AMID EVIL

Dusk had it's issues, I hated the lighting, the flashlight was terrible, some of the claustrophobic stuff was annoying, but the gunplay was enjoyable. Amid Evil gunplay isn't fun whatsoever. The enemies have too much health and the weapons aren't impactful. Did you like the hunting rifle, shotgun, or rivet gun in Dusk? There is nothing even close to that here. They may seem really cool at first but they are just not effective weapons. Furthermore, there's no placeholder for the weapons which makes gunplay annoying. What I mean is, if you hit 3 for shotgun, it should put shotgun in your hands, even if you're out of ammo. In Amid Evil, if you hit 3 (I still can't remember the weapons or what you'd even call them) it will roll up to the next weapon if you're out of ammo. Things that suck: Annoying ass platforming, maze like levels (and the devs have the gall to say their games are straight forward and not a maze), gunplay, font/ui in general, ultimate system (or whatever it's called), You pick up souls which raise a power bar, at full, you can activate your ultimate which enhances all the weapons. But most enemies are just harmless sponges that takes several strokes to kill. You'll sit there with a full power waiting for some big boss to use it on, and there's nothing, just 2-3 sponge enemies at once. Feels wasteful literally every single time I've ever used it. Activate ultimate, mow down the 3 enemies, and then run around picking up ammo. Having no pick up radius is also annoying as hell. Like I want to spend my time picking up ammo every 5 seconds. A pick up radius would have made this more convenient and less of a drag. It's imperative you pick up ammo, which means it's imperative that you do the annoying af platforming to get said ammo, and even then, you have to literally walk through it to pick it up. What's great: The lighting and level design (not the platforming) is amazing. Almost like first person WoW raid dungeons. Wasted, unfort.

The fast-paced action in Amid Evil does not make up for the fact that there is no story, poor level flow, blah enemy design, boring bosses and out-of-place music. For me this is another failure in the retro styled game category. Pros: Fast paced action Okays: Mouse control out of the box was unusable (for me). No way to turn off always run. Save anywhere (did not work right while saving on some platforms). The episode selection HUB was not needed. Cons: Level lighting very harsh and hurt my eyes. Gritty pixel effects also harsh (turning the texture quality to lowest helped a little). Font hard to read (especially against the glowing in-game wall writing). Cryptic messages in-game were mostly useless (but some were helpful clues). Alt attack ready effect was too much (took up a large portion of the screen). Quake 1 like design (run, shoot, switch, repeat, hope you find the exit). They couldn't decide if the game was a platformer or a shooter. The 7th episode caused headache, not fun, poor enemy design. No design consistency (modern level design, quake look enemies, doom like sprite pickups). Enemies in general were blah. Boss battles averaged about a minute (not enough time to be memorable). Music did not fit the action (didn't even notice it till the second episode). No story (you are a hero, and you kill things) It was playable, but by the 4th episode I just wanted it to end. I pushed through and my heart fell when the 7th episode was revealed. Hoping it was just one level (like quake 1) I jumped in and after the first level of the last episode I quit and played Quake 2 Enhanced. You can still buy old games and new games. These retro styled games seem to be halfway between and failed on both counts.

AMID EVIL wants to be a visceral old-school FPS set in a surreal dark fantasy world. In many ways the game feels inspired by Painkiller: baroque weapon design (closer to Conan in Amid Evil), collect souls to power-up your berserk mode, large-scale levels with rushing monsters and huge bosses. However, while Painkiller had tight weapons and responsive combat, Amid Evil is all over the place. The levels are huge colorful and beautiful with with intricate architecture, platforming and secrets galore, but with the dizzying colors and weird lighting, and zero map, it's extremely confusing to navigate. Also they're mostly empty once rid of monsters. I insist it looks really good, but exploring often feels like a chore with a lot of confusing backtracking if you miss a jump. So not very fun unfortunately. The weapons lack punch and I feel like the shotguns have a massive spread/distance issue which meansyou can miss an enemy straight in your reticle. Some monsters either have zero pain reaction and overall they are HP bags. The "adaptive AI" mostly meant to me that projectile monsters lead their shots more and more and the melee rushers would zig-zag more, but it just becomes annoying. I feel like even on Normal enemies deal too much damage relative to you, so you're always on the lookout for HP (in a bad sense). Ammo is badly distributed, with some weapons underused (at leadst in the first 3 episodes) and you grab some power-ups before figuring out what to do, and they're half-mandatory for some sections. Some platforming puzzles demand reflexes so as to shoot switches in a continuous sequence, but the movement feels too heavy and weird. So very soon it all becomes frustrating with little incentives (at least no fall damage nor drowning). The developers' heart is in the right place, but the game is a bit of a mess to me, it's not bad, but not great enough to warrant a full price, it's too frustrating even though there is true potential in there.

Its not for me. I can't get in the swing of it but the game does work/run well

Like Quake with Heretic/Hexen weapons. Own it here and on Steam, why don't you?