The gameplay is clearly doing its best Max Payne impression, with the problem that all of the enemies in the first hour are melee enemies. So in each fight, in each arena, in each level, you're backpedaling as the throngs of undead accumulate into single-file globs that open themselves up to pop-pop-pops, rinse and repeat.

The slow-mo feels superfluous - it was WAY more impactful in Max Payne because the speed of the action was way higher. You really needed to utilize the slow-mo there, because a room with 5 dudes in it was a problem. A room with 5 gun-toting thugs is a room with 5 immediate threats, as soon as you enter the room. Having all of the enemies be melee means that they're not threats as much as they are moving targets, eagerly lining up to be plinked off. I've scanned ahead in some YouTube playthroughs and see that they do introduce a ranged enemy later on, but it doesn't look like it's going to fix my issue.

The music is kind of a bummer to me, because I really like all of the instrumental stuff, but as soon as one of the lyrics-laden tracks spins up, I kina physically recoil. I'm glad that the dev is having fun and putting their music out there. I just really don't think it's good, earnestly or ironically.

Scrubbing through the full-game playthrough on YouTube, I think it's EXTREMELY unlikely that I'm going to give this game 7 hours to playthrough. That is a genuinely staggering runtime to me, and it seems like it'd be such a better game if it was half that length and foregrounded the story first and foremost

Reviewed on Nov 05, 2023


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