Selaco

Got stuck mid campaign with barely any ammo with constant waves of enemies. Played on Steam Deck and switched to PC to try and do it, even with changing the difficulty to the lowest settings, it was a meat grinder. Also navigating the semi-open levels with barely noticeable landmarks is confusing when you don't know where the objective is, other than a short description. They should add a button to hint to the player where to go if they get lost.

This game runs on the GXDoom engine, so it’s basically an old school Doom clone that is polished with modern lighting and shadows and some destructive environments. The graphics are akin to the OG Doom being pixel art. This is just skinned with their art like the upcoming Fallout Bakersfield will be old school Doom with Fallout themed art. Gaming outlets will use terms like pushing the Doom engine to the boundaries with what is possible with the tech….I guess. It basically just adds modern lighting and shadows. I guess that’s pushing the engine to its boundaries. It doesn’t really add anymore to that. It’s not new gameplay. The enemy AI is pretty standard in that they will hunt you down on each level or room. You can destroy all the chairs, tvs, computers, and things of that nature. There’s a decent variety of weapons to utilize and there are Zelda type secrets where you need to destroy a wall by moving the explosive barrels the game will litter the levels with. As I mentioned earlier, there is an upcoming GZDoom Fallout skinned game coming out soon that I imagine will be similar to this game Selaco. They’re old school Doom clones with different skins. There is nothing more added to it. I just can’t see them adding a unique twist to that other than the Fallout theme. All the games I’ve played that utilize this GZDoom game engine play the same, just with different art. I didn’t like it. I don’t recommend it even on sale. At full price, I don’t think there is much content. Gaming outlets really hyped it up like it’s something different, but it felt like more of them same. Felt like a dated game that was polished a bit in the lighting and shadows. It does run well on Steam Deck which is a plus. I wouldn’t recommend it to my friends.

truly one of the great boomer shooter revival games. The level of detail in level design, mechanics, and easter eggs is frankly intimidating. combat is fast and brutal, and there's long quiet sections for exploration and environmental storytelling. I'll level with you - I have no idea what happened in the story. But that wasn't too big an issue.

This is the first time I played a game like this, where the core mechanics and general game polish is on a very high level, but the direction developers decided to take with this game absolutely ruins it and as result I cannot give it a positive rating. To give some context, I saw a video review of this game praising it for it's combat and attention to details and I felt like this is the exact type of game I would enjoy. But shortly after starting playing and going through first levels I was really dumbfounded with just how weird this game feels. If you looked at other negative reviews you'd probably notice a lot of people pointing out convoluted and cofusing layouts that levels in this game tend to have, and even though I agree with that, I think there are bigger problems at play here. The biggest problem I found in this game is it's pacing. Right at the start of the game you'd be wandering around the first few levels wondering where the hell all of the enemies are. Seriously, this is the most confusing thing to me with this game, developers put so much effort into combat, but throughout the game you'd spend maybe 25% of your time in combat and the rest 75% just walking. If I had to describe my feeling about this fact, I'd say it feels like someone tried to make a story-driven mod for a boomer shooter game with a fun combat. The lack of a good story and the development of the game's world is the second biggest downside of the game. Like I said, 75% of this game you'd be just walking and doing nothing, but the thing is it seemed like developers would've hoped you'd be enjoying your time exploring and learning the game's lore. But the unfortunate thing is, the story in this game is very shallow and it feels like it's supposed to be there just to give you a reason to kill bad guys. But then the game doesn't provide you any bad guys to kill so most of the time all you have left to do is to care about this shallow game story and world instead, which obviously no one is going to do? This game just doesn't know what it wants to be, whether to focus on the combat or the story, ultimately it fails at both. For example, It's filled to the brim with all kinds of data logs, environmental details and other stuff. But seriously, who would care about all that if the game world is supposed to be in the background of actual shooting and doesn't spark any interest in the player? Then you get very detailed mechanics of combat and the elaborate design of enemies and some of the shootouts, but who would care about that if you barely shoot anyone in this game and get blue-balled everytime you start to enjoy combat? That is definitely the strongest part of the game - combat. But there is just so little of it. At the very first level I thought my game was bugged or something, because it was constantly giving you signs of enemies approaching and that they're about to kick your ass and sh!t will go down, but that happens like so much later and when they're finally there it's like 3 enemies max a room (with rooms with no enemies in between). So even though the combat is good, the game just builds excitement for it but when it happens it leaves you dissapointed becasue of bad pacing and generally bad shootouts. Throughout the game there has been just a handful of shootouts (maybe exactly 2) where It felt super fun and I truly felt like this is what the game was supposed to be. It's when you're placed in a closed-off arenas and have to fight waves of enemies, it felt super fun and if the whole game was designed around this principle, it would've been incredible. But alas. Personally I enjoy the exploring aspect in games, and with this game it seemed like developers wanted to excel in that aspect but unfortunately it didn't come out as good as they probably intended to. There is an abundance of datapads which contain random sories and sometimes clues for finding secrets. I've read a few of them, and generally texts aren't terrible and somewhat interesting, but ultimately you'd just stop reading them after a few times because it really is just random stuff that doesn't contribute that much to an already weak world building and story, the premise of the story is so shallow that you can't take it or the world behind it seriously so you have no interest to learn more. Even though there is a big potential to improve this aspect. There are some cool/interesting details abot the game world, but the game doesn't try to present them to the player, rather just places them in the background and hopes the player would magically start caring and notices them. There are also some strange art decisions which contribute to the game world feeling shallow. While generally the environment art, weapons and enemies look good, I don't like the way the main character and characters' portraits on datapads are drawn at all. Their illustrations give off a very hobbyist-like feeling and look like fan-art of some sort. That kinda makes them feel "fake" and unbelievable. The soundtrack is also of a variable quality and overall lacks direction. While it's generally well produced and objectively sounds good, it's kinda bad at supporting whatever is happening on the screen, and rarely aims to deliver some kind of a mood to the player. For example the main menu theme, it just sounds like some cool synthwave track you'd find on spotify, how exactly it fits into the game's universe is unknown. It does kinda contributes to the game's vibe, but honestly that vibe is "a game that looks cool on surface, but is very shallow from inside". Another one is that singular D'N'B combat music piece, which felt super out of place. The safe room theme and some of the other combat music is pretty cool though. Generally all of these negatives which I described start to feel less bad towards the second half of the game, although still persistent. To me it definitely feels like this game had a lengthy development proccess in which developers worked on each level linearly, completing one from start to finish and moving onto the next one, and generally not revising their previous work as the game evolved throughout the development. This may explain such shift in quality. I have to stress that the problems are still there, but the second half of the game is definitely on a better direction than the frist. Ultimately I cannot recommend this game right now. I think developers need to get a strong direction/vision for their game first and rework it based on that. From what's there I think it'll be better off as a boomer-shooter with a focus on combat. Me saying that is funny, because that's the description which this game was given by the media. It's far from the truth though. It's more like a bad story-driven FPS that thinks it's story has more to offer than it's combat which proved to be such a wrong direction for this game.

looks good on paper, but in reality (as others said) the combat takes up a surprisingly small percentage and (so far) combat is always like this: you progress, at one moment enemies suddenly spawn all around you (including behind you), and start shooting immediately and somehow ammo is scarce (might be just a skill issue)

further proof of how passion and talent can create something better than billions of dollars this praise is given while the game isn't even fully out and that says something about the industry I think

Having beat it twice I cannot recommend it enough. It is the best of all things boomer shooter. The map design/navigation does leave a lot to be desired but the perfect gunplay and action make up for it in spades. The perpetual damage to an environment is also really rad. Coming into an office where a birthday party was going on then seeing it after a massive battle is a lot of fun. The game does a really good job storytelling through environment as well which I appreciate. I cannot wait for part 2 to come out!

F.E.A.R. gameplay, Half-Life puzzles with Doom aesthetics? Count me in!