehow be innovative because there's no regenerating health and cinematic setpieces (lol?), and worse still, I'm sure the same guy who did the bedroom headset-recorded voiceovers in the gameplay videos is the same one doing all the voice acting in-game, and from the sound of it, with the same equipment.

All in all, it's an embarrassingly unoriginal, pretentious and hamhanded vision of what I expect from a game that proudly displays a blurb from Polygon as a monument of its worth.