Project Warlock

This is not a 5 star title, could have been better (the music is a bit strange, i am in a dungeon and a too happy song plays , fullscreen thing hopefully will be fixed with a patch and other small details ) but i gave it a max score because this is a game made for us , nostalgic gamers, not a cash grab with stupid microtransactions and this new tricks that i won't spend my money. Give me oldies , you get my goldies!

I love love love this game. The art style is very colorful and unique with that retro flair. The gameplay reminds me of a modern Doom with some magic elements. I like the variety of differenet builds that you can create. Thank you so much for giving the option to remove the head bobbing and unlock the framerate.

Project Warlock is a completely fun and simple first-person shooter with strong glimmers to Wolfenstein, Catacomb, DOOM, Heretic, Quake, Duke Nukem, and Blood (to name but a few) It's very hard to pin-down which classic shooter it feels most like. It really does combine elements from all of them. It's almost impossible not to feel nostalgic for 90's FPS's when playing this. The game isn't perfect, by any means. There is some definite slowdown in spots (particularly when using the machine gun) and a few small glitches here and there. The weapon switching system doesn't cycle through every weapon when using the mousewheel, and the lack of in-level saving feels unnecessary (though to be fair, the game is not super difficult and ammo/health items are plentiful, so you won't be dying all that often). Also, gamepad support is garbage (using my Logitech F30, easily the most universal PC gamepad, felt clunky and not all of the buttons mapped correctly) so if that's how you prefer to play, you won't be happy. But Project Warlock is a FUN game. It feels satisfying to play in a simplistic/classic type of way. The music is absolutely outstanding, the 8-bit style visuals are extremely cool, and the gameplay is fast and to the point with only a small dose of leveling/customization thrown in for fun. The levels are Wolfensteinishly horizontal and undaunting and the key-hunts are not tedious. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, especially if you're looking for a more modern-ish shooter with some substance and complexity to it, but it is almost sure to delight anybody who grew up with the granddaddies of the FPS genre.

If you play this game as is it's pretty enjoyable. If you're trying to compare it to some old titles you'll have a bad time. If you're trying to compare it to some new indie titles of that genre... you'll also have a bad time. What you have read already about this game is probably true - there's a resolution and FPS cap at the moment and melee works weird to say at last. But you know what? That gem is a pure fun experience. It's not reminding me of anything from the past... maybe Mafia III... you know... all that "go there, kill everyone, now go there, kill everyone...". It's definitely not Heretic, Hexen, Doom nor Wolfenstein. It's a hack and slash with basic RPG elements and kind-of-retro graphics.

TL;DR: It's fast, lourd and has a good size for the price. The controls are tight and remind a lot of the Build Engine games - especially Blood. If you can live with tight corridor shooters, dark labynrinth level layouts, sometimes chaotic (not in the good sense) music and at times uneven ballancing you get a lot of really good things in all the remaining regards. Super fast fun and a retro style that actually works! The Long version Like: The game is fast paced in a fun way. It has hordes of very varied enemies also in a good way. A lot of designs are tongue in cheek references to popular games from the era as well as movies. The graphic design is awesome and in this case it's one of the rare ocasions where the filters for retro look (like C64 pallete and pixelation, distortion etc.) actually WORK. The game arguably looks even a little better in the older, grimey C64 advanced colour palette look with 2x pixel size. Guns are in a wide variety and upgradeable in a way that invites replay. The episodes are in a wide range of styles as the game doesn't bother with a deep story. The look and feel is pretty spot on like the good games from the era it tries to resemble (~ 1990 - 1996). Sound FX sound super fat and add a lot of fun to the gunplay. It also has a few RPG elements that invite exploration. Like not so much: The game often is SUPER dark and your light source works sort of like in Doom3 - light or guns. Switching is fast but it is still annoying. You'd love to see more of the very nice looking envrionments, actually but most levels are super dark. Destructible light sources don't help, either. Levels are mostly super tight, low ceiling corridor figts. The fun larger areas are rare and oftentimes deco items (albeit destructible) are more in the way of the action than just good art. Level layouts are very labyrinth-y and if you stry from the level flow you get lost easily. No fullscreen automap. Music is sometimes good, sometimes merely chaotic and annoying.