Something sucks and I don’t know what
We got a few hours in with Redfall and so far the game sucks (pun intended) at keeping our interest going. Even though we still need to put more hours into Redfall before giving our final verdict, the story and gameplay seem to be ripe for co-op gameplay.
Note: This is an in-progress review of the game and we’re still waiting to try co-op and late-game missions. We will update this review with the final verdict soon.
You start off with one of the four playable characters and each of them has unique abilities that you can use. Depending on your choice, it’s either sniper, support, medic or attacker. Standard stuff, eh? The three abilities for each character are rather tasteful though. We picked Layla Ellison who can create a shield for absorbing bullets, conjure an elevator which is essentially a jump pad (Fortnite fans rejoice) and the third is my personal favourite - an ex-boyfriend who is a vampire will appear and attack your enemies. Safe to say, the writing and lore are handled with a sense of humour that you will only find in games by Arkane Studio.
Redfall is also good at bringing your curiosity with its unusual environment design. You start off in a boat which is stuck in water that is stuck in time. No, it’s not frozen like your ice cubes but frozen in time. Meanwhile, the sun is blocked so vampires can dilly-dally and feast. It’s an uncommon setting for sure and for that, Redfall manages to separate itself from the rest of the shooters in the genre.
You can go solo or bring up to four friends in this game. The game recommends that you do so and if you’re short on gamer friends, switch to Discord and delete Tinder. Only one app will bring you more gamer friends. Jokes aside, this is going to be available on Xbox Game Pass so best bring friends to make your own Ghostbusters gang.
Playing solo isn’t bad but the gameplay is comically ancient. Guns are plenty and you also get a few unusual ones made to dispose of vampires swiftly. However, Redfall isn’t exactly populated with vampires. You are mostly feeding bullets to cultists in the first few hours of the game. Hollow Man Cultists are gun-wielding fanatics that make your trek to the mission area a bit engaging if not memorable.
A headshot makes everything easy but guns don’t feel meaty enough. The enemy AI needs work too. We often found cultists stuck behind objects and were somehow landing shots a bit too easily. Vampire AI is also fairly timid as well but we’re hoping for the game gets bug-fixing patches soon.
It’s an Arkane Studios game and so inventory management is less of a chore than the bloated Ubisoft titles. However, weapons come in fast and you have to swap to the best one quickly. Sticking a stake on a gun longer than a pistol is also necessary since vampires don’t really die after taking bullet damage. You’ll have a small window to run the stake through the vampire’s heart once you feed enough bullets to drain its health. Failing to stick the stake into the sucker will only give it time to recuperate, so be quick.
Xbox Series X performance is apparently limited to 30FPS but we played it on PC without a capped framerate. We got around 100FPS on 2K resolution with the highest settings on our Nvidia RTX 4090. There are performance issues here, mainly from frame rate spikes. There’s nearly a 20 to 30% frame drop at random in Redfall and the game doesn’t really look as graphically challenging to give the RTX 4090 a tough time. Our GPU usage was around 50% so we think a day 1 patch should fix these performance issues. Fingers crossed.
We haven’t spent enough time in Redfall to pass a complete Stuff apporval. Co-op is yet to be tested and late-game loot and boss battles are yet to be discovered. So far it’s a good game for Xbox Game Pass players. We can’t shake the feeling that it was made with XGP in mind and that players will, and should, bring their friends to actually get some joy here.
Shooting mechanics are simplistic but we’re hoping for engaging missions and fun lore. After all, Arkane Studios are known for creating some really impressive stories.
We will update this review with a final verdict after finishing the game, so check back soon.
