Viscerafest

not good enough

Fantastic boomer shooter, fun weapons, fun levels and a kickass soundtrack!

Viscerafest: You're Already Dead. To borrow a Homestar Runner bit, there's a rising split in the indie FPS market of indie games and "indie" games. Indie in terms of one to small teams produced by niche publishing houses, and indie games produced by A/AA studios and published but wearing the [i] skin [/i] of the former. There's nothing new to it, the industry will crib from independents in times of strife and has done so since the ZX Spectrum, but there's an annoyingly blatant energy to it that I can't abide by. Every so often there's a game that wears the skin of indie games and is pumped out by a larger corporation, and you can always tell by the amount of things off about it. It has the looks, it has the gameplay (of DOOM 2016) and it can even reskin itself for certain kinds of pastiches, but it can't ever commit. A marketing department would be too worried of losing cross market appeal to let the developers actually have too much fun, so they remain locked in turning neat projects into Diet DOOM clones. Even though the guns and ball demographic would rather die than play an FPS game that isn't Call of Duty, they'll be pandered to regardless. The question is what's the [i] big [/i] delineation between indie and "indie", beyond budget? Speed. The answer is speed. What made the "boomer shooter" genre was always clear artistic vision and pure speed, something lacking in the commercial sector even with advances in gun and ball games. Your average FPS fan has been smoking weed since MW1 and their reaction times are fried to a crisp, which is why they despise movement kids. A symbiotic development of how the game CAN be played, and one that can only really exist in places like R6S or Cawl of Duty. They can't survive in any other environment, and prove that children yearn for Quake. But [i] speed [/i] is the bread to which goofy ideas are buttered with indie FPS games, and no game quite symbolizes that more than Viscerafest. Viscerafest is not a first person shooter, rather it is a Space Opera interpretation of Fist of the North Star, with a female protagonist to make sure we win extra critic points for the Tony's. It is a game that, alongside Mullet Mad Jack and ULTRAKILL, exist to reinforce ADD in your average gamer. The gameplay loop is nothing but a frantic mixture of shooting, punching and b-hopping around each arena like a mad man, all to hear some of the corniest quips from a woman who giggles maniacally when you blow up civilians. No you don't [i] have [/i] to kill the unarmed civilian aliens but I'm in need of health and they're in need of giving me their hearts to consume for nourishment. You are Caroline, a [i] sorta-human [/i] mercenary who wishes to turn their alien fiancee into an alien husband, and needs the dough to put a ring on it. Some random warlock gets a bounty big enough to cover the deal, so you elect to run directly at him and anything standing between you and enough money to go on a honeymoon with the hubbie. The means to do so lying in a mixture of arms, upgrades and your punching technique. Don't look at the arsenal and expect this to be a game where overpowered guns blow up your enemies, no sir. The guns are powerful but you only get so much ammo, and every fight can, will and must include your fists. Is it silly? absolutely, but there's no better way to stun an enemy than clocking it in the closest thing his species has to a jaw. It all balances out in the long haul with the enemy variety that incentivizes movement, and specific mechanics. Your standard wave dash exists, as does the bunny hop speedboost that turns each well crafted level into a jump map with enough effort. No expense is spared to make the experience one of utter manic delight, and that's what you pay for when you go with random idiots versus the marketing board. Put your money where your mouth is, and spend a comedically long time uppercutting a boss to death with Viscerafest.

Сначала о хорошем. В игре великолепный саундтрек и для меня загадка почему его не продают отдельно. Звук тоже хорош как и озвучка главной героини. Играть в Viscerafest в хороших наушниках-это сплошное удовольствие для ушей. С визуалом и стилизацией уже всё так однозначно, подозреваю, что не всем придётся по душе. К числу несомненных достоинств также отнесу сюжет, он не то чтобы выдающийся, но завязка интригует. Играем за кровожадную, во всех смыслах, охотницу за головами, которая копит деньги на обручальное кольцо для своего кроткого и милого бойфренда. Это могло бы стать началом ураганного боевика с запутанными уровнями, разнообразными врагами и яростными перестрелками... К сожалению, в очередной раз наблюдаю, как автор ломает стройную и самодостаточную формулу бумер-шутера ненужными нововведениями. Враги невероятно толстокожие, у некоторых щиты, у других защитные поля. Всё это замедляет сражения, превращая стремительные перестрелки в пляски вприсядку вокруг противников с планомерным расходованием всего боезапаса в их толстые тушки. Но разработчик не останавливается на этом, патронов вечно не хватает что вынуждает лезть в ближний бой и разваливать недругов кулаками. Атаки ближнего боя выбивают из противников немного брони, а из их разорванных тел выпадают сердца, служащие аптечками. Да, нас тут что-то наподобие Doom Eternal и это не комплимент для бумер-шутера. Самое печальное, что даже на средней сложности игра не становится драйвовой и интересной, хоть я почти не умирал, но продолжал тратить неприлично много времени на непробиваемых врагов. Ну и немного мелких претензий докину. Где карта? В каждой игре с запутанными локациями должна быть карта. Не хватает нормальной системы быстрых сохранений и загрузок на F6 и F9 как это было во всех олдскульных шутерах. И что это за кнопка в виде значка play, обозначающая "навестись на врага"? Так и не нашёл её на клавиатуре. Итог. Даже самые интересны повороты сюжета забываются, красивые локации выветриваются из памяти, а прекрасная музыка превращается в фоновый шум, когда водишь хороводы вокруг врагов, нещадно насилуя клавиатуру, пытаясь пройти уровень.

This game is amazing. I've played a lot of "boomer shooters" the past year and this is one of the best.

eh, movement is a little too simple and clamped and ammo is oddly scarce considering the genre and inspirations

Overall feels like a good fusion of old-school (badass quippy protagonist, wacky guns, bunny-hopping, ludicrous gibs) and modern (limited ammo economy, melee which grant armor/health regen, varied enemies with specific weaknesses to exploit) boomer-shooter rules. It can be rather challenging and overwhelming at first, but once you get into the flow, it's a grand ol' time! It's an easy recommendation for boomer-shooter fans, but if I were to have any words of warning, they'd be thus: *As mentioned, the game can be quite overwhelming at first with the speed and precision it demands from the player, which was much more than any other boomer-shooter has ever needed from me. Bunny-hopping is mandatory to stay alive, and when you combine that constant up-and-down movement with your already fast movement speed and the enemies being fast as well...it can be practically nauseating at how zippy it all is! I got used to it eventually, but it might not be everyone's cup of tea if you're used to slower boots-on-the-ground gameplay. *As a fan of Doom Eternal, I'm totally down for limited ammo economy that makes me think tactically about my weapon and melee usage...but even then, sometimes the game just felt way too bloody stingy and led to fights where even at my best, I'm inevitably left high and dry, awkwardly punching the last few damage sponge enemies left! It just didn't feel right. And yet on the flip side, there were other times where I was awash with ammo...it just feels like a very unbalanced experience at times. *I feel like the game gets a bit too self-indulgent in the latter stages where it keeps interrupting its fun core combat with these combatless sections where you're slowly solving puzzles or listening to audio tapes or being subjected to unskippable cutscenes as weirdos monologue at you and blah blah blah shut up and let me play! It's bizarre because the game starts off doing the right thing by putting all the lore in a separate section in the hub so you can choose to delve into it if you feel like it, but otherwise ignore if you just wanna have fun, but nooooo, now you gotta watch and listen to it all. I typically like to replay shooters, but stuff like this absolutely kills my motivation to do it again. Apologies for being crass, but it really feels like a case where the devs were huffing their own farts a bit too much.

Doesn’t work on Steam deck as advertised. Freezes on startup

fun game

Is just gud fun. hope nothing bad happens to the main character.