Posted on: February 6, 2022
BladedEdge
Verified ownerGames: 406 Reviews: 5
Glad for Nightdive's rescue, but meh
Having beaten Strife, I have to admit that it's a very disappointing game. I doubt I'll ever play it again. The original game was, infamously, incredibly buggy and utterly unforgiving with 'walking dead' scenarios. It is possible at multiple points in the game to lock yourself out of being able to finish it. Veteran Edition fixes some, but not all, of these traps. Most enemies in the game use hitscan weapons, making trying to dodge and circle strafe less helpful. One enemy (the spider bot) is difficult to spot, jumps on you out of nowhere, and makes an incredibly annoying sound whenever you're even remotely in the vicinity, even if there's no way to get to it. Enemy design is not compelling in general. The weapons generally feel underpowered. The difficulty even on lower modes is brutal, with ammo and health being frequently very rare. Levels are large and interesting at first glance, but eventually they just grow samey and difficult to mentally map and navigate due to the lack of wall texture variety in most of the game. Strife presents as a partial RPG, but there's all of one actual choice you can make all game long that changes the story path to anything other than 'dead end'. I'm giving it a three stars because it's not *bad*, and there are plenty of interesting sights to see and game design ideas to appreciate here, plus Nightdive did an excellent job cleaning it up and making it much more technically competent than the original CD version. I appreciate the rescue and restoration effort.
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