Reviewed before the light update, or story update, or chapter 2 update:
This review will have minor spoilers about the mechanics of the game!
I'll preface this by saying that Selaco is my favourite indie FPS game, and is high up there in my favourite FPSs list. in the top 5 for sure.
I get that this means basically nothing to you, so for reference; I really like Cultic, I thought Amid Evil was fine, I disliked Dusk except parts of Ch3. I enjoy Black Mesa even with the ♥♥♥♥ post Xen updates. I love HL2 + episodes despite their flaws, I really like Doom2016 and can't help but dislike Eternal. There, should be enough for reference of my preferences I guess.
As for Selaco itself, the highlight for me are the enemies. Having good AI is something a lot of games surprisingly don't tend to focus on, which is probably why Selaco's enemies took me off-guard. I love outsmarting them as well as getting outsmarted. It's nothing too complex, but enemies will flank you, flush you out of cover, pin you down in place while others rush you, and have responsive dialogue to your actions. Might sound like not that much but it goes a LONG way.
The weapons are generally very satisfying. (This is probably in large part thanks to the brutality you can inflict onto the enemies as well as gameplay, like stunning enemies with each shot of the Cricket),
Main issue I take with them is the ammo, there's too much of it. (Hencewhy I always play with the scarcity mutator, but more on that later), in a normal playthrough, I'm constantly full on ammo, I decide which gun to use not because it's good for the job or because I like it, but because I need to waste it's inventory otherwise all those secrets I'll find with ammo in them will be worthless. There is a way to buy ammo in the game if you're too low on it (somehow).
Another thing to mention would be the gun upgrades. Generally I really like them, most I take issue with are the SMG taser upgrades, because I rarely ever use that feature, this is not the taser's fault, it's, again, due to me having an excess amount of ammo, which is best wasted by the dual wield mod as opposed to the taser mod (these are exclusive).
However, one thing that must be stated, and I wish the game would tell you this, in a regular playthrough, you will NOT get enough resources to upgrade everything in one run. (as of now, and as far as I understand, it it's planned to remain so)
A personal pet peeve of mine is the DMR feeling too niche, this might change in the future, if more ranged encounters are put in the game, but as of now I just use the Cricket for sniping when I can. One thing I wish the DMR would do is penetrate through enemies, there are two weapons that do this, one is a projectile weapon, while the other is hitscan. I understand that the latter serves as the game's hand-cannon, or sniper rifle or whatever. One tap kill for most things and shoots through targets till it hits a wall. I understand this role, but I don't see why the DMR couldn't also penetrate through enemies.
One last thing that irks me about the upgrades are the ammo upgrades. There are several upgrades which raise the magazine capacity of your gun, but ALSO make you get more ammo from pickups (For instance, the Nailgun upgrade changes the magazine capacity from 60 to 80, but it also makes every pickup give 10 extra nails) I wish these could be separate.
On a bright note: The Upgrades can always be undone, if you don't like one, or aren't comfortable with the tradeoffs it provides, you can just turn the upgrade off.
Upgrades now cost not only weapon parts but also money. (The money economy in this game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥ even on hardcore where it costs you 400 to save, it's too lenient, so at least now there's more things to spend money on)
Lastly, the game has two very powerful weapons for you to use: Mines in Annihilation mode, and Acid Grenades. Both of these are essentially an equivalent of a BFG round (although they can very easily shred you as well lol). The mines have been nerfed a while back but can still just delete a wave of enemies, on top of this, they can be bought.
The Acid Grenades cannot be bought and are very rare, however, they cause an incredibly lethal lingering area of effect. As stated before, the enemies in this game are smart, but they do not avoid this! This makes cheesing certain encounters very easy, on top of, being able to use acid grenades as mines as well. So if you know/can predict where enemies are gonna be coming from, you can an entire wave or maybe even two without even **looking** at them.
This is fine in concept, but becomes really funny when you hoard the acid nades and then just negate the entire last arena with them. I do think this will snowball further as chapter 2 and 3 are released.
With that being mentioned, the game currently ends with a large arena, not a bossfight as is teased. This could be a turnoff for some, so just a warning. I would say that even now, the game is worth more than its price.
Oh also, the fists are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ overpowered. No enemy except the Jugg stand a chance in a 1v1 with a bare-handed Dawn as long as you're not stupid.
Now, the destruction!!! So, Selaco does not have much environmental destruction of cover. You won't be shooting through walls here (although some can be blown up). Where Selaco's destruction excels is the enemies and the environmental clutter that can all be shredded to dust!
I'm sure you've seen the trailers or some footage, it's beautiful. I always say that one of the best ways to immerse a player in a world is to have the world react to as many actions as possible. and in an FPS, your main way of interacting with the world is shooting it / damaging it.
And you really feel it here, if I unload an SMG into an enemy in an office, a bunch of office supplies and paper will be flying through the air. If I lob a grenade into a janitor's closet, pulverized cleaning equipment and wet stains where chemicals used to lay will greet me upon entry.
Very many fun particle effects too, sparks and debris upon impact of certain weapons. Smouldering scorch marks from explosives. Blood, SO MUCH BLOOD! And you also get to keep as many bullet casings in the environment as possible, even move them around.
As far as I know the only thing ever stopping the devs from making their game more destructible is the engine limitations. Hencewhy something like shooting out lights is sadly not an option a lot of the time.
As for enemy gore. It's really good, but not as detailed as Brutal Doom, for reference (but very close). Also, certain enemy types do not have their own gibs yet, so they drop the default rifleman bodyparts when ripped apart. I assume this will be fixed in the future.
One point of criticism I often see is the smoke effect. The game has pretty excessive, dense, and lenghty smoke/dust appear upon bullet impacts (and of course, smoke grenades). I just think of these as an extra difficulty mechanic, if you keep hitting near an enemy's cover for long enough, you won't be able to see, so change position or kill something else in the meantime as the smoke clears. The problem for some people might come from the fact that enemies always see through smoke, while you can't. If this really bothers you however, you can simply set the smoke effect to its lowest setting.
Lastly, the campaign itself. So, you get several difficulty settings and I only play on Admiral (highest dif) or Hardcore (highest dif + no saves outside save stations + no health regen) , my review does not reflect the lower difficulties.
The challenge feels adequate, sometimes easy but not easy in an annoying way, even a single rifleman can ♥♥♥♥ you up if you're not paying attention. More like, sometimes the difficulty chills out so that you can play on autopilot a little bit. As stated before, my biggest complaint is the overabundance of ammo. THE GAME HAS A FIX FOR THIS! Mutators and Special Campaign. Dammit I reached the word limit
