The Citadel

The eroguro aesthetic is critical to the game experience, actually.

For some reason, this game and its sequel have performance issues when played on Linux if the game is installed on an HDD (I think this only happens with Fuseblk); the problem is magically solved when you install it on an SSD.

As much as people were making fun of me for playing this game and calling it tr**nslop, I think this is good and I'm not ashamed of it.

[i]The Citadel[/i] is an odd venture into old school, retro shooter tropes with a very light touch of gun simulation. In the five hours it took me to complete the seven-act story, I had a suitably whelming-but-fun time despite the lack of diverse enemy types and rather monotone level design. Where [i]The Citadel[/i] shines the most is in the actual gunplay. Each weapon does about what you'd expect, harking back to classic staples of the genre (including a hitscan lighting gun style attachment.) Weapons degrade with use, leading to optional jamming that has to be fixed mid-combat, but also leading to less accuracy. Though, admittedly, playing on the normal difficulty, I spent most of my time leaning around corners and hitting headshots from a distance to weaken the number of enemies I see (of which, there are often many, especially in later levels.) This [i]does[/i] take away from the run-and-gun feel that you can absolutely play into. With immediate access to a double jump and a lot of platforms to jump between, the game does lend to a more Quake-esque method of play, if that's your particular jam. The audio is a mixed bag of disturbing and serene, where the death cries of the enemies are a classic sort of brutal, but the music can often be juxtaposed with calm piano keys. There's a satisfying retro quality to the soundscape. There aren't many sounds, but the ones used work very well until you find audio bugs where enemies' footsteps and engines sound much closer than they are or weapon sounds cut out for a moment. Visually, it has indie charm. The art reminds me of a certain era of Flash games from the early 2000's. It's an anime aesthetic that isn't entirely polished, but there's something satisfying about seeing passionate, if not amateur, art being used in a project that's clearly made for the joy of it. There's a certain appeal to it and is sort of reminiscent of Bungie's [i]Oni[/i]. That being said, the developer did make a statement about not being a "guro" artist, which, as far as I know, is stemming from a suggestion that the game sort of fetishizes violence. Frankly, I can see one way or the other: the game itself isn't particularly sexual in nature, but does primarily feature women as its main cast of characters and enemies. Is that enough to say it's designed with malevolence? It's hard to say without real knowledge of the developer, but if the trailer was off-putting for you, it doesn't get any better or worse. There are some cool sections where you can pilot a mechsuit and get a nice power trip as you fly around and utilize stronger weapons and there are some homages to classic shooters like Doom and Wolfenstein hidden throughout the game, including entire secret levels mapped to resemble the genre's forefathers. All-in-all, in an age where the AAA gaming space is getting tougher to love, I can recommend [i]The Citadel[/i] as a fun, if flawed, indie shooter to spend a few hours in. If shooters have an ocean depth of mechanics, features, and stories, this falls on the shallow end but is worth a shot for the price for sure.

The weapons, the tactics, the relentless dificulty always makes me go back to The Citadel, always dropping a "One last try!" before i close the app, love this game so much!

LUCHSHE CHEM ULTRAKILL

muito bom👍👍👍

Honestly one of the most unique if not shortest shooters I've played in a long time. To start there are a couple problems like performance with a ton of enemies on screen or loaded into the level. A 4070 super and decent intel CPU should not be struggling, but I understand with it only being one developer. (more noteworthy their first game on steam) As well as a couple of crashes for seemingly no reason other than Unreal engine nonsense. Otherwise The Citadel is almost perfect. It is a masterclass in visual flair & oppressive atmosphere. It really does come off at first as a almost gooner DOOM clone, and yes at the end of the day you're dismembering anime girls and it seems odd at first. But once you get past those initial quirks the game really opens up in it's visual variety, it has this otherworldly feel to the levels, with some being in cityscapes with the backdrop of what seems like a black hole or a sunless sky, to entire lakes of fire and lava where one move is an instant death, and the music really provides a lot of extra quality to the borderline untextured levels. There was a point in act 4, where we go from a metal backdrop in a cityscape to a melancholic piano piece, directly into this ominous backdrop with no clear instrumentals, it's straight out of resident evil. It's amazing. The combat is hit or miss, the guns are punchy and extremely loud, great variety but really can be bogged down to just spamming the gatling gun over and over to get through everything. It's really kind of overpowered, but the variety holds up if you're less into using the best weapon in the game. Sadly the worst part of the combat has to be movement, it's clunky and has an ice skating feel to it and it ended up making me fall into the death pits I mentioned more often than I want to admit. The story, I'm not really sure. I don't want to spoil this for anyone who reads it, but it's quite something if you're into evangelion or any sort of cyberpunk dystopian funky ♥♥♥♥, it's great. And so far in the second game at the time of me writing this it's gotten a lot better at actually telling a story. Solid 9/10, great for $8 on sale, worth it for the small amount of downsides it comes with.

the toughest enemy you will face in this game is the horrid amount of crashes you can experience in a single playthrough, the rest are easy as pie

fun but it'd be great if it'd stop crashing