I’ve played a lot of retro shooters in my life but this one has to be the most strange one from a gameplay perspective. Everyone throws the term “clunky” around, most of the time in the wrong context, but I say with no hesitation that The Citadel is one of the clunkiest shooters I have ever played in my life because it suffers so much of an identity crisis. It wants to be an old-school shooter in similar vein of Wolfenstein 3D yet it just adds so much military shooter garbage. All weapons need to be reloaded, with even the simple act of reloading being a mess. For weapons like the shotguns and revolver that reload each bullet/shell individually you need to mash the reload button as pressing R once will only reload one bullet into the chamber. It just doesn’t fit the game. Reloading magazine fed weapons not only take too long, but also have another feature where pressing R twice quickly will discard the entire magazine for a quicker reload, which once again is another option that’s just there for some reason.
All guns have horrible bullet spread and recoil too which should be considered a crime for a “retro shooter”. Aiming down sights also feel glitchy and weird as there’s a second delay before you actually transition from iron sights to hip-firing.
The HUD and various menus are hideous to look at. There’s so much visual clutter with a needlessly complicated health/stamina/food system. Stamina drains when you sprint, kick and double jump (yes, a stamina bar that affects double jumping, we’ve hit rock bottom) and can be refilled with oxygen canisters. Food I still have no idea what it does other than heal you and give you a bit of stamina back. You can also lean left and right around corners and in the settings there’s an option to turn on weapon durability. Yes, Weapon durability…
This makes me think they tried to make a more slower survival-based military-esque shooter but then switched to a retro shooter because that’s more popular and as a result the game is a horrible mashup of retro shooter and military shooter design choices.
There’s a lack of enemy variety and all of them have the most eardrum bursting death sounds with all their anime girl screams. Some enemies I’ve seen fall through the floor and die and bigger enemies are put into areas which are obviously not designed to incorporate them.
I could go on about this game’s problems but I got this game gifted to me in the new Boomer shooter Humble Bundle so I don’t exactly feel like I’ve been robbed but I can definitely say this isn’t a high point in the bundle.