Hedon Bloodrite

I was totally blown away by this game! In my opinion it's much better than other recent 2.5D shooters like Ion Fury and Project Warlock. It starts great and then keeps getting better as it goes along. Some of what I liked: + Excellent, imaginative non-linear level design with tremendous attention to detail. No hand-holding but it's hard to get lost for long. + Looks great, many special touches here including great use of dynamic lighting. I don't think the screenshots really do it justice. + Detailed story, with a unique fantasy theme + A large and diverse set of enemies, each hand-drawn and animated with unique sound effects + Unique gameplay touches, such as movable friendly turrets + Pacing is beautiful. Wonderful balance between exploring/puzzle solving, and serious-sam-like craziness + Have to think very carefully to overcome certain memorable battles. Strategic management of weapons and items is key. + Tons of different environments (forest, caves, lava, etc.), each well-realized + A great length. Took me 10+ hours to beat! + Excellent battle music + Satisfying final boss and ending I just have two (very minor) criticisms: - When I started the game it was impossible to play because some parts were too dark to see. Light and dark is very important here, it would be nice to have a gamma calibration screen on start up. - Story was sometimes a little hard to keep track of with so many characters and the "amnesia" beginning.

I did not think it was possible to get this... IMMERSED... in a DOOM engine game. This game is great. I expected it to be a throwback to some boomer stuff but it is much more. You can see in every level that it is crafted with love. It draws you in and does not hold your hand. Things are easy to figure out and yet you get no noisy journal, no quest markers. It rewards your exploration and your skill by letting you hold consumable powerups and weapons through the levels. Gameplay is great. Every attack is telegraphed and can be dodged, many enemies have multiple attacks and every weapon has different attacks for different situations and enemies. The soundtrack is awesome, I thought it was straight out of Unreal and I was correct: Alex Brandon is one of the authors. Everything is explained and nothing feels out of place, even the enemies spawning in your face. The only strange thing is that yourself and every Orc, Goblin or Elf you see is a angel faced half-naked girl.

A very good retro shooter with excelent gunplay, cute amazon monster waifus and excellent level design. In my opinion the only weak link is the story which is serviceable at best but you're gonna be to preocupied killing cultists to notice. I clocked around 12 hours, however I was obscesively looking around for secrets, so your mileage may vary.

This is an excellent game that hits every high mark for fans of games like Arx Fatalis while maintaining the essential elements of it's engine. If you'd like more insight straight from the dev's mouth: YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKVK6Ot9ZX4 Pod: http://inthekeep.com/275463/3019666-in-the-keep-podcast-43-zan-hedon

Shooting is good and fun, but platforming is so annoying that I'm inclined to quit the game. Your character has momentum and you have to counteract it if you don't want to slide off a platform as a piece of wet soap. To make things worse most annoying sections are right above lava which treats you with load screen 60 times a minute. To make things worse, lava platforming sections are drawn in muddy and not very distinctive pallete which makes it actually hard to make out platforms! As for shooter part. Dude, on the bathhouse level there's a place where you are let out in a huge arena. As soon as you enter, fast pased music starts playing and LITERAL HORDES are being piped into the room. And they get locked in one room with you, MUAHAHAHAHA! Enemy amount. ammo, guitar riffs - it's done just right. That's worth an erection. tl;dr shooting done good, platforming done so bad, it made me quit