Project Warlock

Project Warlock is a good boomshot, especially for the money. I had fun at the beginning and end of the game but there were some hiccups in the middle. The game is far too easy until about the 4th episode, even on the hard difficulty. By the end of the second episode and throughout the third, I was getting bored and considered quitting. I'm glad I didn't because I finally had some intense firefights and came close to dying in the city episode. And in the final episode I even died! Once to an actual fight and like 10 times to a cramped level with instant death pits, in a game where you move at Doom speeds. I could have done without that level. There were also several levels in the last two episodes that start you surrounded by enemies and not always facing them. Kind of a evil move but I guess it kept me on my toes. There were several times in episodes 4 and 5 that I went out of the map and could not go back or a switch in the level failed to activate correctly, forcing a restart. There's also a level in episode 5 with an elevator in a sewer that, if you accidentally back out of it, traps you and forces a restart. This is a weird oversight because every other elevator I encountered in the game had a button to return the elevator if you accidentally activated it. There are too many weapons for my tastes. I would rather have fewer, highly differentiate weapons, than many weapons that might overlap. Several could have been cut without losing anything IMO. There are also many weapons that share a key with another weapon and, in almost every case, the weapon I would want in an emergency is not the first one tapping the key will bring up. You can reassign these but it's such a weird and bad design choice. The upgrades in the game are neat but some are not well designed - the melee one that changes your third hit, for example, is mostly a downgrade. But, outside the mid-game slump, I am mostly nitpicking. On balance it was a really good experience.

OK shooter, spells and upgrades are a nice touch. I still have to try a spellcaster though, there seems to be very limited amount of points available. -1 star for being unable to save between levels and being forced to do a 4 levels marathons when you would like a quick shootout. This is devs being lazy.

Love this game, the look, the sound, music, everything. There is nothing i dont like about it (for now) . A lot of upgrades, meaningfull stats, spells, weapons AND you can play melee basically full time, thats a big plus for me in a genre where shooting is the main thing.

I'll give this a 4 out of 5. It's a decent game, but it has some bugs and issues at the time of launch so I'll be reviewing the current version of 1.0.0.1.1. The game graphics is old-skool classic which brings its own atmosphere to the gameplay. The setting is rather on the grim side with all kinds of monsters and demons running about and it reminds me of games like Blood and Nitemare 3D. The weapon upgrade system is very interesting because you will first get a basic weapon and then you can pick one of the two upgrades for it that fit your play style. There are also various magic spells available for purchase, but I didn't really find much use for them. Sound effects were decent, and the music is superb. Some of the levels are a bit short, but you can't really complain since there are 60 of them. On the negative side I had some issues during gameplay. The lighting looks like it hasn't been done properly on highest quality because many places will appear too dark or simply pitch-black. If you change the graphics quality to medium then there will be no lighting at all and all areas will be fully visible. I've also had some frame rate issues where the game would suddenly skip a few frames into the future. This was especially annoying during combat where you are trying to shoot a monster in front of you and the next moment you realize you're shooting at a wall that has suddenly appeared in front of you (because your character instantly turned for like 90 degrees). One time I even fell into lava and died. There are also some minor non-gameplay-breaking bugs so I'll ignore those because they'll probably be fixed in the next patch. I've played this on medium difficulty and one thing that bothered me is that there were way too many extra lives scattered around. By the time I finished I had like 40 of them.

I think this is easily one of the best of the old school style shooters that have been coming out. To be honest, it doesn't play like any of the others as well because of the game design. It's probably most similar to Wolfenstein 3D in the sense that the levels are all flat and the secrets are hidden similarly, so you end up strafing walls and spamming the use button, which has always been a surprisingly fun activity for me for some reason lol, maybe all the time I spent as a kid doing it makes it a nostalgic treat. What sets it apart are the enemy and weapon types, which are very different from Wolfenstein, and the levels are super detailed and varied for being flat. The light RPG elements add some replayability as well, and I've done a couple runs to experience the different gun upgrades, with a few still remaining that I haven't used yet. The game also switches up the world design at just the right moments, so nothing overstays its welcome. The violence is also extremely pleasing, and is a bit like a softened Brutal mod. The guns sound vicious and melting enemies with some of them is incredibly satisfying. If you've been enjoying other games of the boomer shooter trend, definitely check this one out!