STRAFE: Gold Edition

.. instead of a bum Which is what I am. First let me get this out of the way: Don't buy this if you're precious about your mouse sensitivity and don't wanna have to change your dpi just to get it within a decent % of your usual sensitivity. Unless you get it on a store where you could get a "time played" based refund. The game? Well, the only thing it has going for it really is it's aesthetic. It would lend itself nicely to an indie-fied atmospheric sci fi shooter in the mould of doom 3 or maybe fear or even some bits of halo but the corridors haven't been designed, just generated and the gameplay (shooting/movement) mechanics just don't fit. It's like they had this skin but no game, played a few of the better roguelike shooters and thought hey we could do that and if we make it look different enough and hype it up well, we'll clean up ... at which point it seems to have gone like an immortal Bill Hicks sketch. Devolver - "will there be titty?" Pixel Titans - "sure" Boom, a cheque falls in their lap. If you want a roguelike shooter with jumping like it's UT99 Morpheus go with tower of guns. If you want indie old school shooting go with Dusk. If you want this game, .. go with Revulsion or Heavy Bullets instead .. or just get Doom or Prey Mooncrash or something. Don't make the mistake of thinking this will run like a dream compared to those two games either. Less to download is the major difference. I didn't check my FPS but I have an i7 and gtx 1070 and this game didn't feel smooth at 144hz until I turned on low spec mode. Why is this, you might ask. Unity, I will answer. I shoulda learnt by now really. I wonder how much of that ad campaign money could have been sunk into making this a bit of a better game =/

STRAFE really does feel like an old school shooter at its heart, from the frantic running and jumping to escape the enemies that appear from each nook and cranny, down to the eerie calm that descends in the spaces between levels. Having just played a marathon session of Quake and STRAFE back-to-back, I can definitely say that STRAFE stays true to its roots, even if the sheer number of enemies creates a unique and frantic pace compared to the cautious probing that often wins you these old school shooters. There are certainly a few bugs to be worked out, and hopefully the developers are willing to tweak existing values and listen to their fans. STRAFE isn't a classic right out of the box, but it certainly has the potential, especially with a couple of layers of polish and bug testing. If you find yourself reading the reviews for this game, and are having a difficult time deciding whether or not to purchase, allow me to try and help. 1. STRAFE is psychotically fast. Faster than Doom. Faster than Quake. Faster than Serious Sam. Probably even more hectic than Painkiller. Enemies leave monster closets on frequent flags, which means you often find yourself surrounded. Methodically clearing a level is often a no-go. 2. Procedural level generation. If you haven't played a game with procedural levels, I suggest you try it out in a free to play game first. Some people are perfectly content seeing the same rooms multiple times, and some are not. As a general rule, if you still play the original doom maps, you're probably fine. 3. Bugs. This is a big one. I've already had multiple playthroughs end due to irreversible glitches, and in most runs, I end up suffering at the hands of a jagged experience. With no guarantee these issues will be fixed, if you can't handle losing to bad luck, wait a while before more work is done. Overall, fantastic game with some seriously fun mechanics. Just be prepared to lose. A lot.

Strafe: Gold edition is just that: a nice Roguelike(actually, more like lite) Fps wanna-be throw back in the 90's... or, as steam FINALLY decided to call them, BOOMER SHOOTER... .... buuuuuuut! Although the game has multiple, nicely implemented features of the 90's doom-like (actually, in this case is quake-like, which are strangely more rare) like strafing (... I mean, it's in the name), nice level design (yes, not every part of a level will change), boxy graphics, fre****g good music (I must admit, I really liked it) and gun feeling... it has just that. I'm not talking about story, of course (which is non-existent - like the classics - but still it has this ''dark humor'' energy) but about the wanna-be 90's part: the game makes references and everything in the surface level, but the gameplay is something else completely: yes, it does have some feature of it, and the game proclaims itself to be ''old school'', but it really isn't in its gameplay, which is more like a modern shooter (which is not even bad, but not great). Again, the game is ok, and really good if you need to blast something, but gets repetitive after a while, which is what actually kills a rogue-like (lite) game, if you ask me. Another thing that I realize is that there aren't much health pick ups, which it shouldn't be that much of a problem, but it clashes tremendously with the other ''90's-ish'' features, making it an endurance test all the way, and also it makes only some gun choice the only actually viable for completing a run. Still, I wanna recommend this game: finishing the run turn out to be a little of a chore, but a fun one!

If you go into Strafe expecting a successor to Quake it'll let you down. If you go into Strafe expecting short bursts of fun it'll deliver. Fast paced and graphically chunky like a 1990s FPS. Randomized stages, weapon loadouts, and an upgrading system like a modern FPS. Enemy types are kinda Quake-ish, with melee, pouncer, and different ranged enemies peppered throughout. Choice of shotgun, rail gun, or SMG for starting weapons. Weapons can be upgraded at robo booths with some trade offs. Temporary weapons can be picked up at random. Win, Mac, and Linux compatibility and even ran on my laptop's crappy 256MB GPU. Strafe ain't a Quake successor, but pretty good.

I bought the game on PS4, and I wanted to leave an honest review. They had 2 years to develop this game, and it is just lacking in every single way. It tried to bank on 90s nostalgia, but threw away everything that made 90s shooters fun. It was really dishonest on its marketing. The game is "rogue-like", as in procedurally generated with permadeath. This seems to be the new hip thing indie devs love to throw around, yet I doubt they played the 1980 classic from which the term derives from. It is nothing like a 90s shooter. The artwork is bland, and the gameplay is very unrewarding. It is entertaining to play in short bursts. It is getting two stars for the sheer fact that it is nothing it promised to be. What did they do for two years? They have the controls feeling nice, and the music is good, but everything else just falls short sadly. I'm hoping Dusk will be better.