This game is A Lot and so it's kind of hard to fully put into words what it felt like to me by the end.
Starting with the gameplay: It is indeed heavily inspired by the old Max Payne games. However the enemy selection feels a lot more like it's from an old 90s FPS like Quake or Unreal. Meanwhile the level design, quick kills and soundtrack make it feel a litle bit like Hotline Miami. All in all the levels get a little bit tedious, but I got around most of that by bumping up the enemy damage and item healing to 1,5. There are a lot of genuinely satisfying moments in the game where you perfectly line up a headshot right at the critical moment. Even better is when you enter a room, enter bullet time, land 6 headshots in a row so fast that your resource bar is still full afterwards and cleaning up with the shotgun. While some of the levels do drag on a bit and there are a lot of them... these Perfect Moments make it feel all worth it to me.
At the start of the game you have a kind of heavier, surreal take on From Dusk 'til Dawn to wrap up the early vibe. Max Payne, Quake, Hotline Miami, From Dusk 'til Dawn... those influences kind of wrap up the aesthetic at the start. Though of course not quite because Hotline Miami has an electronic soundtrack. El Paso, Elsewhere pumps an electronic hip-hop OST and boy does it work. Not all of the tracks are instant favourites but some levels are kind of defined by how PERFECT the track is. "BREAK SHIT" being my personal favourite. Even if it's not your usual favourite genre I'd say it's worth sticking with it just for those absolutely Perfect Moments.
So the real story behind the game starts to become clear about halfway through and it gets pretty heavy. I won't spoil anything but there's a recurring theme that ties in with the protagonists substance addiction. Basically the protagonist has gone for a very long with something that was terrible for him in the chase after those Perfect Moments. Interestingly, the game makes a point of saying that the chase for Perfect Moments doesn't have to be a bad thing in and of itself. As he says at the very early stages: A good death is almost no work at all, you just need to pick the right moment for a just suicide mission. A good life is something you have to commit to every day. It's easy to find one quick perfect moment and commit to it, even knowing that it will only get worse. Yet picking the harder option will lead to many more Perfect Moments down the line.
The game is also very obviously limited in terms of production resources and it shows. While some will complain that this makes it feel cheap, I think it's truly impressive how beautiful the game looks at times. A lot of levels do not have any roof, which I assume started as a result of time constraints. The game even acknowledges that this is a thing and kind of explains it away as a part of the entity that's creating these levels. Rather than feel like lampshading though, this feels like the most natural thing in the world. Even if you had your doubts on that one, you do find maps with roofs later on and the protagonist even comments on how this makes his life more difficult. When there's no roof you can scout rooms ahead, you can snipe flying enemies, you can navigate to the pillars of light that mark your level objectives. With a roof? No such luck. On top of this, the game has some of the most surprisingly beautiful shots that I've seen in gameplay since Bloodborne. The player perspective, props, level architecture and skybox sometimes line up to make something absolutely beautiful and you'll almost feel silly that you doubted the game's graphics in the face of these Perfect Moments.
The reason that I keep emphasising those Perfect Moments in both the game and the narrative is that I kind of feel like they are meant to be tied together. You put up with some tedious gameplay for those Perfect Moments. You put up with the somewhat generic ambient score in order to hear the next track from the "Real" OST. Just like the protagonist you have to decide whether the hard parts are worth the payoff and you have to decide whether sticking with it is an addiction or a productive project.
I don't entirely know whether this was even deliberate but I have to assume it was at least partially so. Certainly I feel like the story did not need as many levels as it did if they wanted to only serve the gameplay. Either way I find it hard to even say whether I like that they did the game this way. It's hard to say whether the tedious stuff was worth putting up with just for the game to make its point about Perfet Moments. Yet then the fact that I am even pondering the question kind of validates the choice, right? Was the game more like the Perfect Moment that comes from getting yourself ice cream as a reward for going through your hardships or is it closer to the Perfect Moment that comes from being seduced into an addiction? I have to believe that its the former.
Starting with the gameplay: It is indeed heavily inspired by the old Max Payne games. However the enemy selection feels a lot more like it's from an old 90s FPS like Quake or Unreal. Meanwhile the level design, quick kills and soundtrack make it feel a litle bit like Hotline Miami. All in all the levels get a little bit tedious, but I got around most of that by bumping up the enemy damage and item healing to 1,5. There are a lot of genuinely satisfying moments in the game where you perfectly line up a headshot right at the critical moment. Even better is when you enter a room, enter bullet time, land 6 headshots in a row so fast that your resource bar is still full afterwards and cleaning up with the shotgun. While some of the levels do drag on a bit and there are a lot of them... these Perfect Moments make it feel all worth it to me.
At the start of the game you have a kind of heavier, surreal take on From Dusk 'til Dawn to wrap up the early vibe. Max Payne, Quake, Hotline Miami, From Dusk 'til Dawn... those influences kind of wrap up the aesthetic at the start. Though of course not quite because Hotline Miami has an electronic soundtrack. El Paso, Elsewhere pumps an electronic hip-hop OST and boy does it work. Not all of the tracks are instant favourites but some levels are kind of defined by how PERFECT the track is. "BREAK SHIT" being my personal favourite. Even if it's not your usual favourite genre I'd say it's worth sticking with it just for those absolutely Perfect Moments.
So the real story behind the game starts to become clear about halfway through and it gets pretty heavy. I won't spoil anything but there's a recurring theme that ties in with the protagonists substance addiction. Basically the protagonist has gone for a very long with something that was terrible for him in the chase after those Perfect Moments. Interestingly, the game makes a point of saying that the chase for Perfect Moments doesn't have to be a bad thing in and of itself. As he says at the very early stages: A good death is almost no work at all, you just need to pick the right moment for a just suicide mission. A good life is something you have to commit to every day. It's easy to find one quick perfect moment and commit to it, even knowing that it will only get worse. Yet picking the harder option will lead to many more Perfect Moments down the line.
The game is also very obviously limited in terms of production resources and it shows. While some will complain that this makes it feel cheap, I think it's truly impressive how beautiful the game looks at times. A lot of levels do not have any roof, which I assume started as a result of time constraints. The game even acknowledges that this is a thing and kind of explains it away as a part of the entity that's creating these levels. Rather than feel like lampshading though, this feels like the most natural thing in the world. Even if you had your doubts on that one, you do find maps with roofs later on and the protagonist even comments on how this makes his life more difficult. When there's no roof you can scout rooms ahead, you can snipe flying enemies, you can navigate to the pillars of light that mark your level objectives. With a roof? No such luck. On top of this, the game has some of the most surprisingly beautiful shots that I've seen in gameplay since Bloodborne. The player perspective, props, level architecture and skybox sometimes line up to make something absolutely beautiful and you'll almost feel silly that you doubted the game's graphics in the face of these Perfect Moments.
The reason that I keep emphasising those Perfect Moments in both the game and the narrative is that I kind of feel like they are meant to be tied together. You put up with some tedious gameplay for those Perfect Moments. You put up with the somewhat generic ambient score in order to hear the next track from the "Real" OST. Just like the protagonist you have to decide whether the hard parts are worth the payoff and you have to decide whether sticking with it is an addiction or a productive project.
I don't entirely know whether this was even deliberate but I have to assume it was at least partially so. Certainly I feel like the story did not need as many levels as it did if they wanted to only serve the gameplay. Either way I find it hard to even say whether I like that they did the game this way. It's hard to say whether the tedious stuff was worth putting up with just for the game to make its point about Perfet Moments. Yet then the fact that I am even pondering the question kind of validates the choice, right? Was the game more like the Perfect Moment that comes from getting yourself ice cream as a reward for going through your hardships or is it closer to the Perfect Moment that comes from being seduced into an addiction? I have to believe that its the former.