Selaco

Clocked in at nearly 150 hours and I still can't get enough of it! Easily one of the best first person shooter games I played in recent years, and I would go as far as to say that I'd put it along side with Half-Life games. Give it a try, you won't be dissapointed. And devs, thank you for this amazing exprience, you did something special here and I can't wait to play the Chapter 2 when it comes out. Keep up the good work.

Selaco is a bridge. Yes, you read that right. A bridge between the old and the new, in a very harmonic way, if that makes sense. Old-school, classic engine (or whatever the correct term is, i'm not an expert lol) BUT looks modern and fresh. Old-school FPS mechanics BUT spiced up with a dash of novelty and QoL. Old-school sci-fi (cold and brutalist) vibes BUT presented and built in a modern way. Selaco has a lot going for it. Weapons feel meaty and impactful (the nastiest shotgun i've seen in a while), combat is fast and exciting, references are funny and secrets are plentiful. There are moments of rest and there are enemy ambushes, there is melancholy and there is humor, there is slow, calming music and there are adrenaline-pumping bangers. All of this is only the first chapter, mind you, which is massive already. Some might be discouraged by the 'early access' tag, but the game is very polished, with devs responding to feedback and improving gameplay in a sensible way. Passion radiating from the game is tangible. I can't praise this game enough. I know the term 'boomer shooter' gets thrown around a lot (with mixed accuracy), but it doesn't feel right using it here. Selaco is a fascinating hybrid, scratching the 'shooting-bad-guys-in-a-brutal-manner' itch in just the right way. Just get this game, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Very low enemy density so a lot of just exploring the empty map which is okay but not too fun for me. Shotgun feels really slow and I genuinely dislike using it. Gunplay can make it tough to actually see what I'm shooting at but it's not too bad in most environments. I just don't really like it that much. Atmosphere, music, physics, logs all of that stuff is well done though.

TLDR: Great shooting with level design so bad that I'm almost always lost. Played this on the steam deck and out of the games of played, I'd say this is one of the more optimized for steam deck. The gunplay felt fantastic, and while the variety of guns could be boiled down to "3-4 full auto rifles and then other ones with actual variety", I'd say that just about everything served its own, unique purpose. There are definitely many moments later in the game where it felt like the devs just threw as many enemies as possible at me without leaving much room for strategy, but that's about the only major flaw with the shooting. The biggest flaw with the game as a whole, however, is easily the pacing. The game has such a massive conveyance issue with where you're supposed to go next that I was never be able to tell when I was and wasn't supposed to backtrack, unless I smashed my head against the wall a few times. Still, these problems were never *quite* bad enough that I stopped playing. The amazing shooting and the fun mix of movement and cover-shooting made for a game that I played start to finish, and left me wanting and waiting for chapter two.

The first F.E.A.R successor to actually faithfully replicate that games gameplay and feel while simultaneously innovating on it. I'm a sucker for doom engine games and love seeing how people can transform it, but Selaco is on a different level. The amount of destruction on screen at once would be insane for a modern game engine, let alone one from 1993. Even ignoring the technical achievement, the attention to detail is really impressive, and the game's overall presentation is stellar. Can't wait to see where they go with this, 100% going to be my GOTY when it comes out.

Selaco is an absurdly polished first-person shooter that's got some of the best feeling shooting I've ever encountered. Watching gameplay footage really doesn't capture just how weighty and chaotic this game is. Playing on the top difficulty and taking my time looking for secrets allowed me to spend 20+ hours in the Early Access chapter, I died a quite a bit! There is a good chunk of content here and there's basically no dips in quality, a more normal person will probably take somewhere around 8 hours. The game also feels fantastically balanced on the top difficulty (not the deliberately insane Selaco Must Die difficulty), the enemies are extremely lethal and you need to be very sharp with your movements and aim if you want to live. Easily joins my favourite shooters of the last 10+ years and carves out its own niche between games like Amid evil and Turbo Overkill. Where one feels like a true 90's boomer shooter with modern polish, and the other is just movement and combat mechanics out the ass to the point of absurdity. Selaco's lethality and almost tactical feel combined with its insane environmental destruction and interactivity, really help to set it apart.

I think, as is, the experience of wandering around kind of similar looking area, trying to figure out where you have to go just takes up too much playtime. It reminds me a bit of Killzone, which I adored, in how it has some good gunplay and only a small gallery of enemies. I think that if they introduce better map labeling, waypoints, something to help you figure out where to go, this would be an easy recommendation. But I think I'm going to drop this for now since I don't have time to be lost for hours trying to find the fun parts. An example of a game that did this well is Doom 2016, which kind of pushed you through the levels and rewarded you with fun combat.