STRAFE: Gold Edition

Great game! Sadly, unplayable due to fps drops. I'm told that this issue (and others) are fixed in Patch 6, which unfortunately hasn't and won't be released on GOG. Get the Steam version, which has the latest patches. Wish I would have known this beforehand.

Bought this despite all the negative reviews from people that are expecting the hurt your brain ultra HD with the need to run it with water cooled processors. Good Grief. I was able to run this on a 2007 iMac, 8 gig ram 2 ghz dual core processor at 640x480 res for that old school doomish look. It's not like the old doom, where you strafe into a room shoot the barrel, turn left and pop 2 guys then do your procedural dance around the room which you have memorized by heart. This is an ever changing level with some bad ass AI. The longer you play the smarter they get with the wolfenstein come up from behind you and kill you if your not careful. There are colored key cards to get to open certain doors, you can level up your gun with robot vending machines. Plenty of gun variety which you can cycle through and keep for certain situations. Use them up and then break it up over someones head for instant kill. But wait ... you find more, so it's not like your losing anything. You have to find scrap to change it into more armor. Which gets used before your health. There are health machines, but there is also ladybugs you can find which you can keep on you. Access with Q. Left mouse button smashes them and there blood gives you a little health like Wolfenstein with the drinking blood off floor. Right click you can throw them. Or you can buy a crate of them at the store when you come across them. You can also go into cryo sleep and "save" your progress for later. Thats the tube near the entrance that rises up. Not the elevator. 7-8 character varieties per level is enough for me. Normal is stupid hordes but easy is intelligent fewer characters. You will still DIE plenty either way you choose. My main weapon is the laser on the far right. You find the other choices in the level so why grab those. You earn coins and use them to unlock abilities which is the staircase above where you first warp. $20 bucks!?! WORTH EVERY PENNY Their randomizer is fair and is the best so far.

Not much to really say. It's a roguelite FPS with actually decent level generation, way better than prior titles I've played like Ziggurat at least. There needs to be more to the roguelite element though. Only a handful of items I found seemed actually game changing. The only real RNG that affected my runs was the amount of health, ammo, and the gun upgrade you get. And you only get one real chance to upgrade the gun right at the start and they don't seem stack. Also, the game encourages you to go fast with par time rewards but you're going to miss things doing that and take damage when health is the rarest resource so ??? Honestly hope they make a sequel that improves on it someday.

I bought the game expecting an interesting mix of quake and procedurally generated games, and got a steaming, broken mess of a game, that is nothing like quake and has terrible procedural generation. All weapons have clips, and when you reload any remaining bullets are lost, and thus if you are like me and constantly reload when there is a dull in action, you will quickly run out of clips. All weapons have gameplay enforced bullet spread the longer you fire your weapon, but accuracy perks can reduce the spread. Your secondary attack for your gun uses a percentage of your maximum clip, rather than a flat number to be used; so the Assault Rifle's grenade costs 16 ammo with a 25 ammo clip, but 18 at 30 ammo clip, and if you lack sufficient ammo in your clip, it forces you to reload losing the remaining ammo; instead of say producing a noise indicating that you lack the ammo and thus allow you to decide to reload or not. Found weapons have limited ammo and if you find a gun of the same kind that you are carrying, it replaces the guns ammo, rather than give you an extra clip; thus if you have a shotgun with 3 ammo, and find another shotgun, it replaces it with a full shotgun, rather than give you a clip of ammo + your 3 ammo. You get perks that improve fire rate, accuracy, damage, and clip size by blowing up little containers. Overall, with these mechanics it plays nothing like Quake or other old-school shooters; yes you can play it quickly like those old school shooters, but as the gameplay is more tactical and trying to play fast will likely result in missing targets and consuming ammo clips too quickly, you shouldn't play it fast. The other issues is that the procedural generation is flawed. I got to in one run to a place with two locked doors and no keycard anywhere. I had another run that created a deadend and thus couldn't complete the level. Finally, there is no save/load feature, so you have to play the game all in one play session. AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE!!!!

There are many reviewers who are much better than I who will point out the lack of cohesion in slapping procedural generated levels together. The un-enjoyable gunplay. The unimaginative enemies. The flaws are pointed out in much greater detail. What I can tell you is...this game is BORING. After 15 minutes I was just plain tired of it. I gave it a few more tries, than got so tired by how dull everything was, I was just done. If you want a rogue-lite FPS with well designed levels, imaginative enemies, and weapons and powerups that are fun to mess around with, play Immortal Redneck. It does everything this game promised but better. I pity the poor fools that backed this on Kickstarter, there is no way this was worth the two year wait.