Project Warlock

One of the best of its kind. It is everything what you could expect from a game that is an extraordinary journey to the past where Doom, Hexen and Heretic ruled the industry. Great pace, great graphic design, and awesome gameplay. Highly recommend it!

It pains me to write this review as the developers clearly have a lot of passion for the era it is representing. In a nutshell, the game is full of real passion and terrible design. The good: - Graphics - No other recent game has looked as much as a 90s FPS than this game. And the spritework and animations are incredible - It is quite fun to play, despite what I'm going to say next. The issues: - It's not as fun as FPS games from the 90s. If this was released in the 90s, it'd fall into obscurity and be considered average. - The moment - It doesn't feel sharp or accurate, which is a key element of what made 90s FPS games great. Cooldown on weapons are unclear. I kept thinking my mouse button was broken. - The levels lack good design, another key element from 90s FPS games. They didn't consider that they had enemies that shoot projectiles, yet most levels are just VERY tight corridors, so forget about strafe-dodging. Even Wolf 3D had wider corridors. The levels flow well, but are unimaginative. - Weapon switching prioritise weaker weapons. For example, pressing 1 once gives you a weak knife, pressing it twice gives you a strong axe. It should be the other way round to help when you're frantically swapping weapons. When you run out of ammo in any gun, it auto switches to the weak knife. These simple design mistakes detract a lot from the game. - The upgrade/progression system is way too confusing for a simple genre. - The lives system is unclear. When playing on normal difficulty, if all your lives are lost, you entire progress is lost. Some people may not realise this until they're half-way through and have to start from the very beginning again. - The bosses are a horrendous difficulty spike. It's not that they're bad, just that the levels prior are mindlessly easy. When you die in this game, it is from not knowing the game, not your own mistake. Saying that, I'm not bored of it yet (on Ep 3). But I know once I finish it I probably won't play it again.

After some Reviewers on Youtube I watched hyped up this game for me, I bought it and hopped right in, but was rather disappointed for the most part. To name the positive stuff; -The Sound was good and clear. -The Sprites of Enemies and the Weapons looked well made and I also can definetely say that shooting stuff is fun in this game, with exception of the trident which was the only weapon I did not use. Now for the not-so-good and the negative stuff. -The music wasn't that remarkable for the most part, I couldn't get one track in my head after I was out of a level. -The level design was bad up to the fourth episode, there were mainly small and thight corridors leading into small rooms, sometimes a bigger one, all with the same wall texture. They also felt like labyrinths at some part because I could not even remember one room, since they all looked the same. The small thing in the top left corner called a minimap did not help very much. This only got better in the fourth episode, and only the fifth and final episode I would call "good" design. -The playstyle with a base and upgrades was too forced for me. Why do you let me have a base in which I cant even choose what episode to play in? I can only look at the already played levels with mediocre black-red sprites. I cant choose the episode, the next one is forced on me. Just let me play it like the old games, without breaks and with quicksaves. Even after I completed the game, I can only stand in the base and can't do shit, not even grind the last upgrades for my equipment. -There's no twist in this game. It feels bland, after you played the first episode, there isn't anything interesting being added except new enemies and level looks. I think the main problem is me after expecting too much from the game. It was presented to me as fusion of many retro game, but it felt more like a better looking wolfenstein 3d and nothing else.

TL;DR - Buggy, resource intensive for a pixelated game, infinite lives does not mean infinte lives. So when I first launched the game, the window was incredibly tiny. I could barely make out anything. I managed to up the resoltuion, but it took a restart of the game, and getting through all the logos and into the main menu before becoming big. Second, casual mode's description LIES. It says unlimited lives. However, I die once and it says I have no lives! How can I have unlimited lives, and no lives?! Also, this game pegs my PC about as hard as GTA V. Video card use is up to 100% (GTX 1050 TI), CPU clock speed ramps up quite a bit, and the CPU temp jumps about 40 degrees also. For a game trying to mimic the classics, it sure is resourse hungry. Avoid this game for now, wait for several patches to smooth things out. I think the dev spent WAY TOO MUCH time on the retro filters, instead of smoothing out the game.

Oh boy. Here we go killing again! This time it is Project Warlock. Lets keep it basic: Whats good? A retro-styled shooter with badass music, a pretty broken arsenal of guns and spells and a big pile of eastereggs and references. Its outstanding design makes this game feel good. I was unable to quit the game until i had finished it in one go. Whats bad? The gameplay is not made for new players. I will say it right away: If this is your first step into retro-shooter, you get your ass kicked. The Bosses can be pretty unfair at times, but feel rewarding once you beat them (Screw you Sphinx!). In total? A good game that can suck up a lot of time if you are into it. A few thing should be added, like Multiplayer, but i doubt this will be possible.