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
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