Redfall

[DANGERMAN]

I'm early in so it feels a bit soon to really be posting any impressions, but I also feel like if I don't there's a very real chance no one will. 

 

I've just done the introduction mission. I'm playing as Davinder, got off the boat and sorted the fire station. The game hasn't really opened up yet, I have a super move now, but after beating an enemy to earn it there wasn't much left to use it on. Humans more or less go down in 1 shot, so far at least. Sneak up on them and punch them in the back, they'll either crumple to their death or get yeeted across the room. Initially there feels a real pressure to avoid groups of them, but I suspect combat might be a bit more interesting if you just take them on, that's not really what you're playing an Arkane game for, but there we go

 

Vampires I can't really speak to too much, as I've only faced 1, but I just shotgunned it repeatedly in the face while backing away, then stabbed it. This is important, you need a weapon with a blade on it, or a stake gun, or a flairgun I suppose. Shooting vampires enough downs them, but they must be staked, and you don't seem to want a melee weapon, just your fists

 

In terms of niggles, it's very early so it wouldn't be fair to pull apart the level design, there were multiple ways to deal with some of the things I've faced so far, so that's a plus. I'm playing on pc, I've had my performance tank randomly a couple of times, and there's a lack of settings to mess with, not none, but it feels like there's stuff missing. Like, I booted the game and the Nvidea logo appears specifically mentioning RTX. The first cut scene I saw looked to me that it may have had a bit of RT, a grainy orange glow that I feel would have been sharper had it not been RT, but I can't see any settings for ray tracing so I don't think it was? I'm honestly not sure. Either way, my performance feels like it should be higher, and I'm really not sure what's caused the frame rate to tank when it has. Generally though, it's been pretty solid, you can't really complain about 80fps I suppose

[one-armed dwarf]

I loaded it up once I found I could use a fake email to get around the login, probably played the exact same content (picked the same character as well actually, he has a lightning bolt damage-over-time). Accepted a mission to get the station some supplies, and sort of rambled around in the direction of some helicopters. Noticed the exact same performance weirdness, it drops heavily when you're near bases with enemies but neither CPU or GPU is bottlenecked. Maybe it's RAM or something, I dunno, or in built engine limits. The framerate might be fine but I had some very weird input lag, but my mouse is bluetooth. Could be that but I literally loaded Prey back up afterwards and it was fine, so I think it's Redfall being a bit shit. Even with latency boost plus or whatever it's called. Also there's a huge discrepancy between free aim sensitivity and ADS, with no way to tweak each individually. Skillup mentioned this, it's not great. Manageable I guess

 

That's a lot of PC chat, anyway my feeling about it is it reminded me of how Forspoken was this fairly barren thing with a few good ideas thrown in. This feels like the opposite in some regards, the world seems like it could be interesting and have interesting layouts that could promote some fairly brainy gameplay but I'm not seeing the bright ideas in it. It's also got some very dated lighting, no RT despite the logo. It has oil spills all over the place like it's 2007, and canisters which can be shot for explosions. 

 

I might mess around with it but don't really intend to take it seriously, I'm really more curious about why it's considered one of the worst games of the year tbh. My impression of it is it's just very basic, and strangely easy. I tried 'midnight' mode (which is the hardest one) and dudes were still dying immediately. Maybe it didn't trigger the difficulty setting correctly.

 

Rough year for immersive sims, between this and Atomic Heart.

[DANGERMAN]

played a bit more tonight, making my way to the helicopter crash sites (still very early). On the way I started exploring, there's nothing on the streets at all, but I started to go in to some houses. First one I went in a vampire was alerted, clearly supposed to be inside the house but they were stuck outside one of the windows, like Salem's Lot, but not a window I could access, so I went outside and killed them, their orb stayed in the air so I couldn't absorb it. 

 

The next house I go in has a vampire too, I kill it, it made me jump, good stuff. The next house had a bunch of vampires, a few were circling around outside, one was perched on the roof, when I shot it it didn't react, I just alerted all the other vampires. Whatever, not the end of the world, just a bugged vampire. I kill the rest outside, go in, kill one in the kitchen, realise there's one by the front door, thrown my special a it, it doesn't react, so I punch it, nothing. That's 2 broken vampires. I head upstairs, end up in a room with a UV light and a pile of dust, nice bit of environmental storytelling, but there wasn't a lot else in there. So I go in to the next room, another UV light, this time a vampire yammering away, hovering right in front of the UV light, again unkillable, and again not reacting to anything

 

Stuff like this isn't really game breaking, but man does it take you out of a game. It just tells you that it's not finished

[DANGERMAN]

I might look in to how long the back half of this takes, but I think I'm done with it. I've not hated it, and when I played multi player with Spatular I had fun, but it's an awful lot of the same shit and I don't think I can be arsed. 

 

I got to a point where the game could have ended. It wouldn't have made sense based on the intro but it would with everything that happened since. However, this opens up another area, another half of the game. 

 

There's too much that feels like a chore. There's the vampire nests, these appear on the map and make vampires within their radius stronger. To clear them you have to find the entrance, go in, fight your way through a bunch of vampires, then defeat the nests heart. There was 3 on the map for me, I cleared one, finished a mission, back to there being 3 again. Fuck that 

 

There's also a meter that fills up as you play the game, defeating powerful vampires and finishing missions. Filling that sends a Rook to hunt you down, so the more you play the more annoying it's going to get. Again, fuck that 

 

I don't hate it, the core game is absolutely fine, just under developed. There's so many times the game feels tense, where you sneak your way in to some creepy hall, a place dripping in atmosphere. You inch your way through, holding your breath, and what awaits you is a flare gun and some wire 

 

I don't hate it, but I don't think I can play it for extended periods any more 

 

[spatular]

^ yeah coop was fun! 

 

finished it earier, think the 2nd half is maybe a little shorter than the first half. i've been playing it a lot because my gamepass expires soon.

 

it's a bit all over the place in many ways. sometimes it looks quite nice, other times it looks a bit rubbish. sometimes it was quite difficult and i died quite often (even on easy) and some parts were pretty easy (as expected on easy)

 

it's a strange type of game too in that it seems to have been sold as more like something like left 4 dead but it isn't really like that, the structure is a bit like the division or destiny or something, but the gameplay is not quite like those, there are combat parts but you can also stealth through some parts too if you want, more like arcane's older games.

 

i suspect played more like a straight shooter it's going to be not great/average, although i did enjoy the combat sometimes. i was trying to play stealthy - although not possible all the time i think this really increased my enjoyment of the game, some levels specifically with interesting buildings/environment/roofs to sneak around on sort of reminded me of dishonoured (which i really like) and generally i just like sneaking around, stealing peoples stuff, navigating around being up high on roofs as much as possible, sniping from a distance - some bits like these i did really enjoy. and the world is quite a fun/interesting environment to explore. but then other bits, like the forced combat bits (or when getting spotted) which happens quite often, which were sometimes alright, but this is where i didnt like the game as much, sometimes it was pretty annoying.

 

there are quite a few odd/dreamscape/boss type levels which i wasn't as keen on.

 

arkane games don't control too well on a pad (playing stealthy like in dishonoured that isn't a problem imo) and this one with the default settings is pretty bad but i messed with the settings a bit and id say it's not bad at all now.

 

yeah the rook thing could be annoying especially if you've been treaking across the map slow and stealthy then it kills you and you're all the way back at a safe house. generally there isn't much punishment for death mind, think you lose a bit of money maybe?

 

there are a lot of bugs, the first 7 or so hours i played they were small ones that didn't affect any gameplay really, like floating stuff, broken lighting. after that i did have some more annoying ones but nothing really bad - think the worst was some buttons stop working which means you can't crouch which was a problem depending on if i wanted to do some stealth.

 

the xbox version runs at 30fps - not something that bothers me too much, just before i finished it there was a patch which seemed to improve the smoothness of it quite a lot - not sure if this was a 60fps patch or just a smoother 30.

 

overall i quite enjoyed it which seems an odd thing to say considering the bad press, which sort of made me unsure, did i really enjoy it? maybe my expectations were lowered a lot which helped? who knows i think i enjoyed it in parts anyway.

[DANGERMAN]

I finished this the other day, glad it's done, I didn't hate it but it's certainly not worth your time. I found the penultimate boss (I suppose it depends which one you pick) to be a twat. She has all these powerful attacks, which in and of themselves aren't a problem, but then she has a secondary phase where she constantly spawns vampires, they're weak but endless. While fighting them you also need to shoot weak points on an effigy, which means you not killing the vampires, which means taking damage. Then when you get to the next phase there's every chance there's still one of the vampires around chipping at your health while you're trying to restock on ammo and health packs 

 

The final boss by comparison I found much easier. Rather than deal with the enemies I just ignored them and did what I had to do. I died a couple of times but eventually I got a lucky run 

 

I hope this game doesn't damage Arkane too much 

[Craymen Edge]

 

Jason Schreier did one of his what went wrong articles.

https://archive.ph/5Xq7M (non-paywall link)

[Nigel Tufnell]

Bought this a few months back when it was on sale, just fired it up today, apparently a Bethesda account is required to play the game, found out that i already had an Bethesda account, the only game i think i may have required an account for would be Fallout 76.

Played the first 20 mins or so where you have to get of the boat, get to shore and secure the fire station, i am not a FPS player by any means but it felt good to play, is this getting some sort of update to remove the online requirement?