I was playing Trepang2 when THIS was just sitting there? Shame on me for this one.
Incredibly fast-paced slow-mo gunfights with a cool girl protagonist with drum'n'bass music. Frankly, I have no one to blame but myself for not seeing the signs that I'd like this. Cooking much more than Trepang2 in terms of FEAR-style action, with much better arena design, weapons, movement, basically everything except framing. Severed Steel has a pretty superfluous excuse of a plot, whereas Trepang2 at least gave you SOMETHING to work with.
Actually, what is with indie games and being incapable of any sincerity beyond "metaphor for mental illness"? It feels like shit like this, Ultrakill and My Friend Pedro are more interested in being coolly detached to form an emotional core around literally anything. The reason FEAR is so cool isn't just because it has incredible action: it is grounded in its own tangible reality. the Point Man doing amazing, superhuman shit is given more gravity because we have a frame of reference for what normal is, we hear reactions from people about how unstoppable you are, and there is a PLOT with CHARACTERS that every gunfight serves to further. FEAR takes its psychic supersoldier plot deadly serious and it makes every incredible gunfight feel more real in that world. Artifice is important and I'm sick of these games deciding that they are too cool for it.
Comparing this to FEAR on more fundamental levels will also be very bad for it: arena design is way too loud and busy, meaning enemies have to be highlighted to make them visible amongst the backdrop. Whereas Replica soldiers stand out so dramatically in the office complexes of FEAR that no such bells and whistles are necessary.
One thing it NAILS is the destruction of the arenas, though. You can fuck these levels up, and if you are making a slow-mo action shooter, you better be looking at FEAR or Max Payne 3 to see how much a room can be blown apart by a hail of bullets.
I really like what is cooking here. I think this team is significantly more skilled than their contemporaries at action shooters, and the one-arm no reload design is brilliant in how it makes you never worry about anything but the shooting, so the pace is slick as hell. I would love these devs to take another critical look at FEAR and realize its color pallet is not a flaw, but a deliberate design choice. I want to see it expanded into something more substantial, as there is something good here even though I can only call it a dry run at this point.
Incredibly fast-paced slow-mo gunfights with a cool girl protagonist with drum'n'bass music. Frankly, I have no one to blame but myself for not seeing the signs that I'd like this. Cooking much more than Trepang2 in terms of FEAR-style action, with much better arena design, weapons, movement, basically everything except framing. Severed Steel has a pretty superfluous excuse of a plot, whereas Trepang2 at least gave you SOMETHING to work with.
Actually, what is with indie games and being incapable of any sincerity beyond "metaphor for mental illness"? It feels like shit like this, Ultrakill and My Friend Pedro are more interested in being coolly detached to form an emotional core around literally anything. The reason FEAR is so cool isn't just because it has incredible action: it is grounded in its own tangible reality. the Point Man doing amazing, superhuman shit is given more gravity because we have a frame of reference for what normal is, we hear reactions from people about how unstoppable you are, and there is a PLOT with CHARACTERS that every gunfight serves to further. FEAR takes its psychic supersoldier plot deadly serious and it makes every incredible gunfight feel more real in that world. Artifice is important and I'm sick of these games deciding that they are too cool for it.
Comparing this to FEAR on more fundamental levels will also be very bad for it: arena design is way too loud and busy, meaning enemies have to be highlighted to make them visible amongst the backdrop. Whereas Replica soldiers stand out so dramatically in the office complexes of FEAR that no such bells and whistles are necessary.
One thing it NAILS is the destruction of the arenas, though. You can fuck these levels up, and if you are making a slow-mo action shooter, you better be looking at FEAR or Max Payne 3 to see how much a room can be blown apart by a hail of bullets.
I really like what is cooking here. I think this team is significantly more skilled than their contemporaries at action shooters, and the one-arm no reload design is brilliant in how it makes you never worry about anything but the shooting, so the pace is slick as hell. I would love these devs to take another critical look at FEAR and realize its color pallet is not a flaw, but a deliberate design choice. I want to see it expanded into something more substantial, as there is something good here even though I can only call it a dry run at this point.