Review of the game Strafe - old school and hardcore of the nineties!
A long time ago, in a galaxy far away...
Welcome to 1996! Yes, yes, this is the same year when the legendary Quake I was released, thanks to which, in fact, e-sports appeared. It was also the first fully 3D game to support graphics accelerators, using polygons instead of sprites, and it was a breakthrough in the gaming industry. Nowadays, any video card, even built-in, supports 3D acceleration, but in those days it was necessary to connect an additional Voodoo graphics accelerator, produced by XNUMXdfx Interactive, to the main video adapter, which at that time cost a lot of money. But the picture in the few games that supported this technology was transformed before our eyes! Back then, shooters were probably the most widespread genre of games and everyone was playing them. True, not every one of them was something I wanted to go through again and again. Nowadays, every “shooter” game has some kind of plot, but back then few games from this genre could boast of having a clear story, everything was just like a stool - run and shoot and don’t think about anything!
Here is the recently released game Strafe (can be translated as shelling) takes us right back to that distant 1996, but without creating a time machine and traveling in a DeLorean DMC-12 at a speed of 88 miles per hour. Guys from the company Pixel Titans decided to take us back to the days when games were simple, quite hardcore, but memorable. As they themselves say, their brainchild was created precisely under the impression of Quake I and Quake II, and a little from DOOM. Their entire advertising campaign dedicated to the game is deliberately done in the style of the 90s: here you have very dark humor, and the corpses of children, and meat!
The creators of the game even made the name of the site with a mention of the year 96 - http://www.strafe1996.com, and the design is made in the style of that time, which is also good news. However, enough of the prelude, let's move on to the game itself!
Girl, can I have your phone number?
The life of a simple... scavenger is hard and unsightly.
If we talk about the plot, then, as in the games of the 90s, it is simply not there. There is only training conducted by a sexy young lady who tells us that “you’re in the army now,” that is, you, guy, are now a garbage man and your job is to collect scrap in the outskirts of the universe, where no man has set foot. After they check our reaction, see if we can jump, look around, run, shoot, collect scrap and use a fabricator, in which we can create armor and ammunition from scrap, we are given the final parting words, a gun in the mouth, a kick in the face. backside and sent to collect precious scrap. You are offered a choice of 3 guns - a shotgun, an assault rifle and a railgun, after which you jump into the teleporter and...
Where are the flowers, orchestra and champagne?
A crowd of evil mutants and robots greets you on a ship with the winged name “Icarus”! And this is where the tin and hardcore begins! The game does not make any concessions to beginners and immediately sends them into the thick of battle. Let's start with the fact that there is no saving of gameplay in Strafe, which is hinted at by the genre of the game itself - this is, in addition to a shooter, also a bagel. Roguelikes are known for their high difficulty, lack of saves, and frequent deaths. Let's say right away - you will die very often. Strafe, following the canon of the genre, punishes the slightest mistake with death, an achievements screen that describes your scavenger path in a very sarcastic manner, and an offer to start the game again. Just like in roguelikes, Strafe has procedural generation of levels, so that the next time you play the game, familiar corridors can be replaced by completely different ones. But all this system spoiled the impression of the game a little; it would be better if the levels were generated in advance and more thought out.
"Who are you so ugly?"
I'm not local, can you tell me how to get to the library?
Now about the combat system, which is the main focus. And the battle here is very fun and whirlwind! The game doesn’t give you time to catch your breath and rest - crowds of enemies are constantly attacking you, there’s not enough ammunition, there’s quite a bit of food that serves as first aid kits throughout the levels (due to procedural generation, sometimes you can only encounter them once in the entire level or not even encounter them at all) , the adversaries bite very painfully and love to arrange surprises, appearing at the most inopportune moment from some secret room in the midst of a firefight behind your back or falling on your head from the ceiling. After the next batch of those wishing to tear the nameless hero to pieces was destroyed in the next room, this room resembles a slaughterhouse!
“Well, who else here wants the commissar’s body?”
Despite the fact that the game is made in an old-school style, the authors did their best! There are also liters of blood (by the way, on the achievements screen after death you will be shown exactly how many giga-liters were spilled), which generously flows out of the corpses in a fountain and paints the gloomy walls, floors, and ceilings, and in general everything around in a bright red color, and the ability to shoot off an arm/leg/head (select the one you need). It’s better, of course, to shoot off the heads, because even if the next monster was left with one arm and was able to enter from the flank, it can pretty much ruin your life.
"I want to gray London sky it dawned on me. I want colorize this house red."
Speaking of enemies, there is not a particularly large variety of them in the game, there are about 20 types in all, but in each of the four locations, including the starting “Icarus”, they are different and they become more and more evil as you progress. But there is only one boss, they could have added more.
Oh, faithful double-barreled shotgun!
GUNZ, GUNZ, GUNZ!!!1111
And now one of the main features of the game is weapons. Although at the start you, as already mentioned, are offered to choose one gun out of three, there are not just a lot of weapons in the game, there are simply A LOT of them! Few shooters can boast such a number and variety of devices for killing - more than 30 types! Here you have an adjustable wrench (hello, Prey!), and a drum grenade launcher, and a rocket launcher, and a plasma gun, and a rifle that shoots energy disks, and a super-shotgun, aka a double-barreled shotgun (hello DOOM!) and so much more that it’s not a fact that you will encounter all the weapons in one playthrough. The ammunition, however, runs out quite quickly. Out of ammo? It doesn’t matter, you can take it and smash it in the teeth, using the trunk as a club. A little more about the main weapon. It's a shotgun for getting up close and personal, an assault rifle for bringing peace, freedom and equality at mid-range, and a railgun for those who prefer to take heads off from afar. Each of the barrels has an alternative firing mode - for a shotgun it’s shot ricocheting off surfaces, for an assault rifle it’s an unforgettable under-barrel grenade launcher, and for a “rail” it’s a slowly flying clot of energy that causes a small local exterminatus when it gets into a crowd of reptiles or when it’s shot at ball in the main mode (hello, Unreal and the shock rifle!). While walking through the levels, you can see quite rarely and randomly come across machines in which a small robot sits. If you give your gun to his caring metal hands, he will improve it. It’s just that while he’s pumping, our scavenger is left with his bare hands, and if there are enemies next to you, you’ll have a hard time and within 20 seconds you’ll have to crush skulls with your left and right. And here the great and terrible randomness plays a cruel joke - the upgrade for a weapon will be completely random and you won’t even know which firing mode will be improved - the main or alternative one, you will have to check in battle. In total, for each of the main barrels there are 3 upgrades for each of the shooting modes. Let's look at the example of an assault rifle.
- Main mode:
1) Triple barrel - allows you to mow down crowds of enemies thanks to firing from a three-barrel nozzle
2) Nail gun - shoots nails that explode some time after being hit
3) Machine gun - larger clip, reduced accuracy and excellent crowd control in small spaces thanks to ricocheting bullets
- Alternate mode:
1) Plasma beam - a continuous beam for a short time cuts enemies and passes through them like a knife through butter - very convenient to mow down local outcasts in batches
2) Guided rocket - hello from Half Life, allows you to control the flight of a rocket that explodes when hit
3) Minelayer - shoots mines that stick to the surface, which can be remotely detonated and even rocket jumped if you have enough reserves and health (and hello Quake again!)
If you don’t like the upgrade, you can return to the basic shooting mode with machine guns that make cartridges and armor from scrap. Much to your delight, explosive barrels are generously placed throughout all levels, which you can grab and throw at that beautifully floating “group in striped swimsuits.” Well, or you can quietly, if the situation allows, sneak up and shoot at the barrel from afar, sharply reducing the number of monsters in the room.
Half a kingdom, a horse, a princess and all the scrap for a first aid kit! I'll find the cartridges anyway!
And so, with the crumbs of life, most of the game, since the packed rations were completely eaten a few rooms ago...
Retro style all over!
A few words about graphics and sound. Since the game was made in the old-school style, the graphics in Strafe are made deliberately angular, with pixels and low-polygon models, so we can advise everyone who sees the graphics and asks “What is this?! I want a graphic like in Crysis!”, We can advise you to pass by. The cat cried a lot of graphic settings - several anti-aliasing modes, vertical synchronization, choice of screen resolution and “Make Strafe worse”, which turns the graphics in the game into pixelated ones. But this is one of the main features of the game that sets it apart from the rest. The engine used is my “favorite” Unity, which is why the game sometimes starts to lag out of the blue, although these are the little things in life. The only thing I can say about the soundtrack is that it is great! The music, matching the game itself, also sounds particularly old-school, evoking nostalgia for films on cassettes with a nasal translator from the late eighties and early nineties. Electronic music mixed with heavy guitar riffs pumps adrenaline into the blood and it’s very pleasant, cheerful and fun to organize genocide to it!
That’s it, no one will remember you and “no one will know where your grave is”
Win or fail?
What can we say about Strafe, summing up? Overall, the game is worthy of its legendary ancestors, Quake and DOOM. Crowds of enemies? Eat! Wagon and cart of weapons? Yes please! Possibility of pumping barrels? Also available! Cool music? Here's a whole hour of the coolest soundtracks! This is a pleasant thing, but there are also a few points that add a fly in the ointment to the proverbial ointment. The first thing that immediately catches your eye is the high difficulty, which cannot even be changed. In addition to this, the inability to save during the game, or at least after completing a level, turns the game into a very hardcore one. So place a fire extinguisher nearby and get ready for the chair under you to burn, and for the game to sometimes make you want to kill the developers. Although no one promised that it would be easy. There are, of course, teleports at some levels that will allow you to skip several levels when replaying them, but they are quite rare and you can die heroically one step away from the treasured teleport located in the next room and not even know about it. Personally, to my great regret, I was not able to go beyond the 3rd level on the Icarus in several runs; I didn’t have enough strength anymore. As Junkrat from Overwatch used to say, “If it doesn’t work out right away, we’ll blow it up again!” Oddly enough, the game does not provide a network mode, but I would really like to be able to arrange a deathmatch together with a friend or have fun shooting games in cooperative mode and show the natives who’s boss! Strafe turned out to be quite fun, with hurricane action, seas of blood and tons of meat, a shooter with a great soundtrack, but it won’t be to everyone’s taste. If you remember with nostalgia the good old games of the era of Quake and DOOM, love spin-off shooters with a huge arsenal of weapons, don’t want to bother with plot twists and turns, and don’t mind randomness when generating levels and when placing first aid kits, upgrades and other useful items on them , then the game is definitely worth attention! Due to its replay value, it will help you take your mind off the drab routine and give you the opportunity to let off steam by mincing a couple of hundred monsters and painting the interior a cheerful red color. If you are not attracted by the high level of complexity, endless attempts to go through several levels in the hope of finding the coveted teleport and graphics made in a “retro” style, then it’s up to you to decide what is more important - the pros or cons. The subjective rating is 7,5 out of 10 - the game is excellent, but not without its shortcomings and is very much for everyone.
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