Redfall review: a great setting let down by boring FPS mechanics

Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot Chapter after chapter describes the cast of characters and the Maine town in which they live. King spends much of his time sketching the history and culture of the populace before it is revealed that the vampires have come to make their home their new feeding ground, which is why many monsters are his. It’s the approach taken in the story. Before he gets preyed on by vampires, he gives audiences plenty of reason to care.

red fall, Arkane Austin’s latest, reverses this setting, introducing players to the titular fictional Massachusetts island after vampires have already sucked most of the life out of the place. As a result – about halfway through the story (our impressions are based on about 10 hours of solo travel) – you struggle to justify your interest in the fate of a crumbling town and find fresh blood. It’s a hard game. A very well-known trend in the apocalypse genre.

Players play as one of four characters, each with a supernatural backstory and accompanying special abilities, to investigate the nature of a vampire invasion, keep a group of fellow humans alive, and hopefully escape the island. increase. Not very exciting at first. red fall begins with players establishing a secure base of operations (in this case, a fire station) and helping a group of survivors settle into their new homes. There’s a strict priest, a kind doctor, and a grease-stained gun seller, each with their own storefront, accompanied by a bevy of other shallow NPCs. The members of this cast aren’t particularly memorable, and it’s hard to draw attention to their fates, whether they die or not.

The town of Redfall itself makes a stronger impression. It features a downtown core with centuries-old colonial architecture and surrounding attractions such as lighthouses and museums that speak to its history as a center of whaling. Few things serve as a backdrop to a horror story more than Mid-Autumn, so this town sits beneath magnificent orange, yellow, and red leaf trees. Many of its storefronts are decorated with pumpkins.

These locations, along with others, such as a lake bed strewn with dried fish and a shadowy abandoned hospital, are stylishly menacing with bold red 80s paperback fonts splashed throughout menus and areas. produce. name. As expected from Arkane, who is known for creating a strong sense of place in his games through his elaborate set dressing, the interiors of these spaces are chock-full of household items and discarded unfinished scraps. These details tell the nature of the characters who once lived there and hint at the dark secrets underlying the vampire takeover.

However, the atmosphere fades when it becomes clear that the enemy is not a terrifying otherworldly creature, a ruthless private military operative, or a vicious human cultist the game claims, but a shooting gallery target of a paralyzed skull. A highly trained soldier responds to an initial salvo of gunfire by running headlong into a corner of the cinema, waiting to be shot in the head with a rifle shot. Float straight towards and launch a demonic attack, then teleport away from the hail of bullets to back off a bit and try the same tactic again. zig-zagging around the screen to fend off , and some humans setting up auto-turrets — they’re mostly brain-dead, swarming around players and cloaking their own enemies. A vision that only presents a true threat.

Image: Arkane Austin/Bethesda Softworks

Note that the crosshair floats well on the Xbox Series X. Your best battlefield tactic is usually to strafing left and right with your shotgun, blasting cultists and vampires as they move toward your crosshairs. Overall camera choppy has improved, but gunfights are still no exception.This is a problem considering how much you have to shoot to get through red fallA group of cultists, soldiers, and vampires.

Playing as Layla Ellison, a college student with telekinesis, is an appealing wrinkle in standard shooter design. However, her set of special powers, a gun with the highest damage numbers listed in its description, doesn’t do much to disrupt combat that relies heavily on mowing down waves of rogues. , can pop a large purple spiritual umbrella that acts as a shield. She can also float by scratching her enemies, she summons her ghostly vampire ex-boyfriend. But those powers, along with her ability to summon glowing midcentury elevator cages that launch her and other players into the air, rarely add texture to flat, uninspired shootouts.

story to flesh out red fallIts excellent sense of location helps overcome lackluster combat. The incidental writing found in places like old notes and flashback scenes captured in spectral dioramas lends the plot an otherwise lacking spookiness and human drama. It is stimulating enough to color broad strokes.

This tone takes center stage in the second half of the story, and coupled with the plot development that adds momentum to the progression, it may be easier to overlook the weak side of the game and evaluate it as a compelling narrative work. However, at this point, the town of Redfall is too lifeless for players to invest in whether or not the vampires win.

red fall will release on Windows PC and Xbox Series X on May 2nd. This game was reviewed on Xbox and PC using a pre-release download code provided by Bethesda Softworks. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not affect editorial content, but Vox Media may earn commissions on products purchased via affiliate links.discoverable Additional information on Polygon’s Ethics Policy can be found here.