Redfall

It's a bit difficult to parse out the overall quality of Redfall. If you're talking about it from a technical perspective, it's scattershot but comes out better than some games that look and sound pretty but have terrible performance. If you're looking at it from a story perspective, it's a slow burn that cranks up things once you get close to beating the first major vampire, and the same can be said for the gameplay. Solo play is also better than co-op, based solely on the issues we ran into with connectivity, but mileage can vary. Overall, Redfall asks quite a bit of time from players before getting really good, which makes it perfect for Game Pass but tougher for those who don't have the patience to spend the time to wade through the jank to reach that point.

As long as you don’t mind the truly daft AI making things a bit mindless, Redfall is a good-enough co-op action game, but it makes me sad for the vampire-hunting immersive sim Arkane could’ve delivered.

Redfall does more right than wrong in a gaming genre filled with multiplayer shooters competing for limited screen time.

Frankly, it’s a relief to see real neck-biters treated with the proper pulp care. Arkane Austin gets right to it: teeth, claws, and clear agendas.

Redfall was conceived with a bunch of promises around it, but the real vampiric apocalypse is that it couldn't hold up against any of those. Looking like a last gen game with loading textures and an incredibly dumb AI. This game looks more like a concept or an alpha version than a Microsoft Game Studios final product.

With Redfall, Arkane strayed a bit too far from its roots and couldn't nail the landing. While the core gameplay is fun, and there are moments of brilliance that harken back to Arkane's glorious portfolio, most of the studio's strengths clearly do not mesh well with the open world genre, as exemplified by the disappointing safe house missions. Additionally, the writing is very uneven, never succeeding in making the player care about any of the characters, and the co-op mode adds little substance.

A title that feels incomplete in every perspective. At least the Vampire hunting was a good experience, but only the boredom and stupid AI are the ones that fill the hollow open-world. On top of that, a lot of bugs and insufficient optimizations are making the experience even worse.

Redfall is a hodgepodge of influences that fails to excel in the many categories it aims for. Far from being uninteresting, in particular thanks to a quality level design and cogs that fit together rather well in its main systems, the title of Arkane Austin is disappointing compared to the pedigree of the studio. Unlike Prey, the game design is not brilliant or original, but in return, the app is surely the most accessible game imagined by Harvey Smith. This adventure to be lived in co-op, featuring vampires who have managed to hide the sun, is to be tested with friends thanks to the Game Pass before it is overshadowed by other outings. Bethesda's action game will divide, but not rule.

Already made complicated by its niche Xbox exclusive aspect and high price despite access to Game Pass day1, Redfall and Arkane miss their opportunity to release a great game. This "most ambitious project" is also one of their least successful. FPS, RPG, single player, multiplayer, open world and other keywords, a little bit of everything for a lot of nothing and inconsistencies. This accumulation of good ideas and the few very good points of the game are ruined by the many problems (AI, optimization in particular) that tarnish it. A world, its exploration and bad guys nevertheless pleasant, with which we would have liked to get more involved and that the developers give it an even stronger identity.

Arkane Studios brought co-op in the world of vampires, but the game does not reach the quality of the titles Dishonored, Deadhloop, Prey, for which autors became famous.

I’d call Redfall a decent to good co-op experience (high 7, low 8) that’s got a bad single-player game attached for free. Anyone who jumps on this for an immersive, weird Arkane Studios solo run – if you’re looking for Prey or Deathloop, now with vampires – is going to walk away not just disappointed, but bitter.

Redfall is proof that Arkane's know design traditions do not lend themselves well to an open world setting, especially with an undercooked online component.

Redfall is a letdown. Arkane Studios' signature immersive simulation and level design are nowhere to be found in the game. Instead, their typical poor shooting experience, lack of polish, and rough performance issues are present in the game, which is a little too rebellious.

While it resembles its predecessors - osciliating between stealth and shooting, its domestic spaces filled with scattered stories to piece together - the results are soggier than usual. Don’t get me wrong: Redfall is a good open world FPS you can enjoy for dozens of hours with friends. But it’s a noticeable step down from the high perch occupied by Corvo and Colt. It’s the first missable Arkane game in an age.

Arkane moves to the looter shooter genre with a half-cooked game, with no personality and that, basically, does the same as many other games, but worse.

Redfall is an indecipherable mess. Many technical problems destroy its playability, making it still fun when played with friends, but otherwise it is clearly an incomplete game.

A shooter that hasn't been thought through to the end and that doesn't mesh its gameplay mechanics enough. Unsuitable for soloists, but still reasonably entertaining in co-op.

Redfall is a game that has wasted its potential as a fun co-op game in an interesting world, with both technical problems and poor game design choices.

I wanted desperately to find a good game underneath all the bugs in Redfall, and every now and then a tiny ray of light would shine through and give me hope. I took my time to give it a fair opportunity where others wrote it off only a few hours in. Unfortunately, they were right, and this will go down as one of the more disappointing games that I’ve played in recent years. All we can hope for now is that Redfall’s disastrous journey serves as a warning to Microsoft and its stable of development studios. Not because the world’s second-largest company can’t take the hits, but because players deserve better.

As much as we love Arkane Studios and their works, Redfall exceptionally disappoints in almost every aspect, and it seems that there is still a long way ahead for Arkane to polish all the issues up to the standards.

Redfall’s design is disappointingly safe and the whole thing is painfully unpolished. It’s a patchwork that draws inspiration from multiple games, but does it ineptly. Many of Redfall’s elements feel unfinished, ill-considered or deliberately pushed aside as if acknowledged as unnecessary by the developers. The game will not surprise you in any way, but there’s a good chance it will annoy you with generic quests, laughable AI, repetitive gameplay and botched optimization. I definitely did not expect something like this from the studio that gave us Dishonored.

Looking at the world of Redfall, I become sad by its wasted potential. For every great location, there are a handful of forgettable ones. The result is an empty-feeling game with several puzzling problems, like a lack of proper stealth takedowns, a tedious quest and waypoint system, and the inability to pause gameplay in single-player mode. Rampant technical issues hinder brighter moments, including frequent server crashes during multiplayer, inputs failing to work, broken animations, and numerous other bugs that make playing Redfall a frustrating experience. For a game about fighting the undead, Redfall feels soulless in all the wrong ways.

I really spent most of my time playing Redfall thinking about what else Redfall could have been. I like that Arkane tried something new, and I’m bummed it came out like this. It’s a really unique premise and concept in its first bite, but its fangs don’t leave a lasting mark.

Redfall is such a game where every positive point is followed by a "but". A pity!

Redfall is an interesting concept with some valid ideas, some cool lore, and some great moments driven by solid visual design and a knack for leaning into the supernatural. But with a vapid and dull open world, excruciating mission design, constant backtracking, and a plethora of performance issues—this release ends up sucking the life out of you one dumb glitch at a time.

To be fair, if Redfall had come out from a different studio with a lesser track record, I could imagine enjoying it a little more. The town of Redfall is pretty and picturesque, and there’s enough of a story here, about trying to take the town back from the vampires and competing cultists, that you could see how it could be turned into a compelling experience. To get there, though, would’ve required a much different game than we have here. Ironically, that different, imaginary game is one that Arkane would’ve been well-suited to make if they’d just stuck with their strengths. Instead, they opted to make this version of Redfall – the one that doesn’t suit them at all – and we’re all the poorer for it.

Arkane’s expertise in crafting an immersive sim does shine through, but a lot of Redfall’s mechanics, including the four-player co-op experience, feel undercooked and even faulty, resulting in a surprisingly mediocre first-person shooter in a bland open world playing field.

After some updates, Redfall may well become a Game Pass must-play, whether you like to play alone or with others. But right now, while you can have fun with it if you grit your teeth and give it some leeway, it's very hard to wholeheartedly recommend. While some issues here are likely to persist even once the title has been polished up a little, such as the world feeling too empty at times and skill trees being underwhelming, it's the technical problems that are the stake to Redfall's heart.