I'm a fan of old shooters, they make my brain cells fire in every direction and I find aspects of their design that could be learned from modern games.

Hence why this game feels so odd to me, it shows itself as embodying everything that made the Build Engine era of games great while rejecting their most unique aspects. The compact and experimental level design, enemy variety, freedom to get lost, difficulty, etc...

And I understand these are flaws for many people, but at least for me and many that enjoy these games for what they are and not the memory of them, this sands down the edges too much.

A final note, even if the general gunplay is good, the reloading mechanic is uncalled for, I can see it had the purpose of making fights more tense by not being able to always shoot (you deal a ton of damage even on hard difficulties) but you can ignore that obstacle by simply spamming the dedicated reload button, making it more of a nuisance.

Though, it's still enjoyable, I will be going through it in depth to really understand it, something it does share with old school shooters is that the true experience comes after you are familiar with its secrets and maps.

Edit: About a month later I've done about everything in the game, went through all the secrets and explored every level, I did not get 100% as a trophy because the game asks you to kill every enemy in a level, even if high difficulties increase the amount of them to the point where they bug out and you can't kill them.

I've come to really appreciate the game's level design, at the same time that the combat becomes so simple due to the lack of enemy variety and the fact all your guns deal so much damage and get so much ammo that the only reason to constantly change is to spice things up yourself.

Still a good time, can't wait for Aftershock.