- Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
- Release Date: May 2, 2023
- Also On: PC
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- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
- Unscored
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May 1, 2023A disappointing take on open-world first-person shooters, Redfall has none of the flavour or mechanical finesse that we’ve come to expect from Arkane Studios.
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Jul 31, 2023The result is a game with no identity of its own. Redfall simultaneously wants to be a looter shooter like Borderlands, in an open world like Fallout's, with action like Dying light and a lengthy multiplayer experience like Destiny. But it fails on all counts. The game environments are bleakly empty, the gameplay is wooden. Like the vampires from the world of Redfall, the game has no soul.
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May 17, 2023Redfall’s environmental storytelling is somewhat worth witnessing, but shoddy performance, sluggish gunplay, and a boring story have left me drained – just like the victims of the town.
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May 15, 2023I really, really wanted to love Redfall. It is genuinely impressive how much a development team from a studio recognized for its talent and design philosophy took the wrong decision at every fundamental aspect of a game. After finishing the game, the only relevant question in my mind was "how did we get to this point"?
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May 13, 2023Redfall's biggest problem is that it has no clear identity, with an empty open world and a lot of design and technical problems that seem to be very difficult to solve with updates.
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May 9, 2023There is a mission relatively early on in Redfall’s tale that draws you into the mansion of one of the town’s main antagonists. It is a creepy, looming pile creaking with atmosphere and, once inside, plays smartly with Arkane’s knack for twisted level design; shifting time and space and spinning a hair-raising tale through gameplay and artistic direction. It is brilliant and, for a moment, recalls some of Arkane’s best work. But then it’s gone, fading in the wind as you return to wrestle the so-so shooting, lacklustre looting and barrage of bugs...Rather aptly, the mission is called The House of Echoes.
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May 8, 2023Redfall features none of the variety to support its bloated length, in either its slow-to-unfold character progression or its bizarrely thin loot system, which is scant on customization and quickly devolves into finding the same guns at progressively higher levels.
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May 8, 2023Pardon the pun, but playing Redfall really sucked the life out of me. It's a game that so desperately feels like it wants to be more than what it is, which is understandable. It's dreadfully dull, buggy, frustrating, and feels shackled to a genre that it doesn't really want to be part of. Far Cry with vampires sounds like a great idea, but ultimately, what we got feels like a shell of a prototype for such a concept. The vibes the game radiates are great and there are glimmers of a better game when all of the game's elements are working together in harmony, but that so rarely happens.
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May 5, 2023This is just disappointing from all angles. Boring combat in both gun feel and enemy AI, lifeless open worlds that actively discourage exploration, and hero powers that are flat out rubbish to use make not for the fun co-op shooter we were hoping for. A massive miss for Xbox, Arkane, and Game Pass.
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May 4, 2023Redfall is a poor execution of ideas ill-at-ease with Arkane’s historic design ethos, a sad misuse of Arkane’s a unique developer’s particular talents.
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May 4, 2023Redfall is a bafflingly bad time across the board, whether playing solo or with a friend or three suffering alongside you. That it comes in the wake of Arkane’s excellent Deathloop, the enduringly beloved Prey, and the acclaimed Dishonored series honestly beggars belief. Its performance on Xbox Series X is regularly dire, plagued with pop-in, stutters, and a long list of display bugs. It’s beleaguered with bodgy AI enemies that struggle to mount a basic defence, choose appropriate cover, or even effectively navigate the world. The one-note mission design recycles and repurposes itself all the way until the anticlimactic final encounter. Button commands break, characters vanish, and the cheap and static story scenes seem woefully unfinished by typical standards.
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May 3, 2023Redfall makes concessions to work as a middling multiplayer game at the expense of a promising single-player experience.
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May 2, 2023Between the failed infiltration and dull fights, Redfall leaves us with a particularly bitter taste. The desire to loot epic equipment, to discover the bosses of the game (ultimately too rare) and the coop are all reasons that prevent the controller from falling from our hands. But with each confrontation - as insipid as it is ridiculous because of a strawberry AI - and with each new uninviting objective, one wonders what we are still doing there. So, we continue, to see if what awaits us is worth it, to realize that it is not. Are you looking for a very good FPS to do solo? Redfall is definitely not for you. Are you a fan of vampires and want an affordable experience to do with friends thanks to the Game Pass? Arkane Austin's game will fill you up for a very short time, at best.
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May 1, 2023Redfall is an anomaly because a game with this good of a team behind can't possibly be this bad, and yet, it is. There are these drips of looter shooter, RPG, and multiplayer elements sprinkled throughout, but none of them work together, delivering a messy and almost incomprehensible experience. Still, gunplay and exploration stay consistently fun, thanks to the satisfaction of taking down enemies and the level design. That being said, the single-player campaign is dull, but the multiplayer campaign could provide bouts of fun comprised of laughing at the strange AI behavior or the fact that no one can find keys to a door.
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May 1, 2023Ultimately, Redfall is a game that should not have been released yet. Its litany of bugs hampers the gameplay loop of exploring its world with friends, and that loop itself feels compromised by elements that are poorly executed and ill-suited to the team implementing them. I can't pretend to know whether Arkane chose to make a loot shooter or was assigned to make a loot-shooter, but I can tell you what it feels like: one of the best game studios in the world suddenly made toothless.
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May 1, 2023Between the half-baked gameplay loops, repetitive open-world busy work, and shockingly poor optimization, Redfall feels like a title that’s still in alpha, never mind a product that’s supposed to represent a flagship release for Microsoft’s premium subscription service.
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May 5, 2023Redfall resembles the vampires it's based on. It lacks identity, and sucks the life out of you. Every time I see a spark of potential, it's stomped out by bugs, braindead AI, and an empty world not worth exploring. I wish Arkane well in their next endeavor, because they need to let this one die.
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May 9, 2023Redfall is a sorry skeleton of a game that meets the lowest bar possible to be considered a functional, sellable product, and it manages to bungle even that elementary task. At its very best, this embryonic embarrassment almost aspires to mediocrity, but such heady heights are too frequently beyond its reach. If it were interesting enough to inspire any emotion other than boredom, the humiliatingly cretinous enemy AI, recycled assets, lack of basic features, and laundry list of glitches would be laughable. The quality of this game, however, isn’t funny. It’s exasperating. Arkane Studios is so much better than this, and be it through a lack of time or a lack of money, they’ve made something a studio of such pedigree could rightly be ashamed of.
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May 7, 2023Redfall is a broken mess that serves as the worst kind of Xbox Series X|S representation and a huge stain on Microsoft, Bethesda and Arkane's reputation going forward.
| This publication does not provide a score for their reviews. | |
| This publication has not posted a final review score yet. | |
| These unscored reviews do not factor into the Metascore calculation. | |
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May 1, 2023Arkane's vampire thriller is muddled and deeply compromised, but has moments of real charm.
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May 2, 2023Redfall fails to compel on nearly every level, not just in its uninteresting story, but also its all-too-familiar gameplay. Not only does Redfall feel like a game stuck in yesteryear, even its performance finds a way to disappoint. [Quick Look]
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May 1, 2023A narrative that fleshes out Redfall’s excellent sense of place could help overcome its lackluster combat. So far, the story hasn’t provided much impetus to press forward through mission after mission of decent exploration and drab gunplay. The incidental writing — found in places like old notes or flashback scenes captured in spectral dioramas — is evocative enough to color in the broad strokes of the plot with an eeriness and human drama it otherwise lacks. If this tone takes center stage in the back half of the story, combined with plot developments that add some momentum to the proceedings, it may be easier to overlook the game’s weaker aspects and appreciate it as a compelling narrative work. At this point, though, the town of Redfall is sucked too dry of liveliness for players to be invested in whether its vampires triumph or not.
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May 10, 2023In the end, Redfall feels unpolished, underdone, underwhelming, and uncomfortable. I am glad I do not have to play this anymore. While we will likely know the full story behind Redfall’s development eventually, this feels like the result of suits wanting product and not giving the talented people at Arkane the time and space they needed. I am disappointed because I want Arkane to succeed — not be left with this as a stain on their impeccable reputation. We all deserve better.
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May 1, 2023Arkane Austin should never be underestimated for putting their own spin on a genre, with Redfall offering enough surprises and memorable moments so far to set it apart from the open-world crowd. [Review in Progress]
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May 8, 2023Regarding the latest Arkham Austin title, we are not going to hide the fact that we were on the fence. On one side, we felt this irrepressible urge to bash the game, especially concerning its definite lack of finish. On the other, and despite its shortcomings, the title kept us on our toes and we sincerely enjoyed playing it. Saying Redfall is imperfect is an understatement, but with the right follow-up, we really think that it could, in time, rise from its ashes. Hopefully, this will come true as soon as possible. Good luck to Arkane's teams: coming back from this will be quite challenging.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 249 out of 1043
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Mixed: 118 out of 1043
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Negative: 676 out of 1043
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May 3, 2023
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May 3, 2023Unfinished game, subpar graphics, poor performance, dumb AI, broken gameplay systems and just a complete mess.
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May 3, 2023