STRAFE

 PC
User Score
5.3

Mixed or average reviews- based on 42 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 14 out of 42
  2. Mixed: 12 out of 42
  3. Negative: 16 out of 42

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  1. JaydenPickens
    Mar 21, 2019
    5
    It's not that good as people would make you think it is. An average game, preying on nostalgia, but not delivering the oldschool vibes at all. The awful rogue-like gameplay does not help and enemies are not that good. Actually nothing is good her,e but nothing is despicable either. Don't waste your time on this. Better play Strife or Rise of Triad or other forgotten fps gem. Pickens disavows.
  2. Kaprawiec
    Jun 28, 2018
    0
    I love devolver games but... well lets start with this: we got games with awesome graphics like Destiny 2. You want it to look like 1996? Well, sorry but Quake 1 looked way better, enemies and weapons weren so lazy designed. This looks at best like Doom 1/Duke Nukem 3D but without 100x more details like destructible environment from DN3D.
    Mechanics? We got plenty of gameplay styles with    I love devolver games but... well lets start with this: we got games with awesome graphics like Destiny 2. You want it to look like 1996? Well, sorry but Quake 1 looked way better, enemies and weapons weren so lazy designed. This looks at best like Doom 1/Duke Nukem 3D but without 100x more details like destructible environment from DN3D.
    Mechanics? We got plenty of gameplay styles with polished mechanics like Quake Champions, DOOM, Halo, Destiny, Battlefield, COD etc. All way better, all way more playable.
    Roguelike? Hell we got games like Ziggurat which makes all what STRAFE wants to do but just better/more interesting.
    I really wanted to like this game. But its clunky af. Why railgun doesnt shoot straight like it should? Why there is no point to the story? DN3D, Blood, Requiem Avenging Angel, Half Life, Sin, Kingpin etc. all had some more/less interesting background for destruction. Hell, even Quake had SOME story.
    So saying its like 1996 again is just missleading - games back then werent like STRAFE.
    And ffs - they ALL had multiplayer.
    After half of my first run (on 3 ord 4th floor) I got bored to the point I wanted it just to end. Enemies were so ugly NOT like QUAKE or any games from that period at all - sometimes I wasnt even sure whats shooting at me. Some flying blob. Yeah like we had so simple models in games back then - no they looked fine. As a sum of it I ended the run, and deleted the game forever.
    Devolver You dissapointed me big time here its Your first title I just cant recommend to anybody.
    If it were released back in 1996 it would still get poor ratings, just like the one it gets now.    … Expand
  3. Captain_Chaos
    May 20, 2017
    9
    Don't believe the reviews. STRAFE has enormous potential. As a kickstarter backer, I can't say I didn't get what I paid for. I can't speak for the optimization issues, as the game runs fine for me, but they have a solid foundation for future balancing. As mentioned elsewhere, it pushes the "Game of 1996" look for all its worth and aesthetically, the game absolutely **** and has a prettyDon't believe the reviews. STRAFE has enormous potential. As a kickstarter backer, I can't say I didn't get what I paid for. I can't speak for the optimization issues, as the game runs fine for me, but they have a solid foundation for future balancing. As mentioned elsewhere, it pushes the "Game of 1996" look for all its worth and aesthetically, the game absolutely **** and has a pretty kickass soundtrack besides, I'm glad I sprung for that reward tier and am looking forward to getting my music. The guns feel effective and varied. My particular favorite is the disc launcher mode for the railgun, which calls to mind the Ripjack of Unreal fame. Enemies are as dumb as you'd expect from a game meant to be 21 years old, gibs fly everywhere and the "Murderzone" mode is pretty great as well, a wave survival mode with persistent upgrades unlocked when you reach certain point milestones. It is also immensely satisfying to successfully complete a run. I noticed by the time I had reached the forth zone that I had started trembling. STRAFE successfully captures the intensity of the 90s shooter, even if it doesn't 100% play like one.

    That being said, STRAFE goes so hard for capturing the feel of a 90s fps that it incorporates things I really DIDN'T like about them, namely, the blistering difficulty. You also have to look for keycards, but it's immensely downplayed from the old days. Quake 1 was hard, let's not kid ourselves. Mixing that style of gunplay with roguelike level generation should be a no-brainer, but in practice it makes the game harder then it needs to be: Quake wasn't stingy with health, armor and ammo pickups because you absolutely needed them all to succeed. STRAFE, being a roguelike, is by nature incredibly stingy with drops and punishes you for even incidental damage taken, which is incredibly hard to avoid in a game like this. It looks and feels like Quake, but you can't PLAY it like Quake and expect to get very far. Instead, you have to exploit the intentionally stupid AI and funnel enemies into killzones, making it feel more like Half-Life, only considerably less forgiving. You also have to reload, which if nothing else requires you to be a bit pickier with your shots.

    I am forced to lump STRAFE in the same category of roguelikes as CTHON, Sublevel Zero and Enter the Gungeon, where punishing difficulty is supposed to be an advertised feature instead of a drawback. It's a little more fair then Gungeon, though. I have to go once again on record that I don't dislike hard games outright: Bloodborne, Devil May Cry and of course, Quake are among my favorite games. but I don't believe in using difficulty in place of content, and I think STRAFE suffers from that a bit. You should absolutely give it a try you're at all curious, as it's still an infinitely better purchase then any "Triple A" shooters. I just think it could have used some kind of progression system a la UNLOVED or Immortal Redneck, which, I admit, might sound blasphemous to a fan of 90s shooters or 90s games in general. Or at least a difficulty selector. I mean, Quake had one of those.    … Expand
  4. Nero77710
    May 10, 2017
    0
    The game wanted to be an "old school shooter" with roguelike elements.
    A win win for me, cause I love these shooters and I love roguelikes.
    But this game is just trash. It fails to feel like an old school shooter and even as a standard roguelike shooter, it's just the most terrible I've played. I really was hyped for this game, but some mechanics and design decisions are just    The game wanted to be an "old school shooter" with roguelike elements.
    A win win for me, cause I love these shooters and I love roguelikes.

    But this game is just trash.
    It fails to feel like an old school shooter and even as a standard roguelike shooter, it's just the most terrible I've played.
    I really was hyped for this game, but some mechanics and design decisions are just completely nonsensical.    … Expand
  5. BlakeArius
    May 9, 2017
    6
    Rogue-lite Old school mid 90's doom/quake inspired FPS. Graphically it looks the part and procedural generation lvl's are neat too. However, everything else about the game is offensive.. The enemies are bland, silent and chase you down constantly making for less strafing and more just running backward. The music is just blaring, repetitive and annoying. Secrets will screw you over due toRogue-lite Old school mid 90's doom/quake inspired FPS. Graphically it looks the part and procedural generation lvl's are neat too. However, everything else about the game is offensive.. The enemies are bland, silent and chase you down constantly making for less strafing and more just running backward. The music is just blaring, repetitive and annoying. Secrets will screw you over due to where the enemies spawn. Bugs such as being shot through walls and invisible guns.

    The biggest issue is the difficulty, it's so overly punishing and health is so expensive and rare that to get through the game you have to play it slow and methodically which goes against the fast run-n-gun action it's going for. Better to just go play doom.    … Expand
  6. Jetpil0t
    May 10, 2017
    6
    "So Tight!", "not really?". I played the early release copy and this version has come a long way. However the game certainly needs some balancing and polish to really excel. Enemies make zero noise so spawning behind you often is frustrating, enemies all rush you and path finding within levels is linear to non existent, rather than encouraging you to move around the space you simply"So Tight!", "not really?". I played the early release copy and this version has come a long way. However the game certainly needs some balancing and polish to really excel. Enemies make zero noise so spawning behind you often is frustrating, enemies all rush you and path finding within levels is linear to non existent, rather than encouraging you to move around the space you simply backpedal and bunny hop about which ends up less serviceable than slow rolling the game picking enemies off, which isn't all that fun in this game, weapons feel weak especially if you boost through grouping packs and the shooting ends up as bullet sponge tedium, armor and ammo costs way too much. The entirely random nature of it really adds little to the gameplay, it would be better served if it was designed carefully and balanced throughout with multiple difficulties ala 90s shooters, so its sort of as if these guys didn't really play shooters in the 90s? The rouge style format simply doesn't feel suitable inside this game and takes away much of the fun with many runs just being a depressing slew of horrible weapons, upgrades and level layouts, something that wouldn't crop up otherwise. The procedural nature certainly provides more re-playability in theory, but ultimately just boils down to being more frustrating and repetitive than adding anything interesting or fun to the game. I like the games style and it's fun, but in the end it kind of ends up being aggressively repetitive, unbalanced and tedious like so many rouge style games do. Rule number one of a shooter is that a gun can never be too powerful, this game makes the classic mistake of confusing difficulty with tedium and thats a shame. Perhaps after some balancing and design changes this could be a fun game to rip through but currently, just spool up a copy of the Marathon 2 or Quake 2 if you feel the need for some throwback 90s style shooting. Also why the feck is the Wolf3D throwback arcade stack in game got no mouse support, makes it impossibly lame and basically impossible on PC.… Expand
  7. Cmelda
    May 13, 2017
    8
    Strafe (PC) while not old-school shooter (no, its not) is a great game and fun to play. It has its flaws but it has also many great elements like good weapons, lots of secrets, easter eggs and balanced difficulty (it's hard but not as hard as many players are reporting). For me it's solid 8.
  8. ave
    Nov 15, 2018
    6
    As an "old" video game player who experienced the early FPS, I thougth Strafe was for me. It was, and it wasn't.
    The novelty of "random levels" wears off pretty quickly, and dying (mostly because of "deprecating" twitch skills) led me to play only using the Easy level. The game started to be enjoyable (and "understandable") for me even with all its defaults (like the weak game feel, the    As an "old" video game player who experienced the early FPS, I thougth Strafe was for me. It was, and it wasn't.
    The novelty of "random levels" wears off pretty quickly, and dying (mostly because of "deprecating" twitch skills) led me to play only using the Easy level. The game started to be enjoyable (and "understandable") for me even with all its defaults (like the weak game feel, the unreadable map, the weird save system...)
    So for me it wasn't the "rinse and repeat" type of game it is supposed to be ; but more a "play-it-in-one-go-and-that's-enough". So recommended, but with caution.    … Expand
  9. Tomle1202
    Dec 1, 2017
    6
    Strafe tries hard to remind you of the old school shooters, tweaking here and there for a relatively fresh yet familiar experience. The only problem is that it tries too hard.
  10. Xxdaniels751xX
    May 13, 2017
    3
    What a nuisance I took. I do not know what to expect as water from May, but surely one expects something good if you love that classic generation of FPS ... and well, the bugs theme completely discards the purchase for its normal price. We will see in the future, but it does not give me any good thorn.
  11. Gaisericus
    Feb 1, 2020
    4
    It had potential and unfortunately performance issues exist that don't make sense given the intentionally dated visuals. It's somewhat enjoyable though.

Awards & Rankings

50
#50 Most Shared PC Game of 2017

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
64

Mixed or average reviews - based on 39 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 39
  2. Mixed: 27 out of 39
  3. Negative: 5 out of 39
  1. The Games Machine
    Oct 24, 2017
    79
    STRAFE is an engaging and captivating roguelike with a solid, 90's FPS gameplay (and graphics), tailored for fans of the "old school" genre. The procedural maps are well designed and varied, and the idea of having a single, moddable weapon throughout the game is pretty unique. The recently released Millenium Edition fixes a lot of bugs and adds some new game modes.
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  2. Gameplanet
    Aug 11, 2017
    60
    Strafe isn't bad, but there are many better ways to satiate your nostalgia for '90s FPS titles.
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  3. Eurogamer Italy
    Jul 13, 2017
    70
    Quotation forthcoming.
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