Redfall Review – Slums

Before entering our Red Fall ReviewIt should be noted that Arkane Studios is well known for its inventive games that push the limits. Arkane Austin’s previous game was Prey, a daring immersive sci-fi simulation. But with Redfall, the studio has really changed. It’s not just Arkane’s lineage that sometimes makes me think Redfall would be better off more like his previous work; many moments in the game itself suggest the same idea. But Redfall is still a good time despite some bugs and too much emphasis on looter shenanigans.

Although Redfall is a AAA game, the storytelling in Redfall is more than minimal. Much of his story is told through freeze frames that lack emphasis. The story begins with the choice of four main characters who wake up on a wrecked ship only to be kidnapped by a vampiric creature known as the Black Sun. What follows is a story about the hunt for powerful vampires and the discovery of their involvement in the events that led to Redfall, New England being overrun by the undead. I love vampire stories, but this one didn’t really impress me, and the game failed to endear me to its characters. Everything is a bit simple.

The gameplay and structure of Redfall is what you could get if you combined Dying Light and Borderlands. You travel across two open maps, setting up hideouts and finding markers that allow you to fast travel. The main quests are taken from your base board and are mostly about finding items or killing things. Completing two side quests in each hideout will clear the area of ​​the best vampire in the area, and you’ll need their skulls to gain access to even more powerful vampire lairs. It’s very similar to a video game and doesn’t make much sense in the real world, but it lets you know what to expect for each mission.

Each character has three unique abilities, all of which they learn at level five. You level up by accumulating experience gained from defeating enemies and completing quests, which gives you skill points, which are mainly used for abilities that enhance the character’s abilities. Each character also has some unique abilities that don’t really matter. The first two abilities have a short cooldown, while the third requires special energy released by vampires and sometimes human cultists who fight alongside the most powerful vampires. Obviously, you’ll be using it sparingly, so it often feels like characters only have two abilities.

That doesn’t leave them much room to excel, and while your abilities get more powerful as you increase your skill points, the gameplay doesn’t change much. This is all the more true as the enemies evolve with your level. Compared to Dying Light, there’s just no sense of progress. This leaves shooting room to make up slack, which is essentially what happens; Redfall is a solid first-person shooter, and the weapons are quite varied, hard-hitting, and effective.

You have different versions of the usual suspects, such as pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, and sniper rifles, but there are also more specialized weapons, including a grenade launcher, ultraviolet light, and rocket illumination. These anti-vampire innovations add personality to your arsenal, but some of them just aren’t very useful. In terms of damage, the launcher is far superior to the UV and Flare Gun, which are more situational, but also I feel weak. For example, ultraviolet light is a theoretically useful crowd control tool that stuns vampires, but its effects are too fleeting to be practical.

Human enemies will be defeated without much hassle. Vampires, on the other hand, go into a weakened state where their health bottoms out and you have to stake them to finish them off. When you do, you’ll be treated to a fantastic image of their bodies burning as their flesh turns to ash, reminding me of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Blade. It’s very nice to unload a shotgun on a vampire before impaling them.

Oddly enough, you can’t just carry bets with you. Shotguns and Assault Rifles have stakes installed, but you’ll need to switch to them to deliver death Punch. A stake gun will work, as will fire and electricity, but it’s strange that your vampire hunter character can’t just hold a stake. It’s more restrictive than it could be, since you can only equip three weapons at a time, and since Redfall is always online, you can’t pause when switching between them. You have a melee attack, but you don’t seem to even hit anything when you use it, and there are no cool animations for stealthy one-hit killing human enemies, unlike earlier work on this game.

If that seems like a trivial complaint, the enemy AI is a bigger problem. It’s ridiculously bad. People often barely react to your presence at first; you can run up to them and fire a shotgun at point blank range without putting yourself in danger of being shot. The game’s elemental stealth system is so effective that you can hide in the enemy’s line of sight and they won’t see you. You can even shoot one of their friends in the head and they might not even react. But the funny thing is that the vampires will run at you if you stand in the UV light and petrify yourself. The enemies are just stupid.

You’ll constantly be drowning in loot while playing Redfall, which, combined with a roomy inventory, requires long periods of clearing in order for you to collect all your now-useless low-level junk. For this, you get scrap that can be used to buy things, but there’s no particular reason for this because you’ll often find what you need while exploring. You also lose 10% of your scrap when you die, which means you can lose a ton if you’re playing solo.

In that regard, the world of Redfall takes issue with its still co-op-friendly online payout. You’ll find books and articles to read everywhere, but since you can’t pause the game by yourself and no one in a co-op session is happy waiting for someone else to read something, I’m not sure when you were about to. It’s similar to how Arkane wanted to incorporate Its immersive sims in the world design, but the combat is clearly built around co-op, especially when it comes to boss fights. Characters can’t take a lot of punishment, which suggests they need to revive their teammates, so solo players won’t experience the game as it should. But the missions themselves often require players to explore the environment for key items, which doesn’t sit well with the action, especially when you have to stand and listen to glorified audio files.

I feel like Redfall would be a lot better if it didn’t try to focus on co-op like it used to. Dying Light did a great job with the single player campaign, which worked really well with co-op. If it was an immersive sim with more depth and less focus on numbers, I really think it could be something special. I still love this game, but it doesn’t compare to Arkane’s more focused work.

During the game, I encountered several serious bugs. Sometimes I couldn’t interact with key items, which required restarting missions. Several times, I also got stuck on the geometry. For most of the game, a side quest marker hovered over the head of an NPC whose only side quest had already been completed. And even if you’re playing solo, any internet disconnection will throw you back into the menu and force you to replay the mission flow. Since the player has to be the host and you can only play with friends and not randos, this is another strange choice. I also experienced some variability in performance, with FPS dropping quite low, especially on the first map.

It took me around 15 hours to complete Redfall’s main story and most of the main side quests. I missed the pointless cloned hideout missions and some repetitive vampire nests. Once you’ve defeated the final boss (unimpressive since you’re not even fighting him directly), your character automatically switches to New Game Plus, so there’s no endgame and you can’t just fight him. he explores for your own pleasure. You also have to start a whole new game to change characters.

It has a lot of those little disappointments, but I still love Redfall. He does the basics well enough that it’s worth checking out if you want to take on your friends in vampires. But it won’t replace Dying Light or Borderlands in your rotation, and it made me think inconsolably of the immersive vampire sim Arkane could give us without those weird, uncoordinated steps into the multiplayer action genre.

Redfall’s release date is later today and it’s coming to Game Pass.