Captain Wayne - Vacation Desperation

[i]---See where this game landed on my FPS Tier List beneath this review!---[/i] The game starts out quite captivating, with its hyperactive speed, killer music and weird amateur (yet well done) cutscenes but after a few levels started to feel pretty mid. So to start, the game felt too fast. Like, devs probably deliberately don't make most of these FPS that fast for a reason. That said, it is kinda cool and after 20-30 minutes I acclimated to it. The music track for the first level is easily the best one, though mostly due to the fun guitar and keyboard solo's in it. It's no surprise they brought this track back a number of times throughout the game. A couple of the explosive weapons feel pretty bad to use vs. say.. a typical rocket launcher in other games. They're a bit slow to launch and many enemies walk around out, frequently not getting hit. There were numerous times where I was aiming at a single target and would miss 5+ times and eat damage, when I could have just used the basic shotgun weapon (or my bare fists) instead. It makes these weapons very situational (small chokepoints filled with enemies) and dangerous to have up outside of those situations. I ended up avoiding these weapons at all costs. I'd also say that the game speed conflicts with the implementation of these weapons. You can't be leaping around firing these without serious risk of blowing yourself up. They encourage you to slow down and be more careful with them. Level design is.. 'OK' (there was no stage that I loved or wanted to see again). So the cutscenes are deliberately cheesy which makes them somewhat mildly amusing. There's deliberate amateurism in the voice acting and drawings, but they stitched it all together in an impressive way. After the first few levels, you stop getting a cutscene after every level though. I'd say they frontloaded the most awesome stuff about the game and then it devolves into a bit of a bore after a while. It gets a thumbs up from me, but turned out to be nowhere near as good as the initial promise suggested. ===================== [b]Singleplayer PC Traditional FPS[/b] ===================== [i]Simply personal taste. I’m generally excluding RPGs, roguelites, immersive sims, etc.[/i] [b]Loved it:[/b] Doom | Doom 2 | Final Doom | Half-Life | Half-Life 2 | Shadow Warrior (Classic) | Far Cry | Nightmare Reaper | Doom (2016)^ | Boltgun | [b]Awesome:[/b] Duke Nuke’em | Doom 3 | Unreal | Wrath: Aeon of Ruin | Ion Fury | Ion Fury: Aftershock | Zortch | Dread Templar | SharpShooter3D^ | Turbo Overkill | Chop Goblins | Meatgrinder^ | F.E.A.R. | [b]Fun/Decent:[/b] Project Warlock 2 | Return to Castle Wolfenstein | Quake | Quake 2 | Hedon: Bloodrite^ | Quake 4 | Dusk | Hrot | Heretic | Hexen^ | Hexen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel^ | Hexen II^ | Herald of Havoc | A.W.O.L. | Sprawl | Prodeus | Crysis | Halo# | Vladik Brutal | Extraneum | Wolfenstein: The New Order# | Forgive me Father | Kvark | Doom 64 | Fashion Police Squad^ | [b]Captain Wayne[/b] | [b]Meh:[/b] 77p Egg: Eggwife^ | Slayers X | Calcium Contract | Devilated | Trepang2*# | Crysis 2# | Adaca | Bears in Space | RoboCop: Rogue City# | Forgive me Father 2 | Viscerafest^ | Beyond Sunset^ | Amid Evil | Reverend | Satan | The Fangs Huntress | Kingdom of the Dead | The Citadel | Beyond Citadel | Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem# | Powerslave^ | Arkos | Cultic | Brazilian Drug Dealer 3 | Metal Garden | Darkenstein 3D | Doom Eternal^# | Doom: The Dark Ages^# | Judge Dredd: Dredd Vs. Death | CteSiphon | Wizordum | [b]Didn’t Like (OR I did, but it has aged too poorly to recommend):[/b] Caeser’s Revenge^ | Wolfenstein 3D | NAM | Reaver | Incision | Blood | Blood 2 | Mullet Madjack | Blake Stone | Twilight Town | F.E.A.R. 2 | Rise of the Triad | Catacombs 3D | Nitemare 3D | F.E.A.R. 3# | Only Lead Can Stop Them | Carnal | Aliens vs. Predator | Aliens versus Predator (Classic) | Painkiller (Classic) | Project Warlock | Metro: Last Light# | Metro: Exodus# | Metro: 2033# | Rise of the Triad (2013) | Hard Reset# | Eradicator | Ubersoldier# | Chasm: The Rift | Requiem: Avenging Angel | Crysis 3# | Ghostware: Arena of the Dead | Fida Puti Samurai | Exodemon | Neckbreak | Dimensional Slaughter | ========================== [i]* = Some technical issues that irritated me: e.g. Motion Blur.[/i] [i]^ = Has some gameplay elements that make it more of a hybrid than straight up FPS[/i] [i]# = Feels somewhat like a console FPS.[/i]

[h1][b] TLDR: A boomer shooter that brings nothing new to a 30 year old genre, pairing unimaginative mechanics with genuinely terrible voice acting and a nonsensical narrative that never finds its footing. [/b] [/h1] [h1]PROS: [/h1] ➕Fast-paced gameplay [h1]CONS: [/h1] ➖Dated/unoriginal mechanics ➖Voice acting is terrible ➖Narrative ➖Poor looking/cheesy cutscenes [h1] [b] Content (Game world/Narrative) – [5/10] [/b] [/h1] The game world consists of a variety of often colorful and eccentric level design. It’s often nonsensical and whimsical in the way that a wacky cartoon from the ‘70s would be. You’ll have things like a beach resort then go to some sort of alien temple with ghosts. There is some decent exploration with some good potential for discovering secrets. The narrative is as wacky as the levels, but it’s often nonsensical in its presentation. You play as Captain Wayne and must thwart villains with the help of a detective who is also out to bring you to justice. The best way I can describe its off-putting presentation is again an indie cartoon from the ‘70s that you’ve never heard of and randomly jump in to watch it. [h1][b] Gameplay (Mechanics/Difficulty) – [3/10] [/b] [/h1] The gameplay loop is very similar to boomer shooters of the past and generally consists of exploring levels while killing loads of enemies to collect 3 or 4 different color key cards to proceed. I was very disappointed in the lack of both creativity and uniqueness when it comes to the mechanics. The guns, while keeping with the pirate theme, are mostly boring and typical. The shock gun is fun, but you get it so late and it uses so much ammo, that you often have to revert to the shotgun and SMG, which are boring to use. As if the guns are not boring enough, the enemy design really is often frustrating and takes the pace out of the game. You’ll very often have a constant stream of enemies that snipe you from across the map with rockets, yet you are limited to your close/mid ranged weapons, meaning you will either have to run in and take a ton of damage, or sit back and snipe with a submachine gun, which is just terrible. Really, the only unique mechanics that Captain Wayne brings to the genre is the ability to jump high when coming out of water, and a kick which extends your horizontal jump distance/speed. There is a notable difficulty jump a few hours into the game. The deaths are based on a checkpoint system, so it becomes quite common to die to a strong enemy and have to redo the last ~10 minutes. The checkpoint system is mostly fair, though some of the later levels are sparse. [h1] [b] Technical (Graphics/Performance) – [4/10] [/b] [/h1] On the graphical side, the game does not look good. Its normal gameplay looks like something of a PS1-era game, and the cutscenes have that look-n-feel of that ‘70s era cartoon. Neither are what I would consider classic or good. The performance is fine, I maintained a consistent 60 FPS with no issues. The enemy AI is generally terrible, with the enemies being unable to open doors and very often unaware of my presence despite shooting other enemies next to them with a shotgun. It’s almost humorous. The UI is okay, there’s around 5 or 6 guns so aside from using number keys 1-6, you scroll wheel to change weapons. 1440p @ 240hz | installed on SSD [h1] [b] Audio – [2/10] [/b] [/h1] Terrible. It’s hard to tell if this was intentionally bad or if this is how it turned out. The music is the best part, which often consists of heavy rock music, but its so loud that it drowns out other vocal level cues and quickly gets repetitive. The voice acting is notably terrible, again I question if this was intentional, but it sounds like the lines were recorded over a phone call between cars going down the highway. [h1] [b] Replay Factor (Longevity) – [2/10] [/b] [/h1] I don’t see any replay value here other than achievement hunting. There is a lack of any online components and the levels, while having some secret side paths, are generally linear. There is a score attack/survival mode option. [h1] [b] Final Verdict – [3/10] [/b] [/h1] Captain Wayne - Vacation Desperation (CWVD) was a major disappointment for me considering the high reviews on Steam. I found the game to be lacking in gameplay creativity while the story and levels did nothing to make me want to continue, often being completely nonsensical in the narrative. Let’s start with the bad, and there’s a lot for me. Perhaps the biggest negative is the lack of engrossing gameplay. CW doesn’t bring anything new to a genre that is going on 30 years, which is a big shame. The mechanical loop is the same ol’ “Collect x number of items to open a door” that we’ve seen for decades. The guns, the enemies, everything - aside from the pirate theme, is just the same thing without an attempt at innovation. Aside from those issues, it has many fundamental core problems that I would struggle to enjoy in any game. The narrative is often nonsensical as is the level design. I often struggle to think of a point of what I was doing. The audio is also a special kind of bad. The rock music is okay, but blaringly loud and repetitive. Furthermore, it drowns out much of the NPC banter you encounter in the levels. Even then, the spoken dialogue is of terrible quality and sounds like it was recorded over a phone. Trying to end on a good note, there’s not much I can think of that gave me fun or enjoyment while playing. The gameplay was fast paced at times, but the pace was often broken by sniping matches. Much of the aspects that I would consider bad might simply be design choices, such as how the cutscenes look at a bad ‘70s cartoon, and the writing is cheesy. I can understand how these are intentional choices, these largely fail to resonate with me and I had a worse experience because of it. Overall, I struggle to think of many good things about CW. Whether an intentional design choice or a lack of game development knowledge, many aspects of the game failed to grab me. During the few hours I played, I found it unenjoyable, uninspiring, and uncreative. I would easily not recommend this game. [h1] [b] Recommend? (Price) [Y/N] [/b] [/h1] [h1]No[/h1] I think $10 base price is a tad too much considering it's around a ~4 hour game without much replay value. Sale price of $5 is much better. You can find my curator page here: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Synik_GR

this is like if pizza tower and doom had a baby then raised by duke nukem and also became a pirate

Captain Wayne was confirmed by the developer to be asexual and aromantic. Thus, Captain Wayne is, canonically, an LGBTQ+ icon. -A rather short, but incredibly quality-dense nautical-themed shooter with tons of character. The gameplay is incredibly mobile and fast-paced, akin to Doom or Quake. -A lot of enemy variety relative to how few maps there are, but I wouldn't have complained about one or two more weapons to use. -The soundtrack. Kicks. Ass. Or booty, rather.

yea im really dealing with a lot of guilt and its really been eating me whole. my therapist who's also a pirate: arrgghh it be eating your what

战役通关，体验还不错，最后一关拿着蓝色激光笔逃跑杀爽了。

I've loved this game since I first saw it in development, and I don't know why I'm only writing a review now, but please PLAY IT!!! If you like boomer shooters, shooters, captains, the sea, or whatever else, JUST PLAY IT!! PLAY CAPTAIN WAYNEEEE!!