I took a gamble and spent more than I normally would on a game like this, and I'll be honest, Adaca was a pleasant surprise. Not without its faults of course, but for one person to design a game like this, the passion on display is commendable.
By far, Adaca revels in its environments and sheer scale of some areas. While this is something I was pleased to see, I was arguably more impressed by how the game utilized large levels, big fights, explosions, and the sort while maintaining a crisp and stable framerate. Mind you, Adaca isn't far off from Roblox in texture quality, but it's still a welcome level of polish.
It also does quite wonderfully in the weapon selection as well. The sheer amount of weapons in this game can be a touch overwhelming at times, but where the impact of new tools is lost, there's the variety in combat to gain. You'll have favorite weapons of course, but thanks to varying enemy arsenal, you won't stick to two faves quite as often as you would in other games. It's a surprising and welcome shakeup.
There's even a surprising amount of content to boot. Along with the 6 or so hours of content provided by the game's three episodes, you also have the Zone Patrol mode which is more non-linear and open-ended. I haven't dabbled into it too much yet, but it's still a fun distraction from the campaign fare and brings a welcome bit of value. Combined with more than enough secrets, there's a lot of meat for big fans to dissect.
However, this is an imperfect beast in two key areas. The most noticeable of the two is in AI design, which ended up being wildly inconsistent on the game's second highest difficulty, Revolutionary. Sometimes I'd enter an area and see an enemy act like I'm not even there, or an enemy's teammate wouldn't hear me introducing a shotgun round to his buddy's skull. Other times I'd enter an area and have my healthbar disappear. It wasn't too distracting, but there were a good handful of BS deaths I experienced throughout my time.
The other major issue lies with music, of which the issue is variety. 95% of the music choices are purely ambiance which aren't bad for their usage, but never serve to heighten a particular encounter. The only track that properly got me interested was the game's final boss, and even that wasn't a standout.
Even with these faults though, I'm pleasantly surprised by what this single dev managed to pull off with their first project. It's got the fun factor, a smorgasbord of weapons, and varied locations that all sell their spectacle well. I'd love to see how the dev might adapt their creative weapon style to a game that focuses more heavily on it like a roguelike. For now though, I think they have a bright future ahead of them.
By far, Adaca revels in its environments and sheer scale of some areas. While this is something I was pleased to see, I was arguably more impressed by how the game utilized large levels, big fights, explosions, and the sort while maintaining a crisp and stable framerate. Mind you, Adaca isn't far off from Roblox in texture quality, but it's still a welcome level of polish.
It also does quite wonderfully in the weapon selection as well. The sheer amount of weapons in this game can be a touch overwhelming at times, but where the impact of new tools is lost, there's the variety in combat to gain. You'll have favorite weapons of course, but thanks to varying enemy arsenal, you won't stick to two faves quite as often as you would in other games. It's a surprising and welcome shakeup.
There's even a surprising amount of content to boot. Along with the 6 or so hours of content provided by the game's three episodes, you also have the Zone Patrol mode which is more non-linear and open-ended. I haven't dabbled into it too much yet, but it's still a fun distraction from the campaign fare and brings a welcome bit of value. Combined with more than enough secrets, there's a lot of meat for big fans to dissect.
However, this is an imperfect beast in two key areas. The most noticeable of the two is in AI design, which ended up being wildly inconsistent on the game's second highest difficulty, Revolutionary. Sometimes I'd enter an area and see an enemy act like I'm not even there, or an enemy's teammate wouldn't hear me introducing a shotgun round to his buddy's skull. Other times I'd enter an area and have my healthbar disappear. It wasn't too distracting, but there were a good handful of BS deaths I experienced throughout my time.
The other major issue lies with music, of which the issue is variety. 95% of the music choices are purely ambiance which aren't bad for their usage, but never serve to heighten a particular encounter. The only track that properly got me interested was the game's final boss, and even that wasn't a standout.
Even with these faults though, I'm pleasantly surprised by what this single dev managed to pull off with their first project. It's got the fun factor, a smorgasbord of weapons, and varied locations that all sell their spectacle well. I'd love to see how the dev might adapt their creative weapon style to a game that focuses more heavily on it like a roguelike. For now though, I think they have a bright future ahead of them.