0.5/5 ★ – FoofDeckman's review of Redfall.

What the hell happened, I mean seriously, what is this? Never in a million years did I expect one of my favorite game studios, Arkane, to release this worthless, lifeless, soulless, buggy and unfinished mess. The level of incompetence from even the base level of game development is shocking, especially coming from the same people who made Dishonored, the single best stealth action series ever made. I don't know what happened behind the scenes developing this game, but something happened, whether that be publisher tampering, budget cuts, or just a rushed development cycle, everything about this game is terrible. Usually when I play a big release game like this I can name maybe one or two aspects that I at least found enjoyable, but Redfall is a rare example of a game that doesn't work in any aspect. Leading up to the release of this game, the director compared the gameplay loop of Redfall to the Far Cry games and while on a surface level that's a fairly accurate comparison, but honestly that's even a disservice to Far Cry. Redfall is a co-op open world hero shooter, which if you're an Arkane fan you'll probably find that weird right away. The meticulously crafted sandbox of Arkane's previous games is scrapped in favor of one of the most generic open worlds I've ever seen in a video game. I can't express how empty this game feels, there was several times in this game where I'd just stumble onto a big open area and see nothing to do. There was no enemies to kill, no secrets to find, nothing to collect, just empty wasted space, to call this game's world lacking would be an understatement, it is just empty. There was times where I'd walk through what felt like half the map and I'd encounter maybe 2-3 enemies at the most, and even when I do encounter someone I can kill them without any effort in usually one shot. Redfall has some of the worst enemy AI I've seen in a triple A game maybe ever. It feels like nobody tested this game prior to launch, anyone who plays this game will immediately notice how glaring of a problem it is and I absolutely refuse to believe that none of the developers knew about this prior to launch. It is baffling how braindead every enemy you encounter is, there would be times where I'd just casually walk up to an enemy directly in front of them and have them not attack me, they'd just stare. Sometimes you'll have enemies walk into walls or shoot through walls, or if you're trying to stealth they'll somehow to detect you through walls. Other times I'll be fighting an enemy and jump to a different elevation only for the enemy AI to get completely confused and run away from the encounter, or in other cases they'll just run into an object or pace back and forth because their pathing wasn't programmed to go around it. The vampires in particular are a joke, the best way to defeat these guys is by walking backwards and slightly to the side, they will never hit you if you do this. For some reason they are only programmed to lunge at the player so if you keep moving backwards and to the side they literally can not touch you. There's a mini boss called the rook that you start to run into later in the game, and whenever you encounter him all I did to defeat him was get to a higher elevation and stand still. For some reason nobody in this game can climb over ledges or get to higher elevation outside of certain vampires, so you're just completely safe unless they can shoot projectiles. I can't stress how game breaking and boring Redfall feels to play, as even if you try to play the game normally something always breaks. First person shooters have existed for longer than I've even been alive, there's been decades of refining this genre to a tea and there is no excuse for Redfall to feel this clunky. Now I played this on PC with keyboard and mouse, and I've never played a modern triple a first person shooter that felt this bad. I don't know what it is about this game that makes it feel so bad to play, because it has all of the basic keyboard and mouse controls they you'd expect, the game just feels off. Not only that but Redfall has the classic colored rarity loot system with item stats, it's so tiring to see this same system used in almost every game, but usually it has a point for existing. Whenever you grab an item in Redfall you're never like "Oh wow I found a rare gold gun" because for some reason the colors don't mean anything. Throughout my entire playthrough I kept getting tons of gold weapons, but I'd immediately progress in the story and get a blue item that's better than my gold item I just grabbed. What is the point of a rarity system if you're just going to give out easy to find weapons that are equal value to a higher tier gun? It also doesn't help that the increased weapon damage doesn't do a whole lot in the long run as every enemy in this game takes only a few shots to kill, sometimes even one shot. Keep in mind I played on the hardest difficulty throughout my playthrough and I was still mowing through enemies like they were nothing. I'm not really a Destiny player, but a lot of the aspects of the heroes you play as in Redfall reminded me of Destiny characters. You have 4 heroes to select from at the start of the campaign each with their own two abilities and an ultimate. During my playthrough I played as Layla who has these telekinetic powers that can be used as a shield to deflect damage or can summon an elevator to levitate me in the air, but the problem comes when you realize that's about all there is to her. In my 15 or so hours of gameplay, I never really used a lot of my abilities because it feels like most of the time the level design isn't built around it. While the levitation ability had it's moments here and there, it's usefulness was incredibly inconsistent as it could sometimes do almost nothing if you move a certain way, but other than that I never really used a lot my other abilities. The abilities in this game feel watered down compared to a classic Arkane game and there's a lot less of them too, it feels like they had the full roster of abilities but lazily split up between 4 characters, most of the powers being completely worthless. Nothing says useless more than the pathetic thing this game calls a skill tree. There's certain upgrades you can purchase in this game that have no use whatsoever, what the hell am I going to do with more headshot damage when my weapons already kill enemies in one to two shots anyway? What's the point in me having more reserve ammo in my guns when ammo is so easy to obtain? So much of the skill tree feels like filler in an attempt to add more of a sense of progression in an already lacking game. One thing I love about Arkane games, specifically the Dishonored series is the art direction and style of them. A lot of them go for this gothic atmosphere and architecture, so I thought a game about vampires would fit them perfectly. It turns out I was wrong, as this game looks like hot garbage, I don't understand how this game looks worse than games from two console generations ago, just because you add tons of neon lights everywhere doesn't automatically cover the completely washed out textures and terrible models that looks like they were Fortnite shop rejects. Now I'm not someone who usually harps on the look of a game, especially if it's a good game, but this is Arkane we're talking about here and this is such a drastic step down from anything they've done before. There's a big plot point at the start of the game where vampires have fully blocked the sun in this area as an excuse for them to roam around during the day. Now this sounds really cool and fun in concept, but why does it still look like it's broad daylight? What's the point of making a big deal about covering the sun if it's just going to look like daylight anyway? Wouldn't it be cooler if it looked more like an eclipse, you can't even tell the sun is covered unless you look directly at it so what's the point? It's wild how little thought any of the designs in this game were planned out. This game couldn't even bother to animate cutscenes, instead we get these still frame 2D slide shows that constantly plague every part of Redfall. Whenever you talk to a character you get a single shot of them looking completely expressionless with the same terrible looped EDM music placed overtop of it for about 20 or more seconds until they stop talking. It would be one thing if these cutscenes were stylized or had some sort of personality to them, but they are just completely lifeless. There's still so much I can talk about, but I feel like I've said enough already. I'm not a religious man, but playing Redfall was like if Jesus turned wine into dirty water. Why would Arkane, a studio known for some of the best singleplayer action games ever made, abandon everything their fanbase loves about them, and make a garbage coop open world hero shooter instead. Maybe I'm just in the denial stage of grief, but I'm convinced something major happened behind the scenes. This game should have been cancelled and never released and as a result of this terrible mess of a game, Arkane has singlehandedly ruined their near perfect reputation, and also broke my heart in the process. It's like seeing someone you love turn into an abusive raging alcoholic, you'll never look at them the same after that, maybe that's a bit dramatic, but I feel like you get my point. Do not buy Redfall, the mighty have fallen.