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Redfall review roundup – The fangs don't quite sink in - - News | redfall,review | GamesHorizon

Redfall review roundup – The fangs don’t quite sink in

Tanay SharmaBy Updated:7 Mins Read Reviews

Redfall is a first-person shooter video game developed by Arkane Studios Austin and published by Bethesda Softworks. Known for their immersive first-person adventures, Arkane has made a name for itself by developing games like Dishonored and Deathloop.

Similar to the likes of Borderlands, Redfall is an open-world first-person loot shooter- except, instead of bandits, it has vampires and cultists. The game is set in a charming fictional town off the coast of Massachusetts and contains four playable characters, each of whom possesses a set of magical abilities.

Post-launch, the game has been receiving mixed reviews. Some claim it to be ‘good enough for Game Pass’ but not worth your time otherwise.

“A great setting let down by boring FPS mechanics”: Polygon

Polygon optimistically presents the game in a positive light, admiring its visuals and setting.
According to their review, it might be simpler to forgive the game’s flaws and embrace it as an engaging narrative piece. The dark tone takes center stage in the second half of the story along with plot developments that up the ante. However, at this point, Redfall’s town life has been drained too much for players to care whether or not its vampires succeed.

Unfortunately, the tension quickly evaporates when the enemies turn out to be shooting targets rather than the terrifying extraterrestrial monsters, cunning private military contractors, or vicious human cultists that the game has them out to be.

“Good enough for Game Pass”: Engadget

Based on Engadget’s review, Redfall makes moving around immensely gratifying, which is important given that much of the game is spent walking around neighborhoods. The running mechanic provides a big and quick speed boost that never feels too slow. It feels like gliding.

Redfall provides a foundation for great exploration, except it feels darn empty. Things start to unravel at this point. The entire environment of Redfall has a sense of death, but not in the on-brand, reanimated corpse sense. Long stretches of road and entire neighborhoods are devoid of adversaries or points of interest, and cults and vampire packs are frequently remarkably simple to spot.

The result is that most simple encounters conclude with a scattering of bullets and minimal tension because of the obscenely stupid enemy AI and the crushing level of aim aid. At least, there are always enough of shiny things to collect.

“Half-Staked”: GameSpot

The folks at GameSpot struggle to wholeheartedly recommend the game. According to them, Redfall’s enemies are incredibly unresponsive, which is something they never expected from a group this competent and a publisher with Bethesda’s depth of resources.

When using a sniper to kill enemies, it’s common for the nearby foes to continue their day unaffected by the loss of their allies. When engaged in combat, they frequently take too long to shoot and struggle to find cover, allowing you to strike first and kill later. Even the larger, more formidable vampires occasionally use strikes that are so simple to block that it often reduces them to afterthoughts, such as a lunge that you can simply back up to escape.

While Arkane’s rejection of its own fundamental design tenets is disconcerting from the perspective of a fan, Redfall’s lack of polish is apparent even if you haven’t played anything the team has produced before. This game, which is supposed to be the Xbox Game Pass spring showpiece, is simply not ready. Bugs and glitches are abundant: texture pop-ins, incorrect UI information, character models that oddly duplicate themselves, quest items that vanish, game crashes, A- and T-posing characters, and of course the game’s lack of a 60 frames per second mode, which was recently a pre-launch headline, too.

“Flavorless”: IGN

IGN compares Redfall to the quality of Dishonored, and it clearly doesn’t hold well. Redfall’s idea appears straightforward: retake the town from the slobbering vampires and their human flunkies who have overrun it. It might be best described as Far Cry with a supernatural bent. Sadly, the experience thus far seems surprisingly monotonous and frequently broken.

If the rest of Redfall had been able to sink its fangs into a solid art direction, it would be simpler to see past the mundane battle. But it hasn’t, and IGN has their doubts that it will. The narrative itself appears to be taking place via static in-engine dioramas or barely animated artwork. They all appear to be placeholders for upcoming cutscenes, and they admit that they had to fight their way to a film projector to play what was essentially a slideshow. This gave Redfall a cheapness that was difficult to overcome.

“Never shines quite as brightly as it should”: GamesHub

GamesHub took a careful look at what Redfall gets right and wrong. According to them, even on easier difficulties, the game’s numerous dark corners are filled with detail, so it’s disappointing that a strong narrative was chosen over repeated combat skirmishes that get harder with each mission. Redfall becomes monotonous and repetitive in some sections as the task checklist takes precedence over the development of an engaging narrative.

Redfall’s inclination towards multiplayer mechanics makes it feel as though it has lost some of its uniqueness, with its two main focuses—fun combat and an engaging narrative—fusing together globularly without really assisting one another. The game’s narrative is quite engaging in spurts, especially when it devolves into surrealism and metaphor in inventive, imaginative ways. However, these moments are spaced out throughout a sparse narrative comprised of several set pieces.

“A lifeless multiplayer shooter”: PC Gamer

The town of Redfall must play by the same set of laws if it genuinely possesses the DNA of an Arkane immersive sim, like the immersive worlds of Prey and Dishonoured. That’s where things take a wrong turn.
Redfall is exactly what PC Gamer anticipated it to be: a lifeless multiplayer shooter devoid of any of the humorous, systemic innovation seen in a single-player Arkane game. After playing it for over 40 hours, they’re not sure whether they even want to suggest it to Game Pass members— 77GB is a large download for such a lackluster FPS.

The village of Redfall has lovely autumnal emotions despite being one of the emptiest open worlds they’ve ever seen. There’s a nostalgic essence to it – admiring the kind of neighborhood they would have loved to trick-or-treat in as a child for extended periods of time going back and forth, the ideal cozy small town to set a vampire novel in. But as you take a closer look, you notice how much of this town resembles what an AI would produce in response to the command “open world immersive sim”.

Redfall is a significant game from Arkane even though it isn’t the biggest game Microsoft is working on. They had the opportunity to experiment with co-op, looter, open world, and, of course, vampires in Redfall.

The game is receiving tons of reviews, and they’re not just average— they are downright bad. It’s astonishing to see Redfall debut with a Metacritic score of 63 and an OpenCritic score of 64, with only 26% of critics recommending it, for a game of this scale from a firm that often cranks out good hits.

Compared to recent Arkane games like Prey (82), Dishonoured 1 & 2 (91, 88), and Deathloop (89), Redfall’s score is significantly lower. Although Redfall represents a dramatic change in direction for Arkane, there were at least some reservations about it. However, this is not quite the worst-case scenario.

The Good and the Bad: What does the game deliver?

Redfall review roundup – The fangs don't quite sink in - - News | redfall,review | GamesHorizon

Positives

  • A great theme and an interesting lore
  • Well-designed characters with interesting backstories and abilities

Negatives

  • Bugs and glitches hamper the visual effects
  • Lacks the studio’s usually keen eye for world design
  • Loot system feels repetitive and underutilized
  • Enemy AI is deeply problematic

Are you going to try Redfall? Tell us in the comments below!

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Tanay is a writer at GamesHorizon. He wears many hats - musician, gamer and interactive storyteller to name a few. He's pursuing a Master's in Behavioural Sciences and holds a Bachelor's in Human Centred Design. You'll often find him taking tough life decisions in unreal worlds. Some of his favourite game studios include Quantic Dream, Rockstar Games and Telltale Games.