A FPS-Action hybrid with some of the most impeccable and enthralling worlds and characters I've ever seen. All running on a version of the Doom Engine, somehow.
Mohrta is currently the latest FPS game in a joint effort between Scumhead and Osiol. The game follow a unit in the military group known as The Hayward, as they explore this zone known as The Great Strange, in pursuit of a AWOL member of The Hayward known as Avlan. As the The Strange is the culmination of many different worlds, it's up to this specific Hayward to explore these vast and varied dimensions in pursuit of Avlan. The game provides a very interest blend of FPS and slower-paced, almost dungeon crawler-like gameplay wrapped together in a fascinating world inhabited by a colorful cast of friends and foes.
Gameplay of Mohrta has the Hayward wander through various dimensions, completing whatever plotline the specfic area or dimension as a whole has to offer. Often involving fighting through a wide cast of enemies in both shape and fight style. After the tutorial, each level is able to be completed in any order the player wishes, although from experience, the challenge does ramp up nicely if going in numerical order, but again is up to the player. Each level is split up into 3 different "sub-levels" that feature a chunk of gameplay ranging from some linear exploration, some non-linear task, and sometimes something completely different, all usually featuring a boss fight that rewards with a weapon. Speaking of the weapons, Mohrta has one DENSE arsenal, while you start off with just a sword and revolver, as you defeat more and more bosses you'll gain access to a wide range of weird and wacky weapons. Some follow some FPS archtypes like a Shotgun, SMG, and Rocket Launcher like-weapons, though with some visual flavor while others have other quirks to them, like not being needed to reload or more uncommon weapon types such as a flamethrower, or just completely gimmicky and weird. All of these weapons, sans the melee ones, draw from the same ammo pool of 4 ammo types so it's up to the player to decide how to use their supply effectively. You're also given access to mana dropped from enemies, pots or refilled via your mana gourd which allow any of your weapons to do a special attack which the cost and effect all depends on what you're using. You also have a sentient plush doll companion that can refill your health with a push of a button as well as another creature that activates a flashlight effect. Between trips through the various worlds, is a hub that feature the level select as well as a tiny area filled with NPCs to talk to. Some are able to upgrade your gear. Such as using Strange Ore found in the levels to upgrade your weapons and armor, Raw Mana, another collectable, to upgrade your Gourd for more charges, and Doll Buttons for more Health Charges. You can also break down collected weapons you don't wanna use into ore to upgrade the ones you do mainly use. Which is a nice feature to have if you get a weapon you simply aren't feeling and rather upgrade the ones you do use. Lastly to mention is the game uses a save point system to not only, well save, but also refill your health, and mana. As well as giving you a opinion to warp back to the hub. Although if you're worried about having to rely on these save station for saving, as this is a Doom game you still have access to the quicksave menu. Although the game is intended to be played with the save totems, just to keep in mind.
Now there are some noteworthy things to point out. All of the weapons you gain are sorted by a single button on the number bar depending on what level you got them. For example, all the weapons from level 1 are all tied to the 2 key. Now I believe you are encouraged to thin your weapon amount out based on your preferences, but as you are able to well, not and be just fine. It was annoying trying to cycle through the weapons to get what I needed from each category. While there is a weapon wheel that kind fixes this issue, I would have rather have the weapons sorted by what ammo type they used since most of them generally try to have similar kinds of weapons use the same ammo. Another odd omission is no way to upgrade your movement at all. While I do think just being able to upgrade to Quake-like speeds would absolutely break the game. The lack of it does make backtracking both intended and optional very tedious. I mostly got by as there's a weird movement trick with the dash you're able to do while you're leaving any size of ledge. As this trick will give you a burst of speed. But then way later I found a movement trick by using a melee weapon's dash attack with the dash makes you move insanely far. While this is a some form of a solution it would have been nice if you were able to upgrade your dash capacity or speed from dashing.
Style Wise, Mohrta is utterly fan-#*%&ing-tastic. If you're familiar with Scumhead's other work you'll know they really love bio-mechanical body horror crossed with eldritch elements in their designs. This combined with Osiol's similar tastes, and you got a recipe for some of the most inspired character designs I've seen in a game in a good while. The fact that every single level has both unique enemy and boss designs is just so insane from how much work had to go in designing, modeling, and implementing them. Speaking of the levels, each one does this really fun thing of started off with a pretty familiar albeit very inspired level theme, like grassland, ice and desert while progressing through the sublevel each gains a new theme on top. Like that grassland becoming into a bug hive, or the ice area featuring a abandoned campus, or the desert featuring a festival. It always keep you guessing on what's next and it was always such a treat to start a new level and get absolutely floored by the impeccable art direction. Which speaking of, this is still mostly just Doom-style sector work with low-poly 3D models which is just insane that any of this is possible. There are some issues with the game hitching when a lot of action is going on, usually when a boss starts and using it moves, but it never caused a unfair death. Just something to keep in mind.
Overall, Mohrta was a such a surprise. I had only had experience via a old demo of the game so I had a rough idea of what to expect but having the full picture, man it's so superb. While the gameplay loop isn't perfect with the combat sometimes being a tad awkward and the performance, the experience from start to finish had me enthralled the whole way. Whenever that be the cool characters you meet, the lush environments to explore, or finding what new random contraption of a weapon to play with. There is just so much here done with passion that lands, it well surpasses it's short comings to landing in a must-play territory if you enjoy these kinds of games. There's even a few endings to aim for with the true ending not being to terribly hard to aim for if you're through. All in all, this is one of the few games I would say is absolutely worth it's default price and more so on sale. The amount of work that clearly went into the art alone is enough to justify it and as such I am much excited to see what Scumhead releases next, either alone or collaborative!
