Relentless Frontier

My initial reaction after spending a couple hours with the game is overall positive. I am not sure I can recommend it at full price as there is only the first chapter completed. However the game is high quality and deserves more attention. The graphics are very nice appearing to be completely hand drawn. The guns look, feel, and sound very good to use. The music is great giving it a sci fi adventure vibe. The enemies have great animations and react well to damage, with a good variety even early on. They move fast and can attack in groups making it challenging. As far as the controls, you move fast as well. The game has movement FPS controls with double jumps, crouch sliding, and dashes. Movement is too fast for my liking as it seems the game has autorun set on by default with no option to turn it off. The game works well with a controller however even with the sensitivity turned all the way down feels too sensitive to me. Coupled with the fast movement speed can make aiming on controller a challenge with auto aim off and a group of enemies swarming you from all directions. Some of which wear armor that can only be damaged with the shotgun, so there is a bit of weapon swapping as well. The levels are large and non linear with a lot of verticality. This is great for exploring and finding the many hidden secrets and caches. However the game has no map that I have noticed, other than the occasional in game "you are here" maps. You may find yourself wandering around at times trying to find the required keys needed to progress, slowing down the pacing. I appreciate and enjoyed the level design, art direction, and new assets however. Edit: I found the map button so much easier to navigate. As it is a GZDoom engine game it supports mods and worked well with the couple that I tried, a companion and health regen mod. The devs were friendly and fast to reply about my question on the status of early access, advising the game currently has between 4 to 8 hours content depending on your play style with updates in the near future. I do think it will be awhile before the game is fully complete though so take that into consideration before your purchase. It is definitely one to keep an eye on if you are a fan of boomer shooters. It is one of the best commercial GZDoom games out there and I don't see many people being disappointed with the game overall once they have spent some time with it. Thumbs up.