I loved Prey 2017 and had high hopes for Arkane Austin's next project. But I can't believe this was made by the same team. Redfall is so bad, like, questionably bad. What the hell happened??

I'm not even totally against Arkane making a looter shooter instead of an immersive sim, if at least the game was good. But here, it's a failure on all levels.
It's very repetitive, the guns feel so weak, finding loots is not satisfying at all. The open world is not interesting to explore because there is nothing really to do except shoot the same vampires and humans over and over again.
Speaking of the enemies, they are completely braindead. This is some of the worst AI I've seen in a AAA game in a long time. They can't even jump over a car or fence, or crawl under a low object. They will just stare at you because they don't know how to get to you.

Visually, this barely looks like a PS4 launch title, but it takes up 105GB for some reasons and runs like ass. I had constant texture streaming issues and everything looked blurry.
Also the art direction is very bland and lacks a distinct style. This is the most disappointing aspect as Arkane is known for creating games with strong artistic visions. Redfall looks like a bunch of Unreal Engine asset packs.
Even the music seemed out of place, and I had to mute it because it was destroying the mood.

This is definitely not worth 70$. It feels so barebone and cheap. They couldn't even afford cutscenes, so the story (which barely exists anyway) is told with a bunch of still images.
I'm really worried about the future of Arkane Austin, this is super disappointing.

I'm not done with Redfall yet, but I do intend to finish it.

I feel the need to get out in front of the exaggerated responses this game is getting. It is not unfinished, bad, or some sign of Arkane or Microsoft failing.

Redfall is totally fine. It's not the most inspired game in the world, it has some technical issues that can easily be fixed in a future update, but it's stable, the gameplay loop is fun enough, and the game looks pretty good.

Some games can just be middle of the road. That's okay. The exaggeration does nothing for anyone, and I don't know why we all fall for it every time a game is less than a 10/10.

Things I like so far: The gunplay is good with some adjusting in the controls (i recommend increasing the controller delay and the sensitivity to tighten up the aiming), the loop is familiar but cleanly executed, the player characters are surprisingly fleshed out,, and I find the constant need to swap weapons for different enemies as thrilling as ever.

Give Redfall a try for yourself. The hot takes are exaggerated, and with a game this readily available, why take some random Twitter blue check at their word?

I can look past the game crashing on me. I can look past it running at 30fps. I can look past the camera controls not working and feeling floaty. I can look past the fact that the game only has a few enemy types and even less dead body models. I can look past the fact that the enemy AI is so bad that the game plays itself. I can look past the fact that the textures almost never loaded in properly. I can even look past the fact that the character designs are straight outta Fortnite. I can look past the cringe millenial-core dialogue. I can look past that the required online connectivity made it so a server failure on their end kicked me out of the game within 15 minutes of me starting it.


But the one thing I can’t look past is… actually you know what? I can’t look past that stuff. I didn’t have a single second of fun with this game and it didn’t touch me on any emotional level other than true boredom.

A very tough release from a studio known for strong, polished titles. It's playable, especially in co-op, and can be made into some fun with friends, but it's overall a rough experience. The world feels empty, the gunplay seems meh, the looting is mediocre, the enemy variety is limited, the bosses cause performance issues, the story and characters are (seemingly intentionally given the lack of true cutscenes) largely forgettable. The main gameplay loop of killing vampires with weapons and stakes is probably the only real draw. It was addictive enough for me to beat it, but I am glad I played it through Game Pass, as I never would've bought it for $70, and would not recommend anyone else doing so. A letdown from a studio that has many great releases.

A waste of everyone involveds time. The players, the devs, everyone. I have no clue why Arkane of Dishonored and Prey fame decided to make this hollow shell of an idea taped onto a basic early 2010s shooter with worse gunplay than whatever you can think of. This team can do so much better and they did with Prey and Prey Mooncrash phenomenal experiences worth playing - this isn't that. It's not worth your time for story, gameplay, or "loot" (it is a looter shooter.) Enemies don't work, abilities break aspects of the game or cause bugs, repetitive missions, cookie cutter open world filler, and a mission to boss structure of something like Ghost Recon Wildlands of all things. On top of that last point the map is completely barren with only fast-travel points to cut the long walk between locations. So no interesting vehicles or more notably movement options IN AN ARKANE GAME. Remember Blink from dishonored forget about it, the gloo gun from Prey, what even is that again? This is all made worse by arguably the most important staple of an Arkane game - level design. The clockwork mansion from Dishonored 2 goes in my hall of fame best levels in gaming, the space station in Prey is extremely interconnected and fun to navigate for shortcuts, and creating paths with the gloo gun. Here then comes Redfall which is; big open flat spaces with 1 or 2 enemies, if you're lucky a group of 4 to 6 (that don't work btw), average repeated houses with very crampt corridors, and show piece vampire locations which end up being corridors. Nothing here screams it was made by Arkane besides the character designs, and how full rooms and buildings can be with knick nacks and gizmos you can look at or interact with. Seeing a whale oil canister in this game was just a fundamentally sad moment and exemplifies how cursed of an experience this game is and what it isn't. Do not pay money for this game, if you use gamepass for other games don't pick this one. Supposedly this game is going to be recieving content updates and fixes. But this is not No Mans Sky there's nothing here that's salvagable or worth changing. It's a complete failure on every front I can't believe Xbox bought Bethesda (which includes Arkane) and completely looked over this game and said "yeah let's release this game". Someone in publishing and development should've steered this ship on course to something good years ago. But we're here now with this wreck.

Edit: It's come to light that Redfall was originally planned as a microtransaction filled multiplayer Arkane game due to Prey failing to meet sales expectations. During that time 70% of the people that worked on Prey in Arkane Austin left the company. Making it even more evidently clear the people who could do better had already left, and to them doing better would be not making this game at all. So it's a shame they left because I'd hoped to see more from the Prey IP but good to know there's many reasons this is not an Arkane studios best work, clearly barely even a product of that studios creative intent.

One of the worst games I've launched this year. I've expected nothing and still disappointed. Empty open world, atrocious ai, which can not even aim at you fast enough. Unlikeable characters, mid soundtrack and visual style (although vampire nests are quite cool). I have not found any reasons to play it by stealth and using the abilities at all. And you heard a lot about poor optimization already.

To be honest, I don't see that it will be improved after qol and performance patches, this game should be reworked fundamentally. It's really sad to say, considering Arkane made some of my favorite games ever (I even enjoyed Deathloop despite its huge flaws).

This games possible only redeeming factor is that it happens to be co-op, and that it really didn't try anything that ambitious in terms of missions and challenges, because if it did it would sure to be absolutely unplayable. The gunplay was bad, the graphics were unbelievably mediocre for a next-gen game released in 2023, and despite that there were still a number of frame rate drops and crashes and bugs. The story was pretty much a big nothing, and the dialogue and cutscenes were ridiculously low effort and annoying. If there was anything that this game reminded me of, it would be like a far inferior Borderlands, with the weirdly tanky combat, often painful dialogue, and the seemingly pointless "wander across the map to do a 3 minute quest" type thing. Overall, if you have gamepass and some people to play it with, you can play it, it's definitely a game that exists, but please don't spend $70 on this and if you have other things you really want to play definitely just do that.