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Check out the demo, it's a bit outdated but should give you the gist of what to expect!
As a massive Half-Life 2 & Halo fan, this is a wonderful little mix of both. And a solo dev project that just seems to really home in on the core of what makes games like those great.
You get:
Actually decent AI (takes cover, communicates, have different tactics, engaging to fight, stealth seems somewhat useful as well, and faction infighting is always cool to see in games)
Gravity Arm, stagger enemies to pull their weapons from their hands, pick up almost anything from the environment that's littered in classic Half-Life 2 style physics props, and throw them, also some light environmental puzzles of moving and throwing objects to activate bridges and stuff and classic physics puzzles.
Impactful arsenal more akin to Halo than HL, with some gameplay differences (energy good against shields for instance, classic Halo) It's a good sign when you struggle to choose which weapon to keep (BR, SMG, needler rifle, shotgun, flame grenade launcher, powertool thing so far been fun, even the pistol feels good and is a work horse weapon, swapped that though for a pocket uzi, though the laser revolver is super powerful), and a good quick melee and quick grenade function like in Halo.
Impressive environments that are a blend of being on an alien planet but it's also a backwater under an oppressive regime hunting for rebels ala Combine, so expect worn down derelicts and outdated looking tech and crumbling infrastructure with a military presence there that only cares for keeping control and not building up the place, it's a wonderful aesthetic done well here, with an impressively rich soundscape in environments that feels also fittingly atmospheric with a complementary haunting OST.
It's an interesting world as well, hidden lore, transmitters with strange messages, fun to explore and find spooky weird fragments of logs.
Spooky enemy types as well with disturbing shrieks and screams in varied locations so far.
The movement feels great, even while not sprinting, I feel like head bobbing is done correctly to feel like a HL/Halo type game (you can toggle off if it is not your jam), and weapon inertia/drag/sway/laziness is also a nicely done, as are the effects of everything, the physics, muzzleflash, weapon recoil and kickback animations, the blood spurts from enemy hits and the enemy twitch and pain animations, the zooming in in a scope and how smooth it is, all the little sound effects for instance when you cycle through weapons, the little clicks and thunks, the melee has range as well as a cone and not just a simple pixel point hit area-- The little details are all paid attention to meticulously I feel by the dev to make this feel as authentic and proper of an FPS experience as possible.
Also, secrets, remember to break boxes/remove lids to find goodies inside, and look in the distance, you might find some weapon or crate to pull to yourself perhaps hidden away...
I'm currently playing the linear campaign, which is my jam, but there is also a "Zone Patrol", which seems like a separate style of game mode, an open-ish level where you complete objectives of some kind, not sure if that's meant to be more directly inspired by Stalker so don't quote me on that.
Though it released not as an early access game, Episode 3 is going to come out at a later date, with potentially more Zone patrol stuff as well.
If I were to have negatives, they would be insanely minor, like having your first person view of the weapon model clipping into the environment when you get too close to something, ambient occlusion is a bit strong, wouldn't mind an ingame option to disable vignette separately (can easily do so via UE4 engine.ini tweak, see PCGW), or that god forbid this solo dev didn't make better faces for character models,-- Petty, I honestly don't really have an issue with those, but like those are the things that stick out, the rest is slick, polished, juicy, gorgeous, moody, punchy, awesome.
This is an ambitious project, recreate what makes HL2 & Halo great in their own world, with its own story and campaign (and another game mode!), by a solo dev, and it honestly seems to just deliver on that promise. I mean, it is probably crafted from assets the dev got elsewhere, but this isn't the case of the "asset flip", but where a dev still got the intended look and feel of the world achieved through the resources they had available to them, the world makes sense and everything looks cohesive and great, there isn't out of place bloom and lens flares, the dynamic lighting is used to great effect, it's all put together in a directed manner.
It even has quick saving & loading! Pretty rare and you get the sense that it's usually a pain to implement correctly into games from the way devs tweet about save mechanics.
Pretty extensive options menu. Key rebinding is good (I suggest "pull" on something like mouse wheel up, because you'll be using it a lot, there's a weapon carry limit so scrolling through weapons is less important imo), gameplay tweaking and HUD tweaking and FOV sliders and some Halo skulls inspired modifiers, with good graphical options, and I also like how the menu explains what the difficulty settings alter, also it being more interesting in altering enemy behaviours and not just HP/DMG-- Playing on Normal and there's still tactical behaviour, enemy accuracy isn't the best so that's probably a lot more accurate on higher difficulties, as well as their reaction times I'd imagine.
Performance seems solid, playing on a laptop, i5-11400H 6core/12thread 2.7GHz 3050RTX 4GBVRAM 8GBRAM Win11 with shadows and PPFX max and the rest on epic (AA low) and so far I'm getting 60fps, had some minor dips in one location but nothing under 50.
Worth it, support your indie devs, pay full price 20 if you love games like Half-Life and Halo. |
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发表于 2022-7-26 15:33
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