AMID EVIL

This game may be the best modern old school shooter yet! The start feels like Hexen... The worlds will change more to serious sam Egypt style then to Unreal Gold with its castles and sky worlds then to quake with its sewer like worlds and then to Unreal Gold with its high chirch. It is really hard to explain the world but it is so good. Ion Fury seems more like a coppy and paste game. This game has unique magic based weapons somewhat to hexen. The difficulty is perfect but the game is really energy draining. Serious Sam in comparison is a holliday. Doom like primary school. What I want to say this game is fast and well crafted.

and put it on steroids. That's AMID EVIL. While not as good as either of its "parents" this one still holds its own as something different. While in QUAKE and DUSK you get mostly guns and in HEXEN you have martial weapons and staves AMID EVIL focuses more on the magical part. One of the staves you pick up tears planets from the sky, compresses them and shoots them at your enemies. Yes, planets! AMID EVIL doesn't have the complex level and puzzle design of the HEXEN and focuses more on quick action. Enemies are tough and require constant dodging. Personally I prefer the lesser puzzle- and more combat-heavy gameplay. There are no experience points or skills like in so many games nowadays, this one is straight forward: fight hordes of enemies, find keys to exit the level, keep track of ammunition (mana) and navigate a gorgeous looking dark fantasy world. The worlds drew inspiration from the first (and only great!) QUAKE game, which I very much appreciate. Each world is different with different monsters. If you loved (the original) QUAKE and HEXEN games, you need to buy DUSK and WRATH: AEON OF RUIN *AND* AMID EVIL and you'll be in 7th heaven. If you however require a GPS system to guide you to your next objective then you should probably give all these game wide berth.

Originally posted a longer review on Steam, to read a fuller breakdown go here: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197976091020/recommended/673130/ AMID EVIL comes with a lot of replayable fun content, is highly polished, just absolutely gorgeous and ends with a bang. Gameplay is your proper fast-paced old-school FPS with a variety of unique weaponry, enemies and environments. What sets AMID EVIL apart from many other passion projects is perhaps the different atmosphere, visuals and style it goes for. Music is fantastic, fits the alien worlds, Andrew Hulshult (along with Leon & Simon) put a lot of passion and love into this project, the dynamic nature of the ambient and combat music is well handled. The fantasy theme has allowed some beautiful use of colours with strong purples, blues, greens and reds, while also designing most landscapes to be strange and eerie. It gets progressively more abstract, surreal, intense & trippy towards the later episodes. Gameplay is worth it already on its own. Story isn't the main focus of the game, but it's still handled pretty well for an old-school FPS, and there's more lore in the codex and messages sprinkled around. It rivals a lot of AAA stuff out there, high quality, and its unique presentation allows it to stand out as a different flavour above the rest.

Maybe I am just spoilt because I recently played the amazing Project Warlock and Ion Maiden, but for an oldschool shooter the weapons feel, well suprisingly modern and unfortunately not in a good way. Most weapons I've come across feel extremely sluggish and no matter how powerful they might be they rarely ever feel actually powerful, I can't really put my finger on it, it might be the lackluster sound effects, or the weapon damage but they feel more like toys than anything else. This becomes especially apparent compared to the fast paced movement that is every bit as good and fluent, or even better than in most of the games contemporaries. It is also not helped by the fact that most enemies can take quite a lot of damage. Because of all this it often feels like you're not actively killing enemies but rather simply waiting for them to die while you run around and dodge their attacks. Unfortunately this type of shooter lives and dies by how its weapons and movement feel and interact with each other, and this particlaur one is no exception offering very little redeeming qualities beyond maybe the music and the art style. Also this is by no means a big issue but poor UI design is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. The font they used, while aesthetically pleasing, is pretty much impossible to read on the fly and really should never have been used for anything in the menu beyond the title perhabs, let alone conveying important information in the midst of battle. Now don't get me wrong, the gunplay is still somwhat fun and entertaining for a while and if this game was the only old school shooter out there I might find it to be rather refreshing, however looking at the plethora of other games in this style that have been released recently, I unfortunately can't really think of a reason to recommend this over any of them.

If you want to experience oldschool FPS play AMID EVIL. Non-stop action with no cutscene interruptions and charming graphics.