It came from the age beyond the ages From the space beyond vision Wheeling in an abyss of infinite darkness We were minute among a myriad vast ones Bright, amid a myriad dark ones. We failed. Okay, let's jump in on medium. Yeah, maybe you're right. There we go. Welcome champions. It's been a long time coming, But we finally got all seven episodes of Amid Evil--New Blood's answer to "Can they make two throwback shooters that are face meltingly amazing?" Yes. Is it as good as Dusk? That's tough because Dusk is good, right? But Amid Evil is also just so good You can't flip around in the air like a circus performer, however, You can slay a vast array of monsters with some of the tightest and most meticulously-designed combat I've ever seen. You ever play a game where you just shoot bullets at a dude for a few seconds and they fall down? Amid Evil ain't like that. See, instead of having boring guns that suck, There's a bunch of satisfying and wonderful staffs, rods swords, maces, and Magic ribbon candy. And all of them are useful. You don't get a pistol you'll toss away when you get a machine gun, But let's not get ahead of ourselves. A little disclaimer before we start: I am playing on evil difficulty, the hardest, unless they hit a super secret difficulty on me and no, I'm not aware of any secret levels in Amid Evil. (Okay, that's a lie, but that's spoiler territory.) Also, I'm not shilling for New Blood, this game actually makes my dick hard enough to cut glass. This has been another installment in my ongoing series of: "I dare you to put that on the store page" We got seven whole episodes of bloody barbaric mayhem. Imagine if Heretic or Hexen got a modern remake but instead adding a bunch of useless shit about switch hunting, a dark and sinister antagonist making plans to take over whatever... the deed's already done. The seven realms have been conquered by an implacable evil and it's up to you, champion, to save them. You might notice first before anything else that this game looks beautiful. It's just as chunky as Dusk in terms of the enemy models; the textures are all low resolution... However, you're not going to notice until you're up close. That's Unreal tech for ya. All these pretty effects, Hopefully you got a machine that can handle it. I had a toaster when I first played this and I got a solid 30 FPS with medium-ish settings. This here is the epic settings. This doesn't even begin to show you how good this game looks. The game comes from Indefitagable. I think these guys are mostly Interceptor refugees. Don't hold that against them. You guys remember that Rise of the Triad Remake? (Intruder!) I realized while I was getting footage for this game, I still don't hate it. It's heart is in the right place. It's just jank as fuck. Amid Evil is nothing like this. Once you're in first level, make sure to jump down into the water or jump down into anything that isn't the sky, there's no falling damage, and you never run out of air while underwater so jump right down here and grab the Whisper's Edge We'll talk about that in a little bit. It's a fine weapon. First up is the "Axe of the black labyrinth", "A weapon created by the old gods themselves that has belonged to many great warriors and heroes. It senses evil, and at a short distance will pull anything that it hates towards it." Yeah, it does that. This will be the first weapon you use, it'll be your go-to for saving mana, and you might think being the starting melee weapon that It doesn't work as well as the others. You would be wrong. Lower-Tier enemies in any episode willl go down with one or two hits, after which you'll immediately collect their souls. Those are for the soul mode, which, okay, imagine Heretic's Tome of Power, except all your weapons are good. Yeah, Get out of here, Fire Mace. You're a fucking joke. Here's what the Axe does once you power it up. Now normally you collect the souls, and as soon as the meter is full, You press alt fire to use it. You can go into the options menu and turn that off, because originally what happened was you would just automatically use it as soon as the meter was full, but then they decided to turn that off so now it's for true champions, which we are. It was a heavily requested feature that they patched in forever ago. I don't use it. I like to live dangerously. You might notice how fast these monsters are. That's because we're playing on Evil. I wouldn't suggest that for beginners, you should get used to how these weapons work first, and you will, because the game is really good at showing you. You'll pick up this thing, The Staff of the Azure Orb. The projectiles themselves don't do a ton of damage, they just home in on monsters Which is what makes this one indispensable. Great for flying enemies that want to evade fire. The game immediately lets you power it up and it turns monsters into water. That's one of the things this game does exceptionally well, Every time you attack an enemy, every time you kill an enemy, there is very clear and precise audio visual feedback. You can hear and see exactly when the monster dies. It doesn't just look cool it's extremely important during combat to be able to know, down to the second, when you can move on to the next target. If You want to survive, never stop moving. You're fairly quick, you can jump to evade attack. Monsters do a ton of damage, especially melee damage, as far as I can tell nothing in this game hitscans you, and this being episode one, the monsters are fairly simple Oh, yeah Each episode has different monsters in it. Episode one has you dealing with astral acolytes. Simple, easy, cannon fodder. One swing of the axe sends it back to their ancestors. Deacons. Slightly less easy. They have a ranged attack that can block your shots. Astral defenders. Bomb tossing bastards That'll be a pain from the first level on, and then they disappear after the first episode, so that's good. Astral angels. The flying enemies of this episode. Good to test out your water staff. [Postal Dude] "Now the flowers will grow!" Apostles. These are the walls of meat you need to really work at killing, and on Evil difficulty, they're everywhere. Good, I get to show off the Whisper's Edge, this beautiful sword here. Think of it as your shotgun It makes one long wide slice, and because this is Amid Evil, you can hear the sound it makes when it strikes an enemy Yeah, this is one of my favorites. When you power up it shoots bigger slashes that bounce around and just... Ooh. Trying to describe how combat feels in this game, because of how every action has such immediate and recognizable feedback, When you're done with a longer battle, I'm not talking about some kind of Painkiller, Serious Sam backwards Death March where you hold down the s key and shoot I'm talking about Dodging, weaving, jumping back and slicing the monsters to pieces, on the edge of death It's hard to describe, but here's basically how it feels when you finish a battle I'm not capable of real emotion, so I use Bruce Campbell clips. I mean, maybe if you like shitty combat that sucks You shouldn't buy this game You better get ready for pain, because after the first level the game's done holding your hand This right here, I have a system, It works Whenever you've killed an enemy with the Whisper's Edge, let off another shot because there could be another one coming. Always. Don't worry about wasting your mana. You'll be fine. It's better than letting one of those things get near you. These levels for the moment are very Quake-like, very Unreal-like, Except obviously a lot prettier. And the game in general has some stunning architecture, Just- There's a secret here in the second level you should all get to. It's a little bit hard to find, a lot of the secrets are, but you get what is my favorite weapon in the game, Which says something because almost every weapon in this game is amazing. I could give or take the water orb staff. It's fine. It's just that when you pick up a staff that launches planets The Celestial Claw. Sure, It doesn't make a lick a sense that you're pulling planets out of orbit to shoot them at monsters, That you're probably killing more people On any of these worlds than you're saving by destroying this evil force, but holy fuck isn't awesome Or that one of those planets is the Earth sometimes. The Earth has been through enough, I think. Thank God I got a copy of this early. Powered up, It shoots a goddamn star, and not like Mario stars eith-. Hey, wait a minute, Haven't I done this bef- You sick of me talking about how good the weapons are? Too bad Here's my next favorite, The Voltride. It's a trident. It shoots lightning. When you overkill an enemy It does chain lightning and kills monsters near the one you just killed. And when it's powered up, It's a quake style lightning gun, and it's amazing Requires steady aim to use properly. You'll know when you're hitting things cuz it makes this sound And you'll know when things die because it makes this sound. These are all the weapons I got in Episode One. They were enough to deal with the boss. Now, for bosses, because I have the "Automatically use Soul Mode" thing turned on, What I usually try to do is fill up my soul meter in the previous leve,l and be Prepared to hit them hard as soon as the battle starts, not really necessary with the first one He's not a problem. The Moon Guardian mostly fires spinning blades at you. Like he's guarding Dracula. Once you beat him, He'll just fall apart Get ready, cuz you gotta deal with three new monsters immediately. Melee sentinels and ranged sentinels. Watch out for the melee ones because once you kill them, this otherworldly parasite inhabiting their body comes out to attack you every time. well except Weeeeell, except... This is the Star of Torment. It is also my favorite weapon. Imagine if a Flak Cannon and a Nail Gun hate-fucked, and had an equally hateful baby You've got adult versions of these parasites that fly and also ones that would just look like trees made of eyes Because the developers have seen into my nightmares. These are the worst to deal with, even the flying ones have a homing projectile. [groans] We're in some darker, less friendly areas now. Not any less colorful. This game really goes overboard on the color not in a bad way. I'm just not used to it So little of this game is brown I think the designer saw places that were brown, and put orange lights on them to make sure that they were no longer brown. Tastefully done though. The game isn't like an acid trip until like episode 6 This episode has one of my favorite levels: Forgone Fortress. Might not be the prettiest, But it's a blast to play. A lot of levels in Amid Evil are like an evolution of that Quake/Unreal style I guess closer to Quake with shades of Hexen II sometimes. More Quake 3 sometimes really, Except- It's another situation like in Dusk, where you can see the games that were an influence but this game goes above and beyond to establish its own identity. An evolution of these things rather than an imitation. You get your final and deadliest weapon in the third level of Episode 2, The Aeternum. And if it's powered up, well, I only use that for special occasions, it's hard to come by ammo for this thing sometimes. Here's a taste of it from a later episode. It just- it creates a black hole. Now, this Domain of the Sentinels was invaded by these parasites and instead of maybe diplomatically dealing with that You need to kill the giant slime monster that brought them here- The Scrounge. Oh, he's a bitch. He's on you the whole time. He soaks up damage. He bounces he spawns endless little parasites So what I do is I hit the parasites with Splash Damage and they leave Souls behind Maybe you can get enough to power up again. I was playing through these early episodes before the final version came out So I'm not sure if the Star of Torment attack of turning everything into a pin cushion is as effective against bosses as it As it was for me. Dear God, this thing. There's usually one secret in the boss levels, and it's usually full health. These vine-y bastards, oh you oh. Don't worry, the Axe works really well on them As you'd expect your water staff works really well against things made entirely of fire The game is starting to give you more powerful weapons early with good reason. You'll need them. Smaller Enemies, The really fast ones, are gonna be in your face immediately And as soon as they so much as touch you say goodbye to an eight of your health. A corrupt spirit has invaded these ancient tombs, And it's bringing back big rock golems that are prime targets for planetary annihilation big ones too - and Tiki Heads- Oh, the fucking Tiki Heads! Amid Evil starts to get a little bit harder. Sure. No, fuck off fish, I can't waste my power on you! Episode 3 & 4 are generally brighter, sunnier, [Episode] 3 has this South American ruins vibe you see in Hexen II, except the monsters aren't constantly going invincible and blocking your shots Yeah, fuck you Jaguars. You assholes. I swear. I actually like Hexen II. The levels are starting to get bigger, the battles more frantic, the traps more deadly This is still nothing. The Boss of Episode 3, the Corrupt Spirit. I know what you're thinking He's gonna be a bigger version of these guys here. Oh, no, he's a- Giant tornado that hurls shit at you. You're never going back to Kansas again, You're Vanquished, Bitch! That's Three Worlds saved and like 200 destroyed. You guys ready for this? Of the first four episodes, This is my favorite. It's beautiful, You get all the weapons in the first level, The enemies are a little more significant in this episode the Sultan's Heir can block and reflect your attacks So gank him with Splash Damage. Hell, I'll go up to him with the axe and chop their heads off. It's doable. Let's see him reflect a blade forged by Elder Gods. They hurl flaming javelins at you, which will stick and burn you If you notice a fire theme going on that's normal, Till we get to the uhh... """weakest""" enemies of episode 4, the Sun Seekers. These are the fastest things I've ever seen in a video game You got these guys, Soul Butchers, who might attack slow, but consider it as their version of your powered up blade attack, they're not fun. Shoot an entire solar system at them. Episode 4 is about where you really need to start strategizing. Using your homing attacks well, dodging, Prioritizing targets, Predicting enemy movement,else forget it you're done Not getting stuck with Fiery Spears, And you better be aiming well or else forget it - you're done! It's not just like some shitty Steam early access shooter where the enemies wait for you to find them No, they come to you, and you will die You will die fast. What you're usually looking at is smaller enemies coming at you supported by larger, spell-casting Ranged monsters. You can cut through the smaller enemies without much trouble. progressively Each one of these episodes seems to get progressively better-looking. The Tower of Light, E4M3, Another favorite of mine. One brutal fight after another, all leading to the Solar Saint. A sort of thematically flipped version of Episode One's boss, And he'll try to burn you with just all of these fireballs. That's not the attack That'll get ya - Oh, no. Oh cool, looks like he fell off, guess that's don - ohhh. This right here - This jumping attack that he does, and then another boss does later - Oh, he's - I don't know what's going on here Usually if you move you can avoid these but no, not here. You got to randomize your movement patterns or he's gonna smash you to death with that hammer You can just barely dodge him if you're listening for when he's coming back down. You're still gonna get hurt though Not impossible but a healthy challenge. When you kill them the sky goes dark Nice touch now it's time for the real shit. You were getting comfortable with all these temples and ruins and such. That's over. This is where the game changes. I'm gonna say this now Spoilers ahead. And I know there's some of you out there who are listening to this but not watching probably off shitposting or something So you won't notice a more subtle spoiler warning Just look at this beautiful - Oh God, lasers! You can still dodge the lasers. The first weapon you get in this episode is the one that shoots planets at things So that should give you an idea of how this is gonna go. The forges are just machines giant machines and balls. Spiked balls. They're annoying. I hit them with the sword cuz it'll knock them back a bit. They're not your worst problem. No, no, that's - Ohhhh, You motherfucker, this is the Pain Master. It's a master of pain. This is the beginning of Amid Evil being REALLY punishing. Episode five is probably my favorite so far except for some of this platforming Oh God, No! No, FUCK! Okay, that was awful, I'm doing it again. Great atmosphere. The Thunder, the lightning, the fogm the machines It's such a departure from the ancient temples, which is a good thing obviously and fun and interesting. Oh That's- That's Evil. E5M2 is called "Crucible Of Pain" Okay, Oh God Oh,God! Gantlet?! Don't you mean "Gauntlet"? You know, I forgot there's an Invisibility Powerup in this game. The power-ups don't appear much unless they're in secrets I didn't find, which is entirely possible. I don't know who's completely owning everything in the room with lightning! I don't see anything! There's a bunch of platforming, right, And this game does get hard as fuck. Problem is that it's all still doable, the controls of the combat are great So it's your own fault if you - Oh, fuck you, you dick diddler! I'm still trying to save my soul power for the bosses - shit! All right, I saved it for this clown. This boss can be exploited with the Powered Up Star of Torment also, so there's that. He still jumps like a douche. Oh, hey don't mind if I do! Okay, these monsters are made from crystal, and they shatter in a nice way that's cool. They're still bastards. These Crystal Snakes spit acid at me. The deadliest by far besides these guys that float and toss all of...this... And these giant fish that are- Oh, thank God the mescaline is kicking in. This actually makes it less colorful! And this music! It is Andrew Hall Schulz who has not left his can in years, working hard on every shooter released since 2013 I guess the acoustics in there are amazing. If YouTube claims that music I'm coming after you motherfuck- the twin terrors The Twin Terrors - who i've barely seen, because of the flurry of insane shit that happens Whenever I enter this level - I can power up the Aeternum and give each of them a black hole- On easier skills that took care of em. Oh, yeah, and you're suspended in a bubble. Did I not mention the bubbles? This would be enough to cap off any other game - not this one! If you guys aren't good at fighting and avoiding pits, well This will teleport you back if you fall. But that's the least of your problems. You remember how I was talking about enemies and feedback and all that fun stuff? These guys are blurry, hard to read, fast. This guy here moves in weird patterns This guy here? His attack will teleport you right to him a thing that worked out for him! Once. Trying to describe individual parts of The Void is like trying to describe your way around a mobius strip. I don't know what's happening here! I just know it's evil and it has to die! Even the secrets are hard to find in this episode. Look at all of this! This realm of evil! This dimension of squiggly Horrors! It's not badly designed by any means It seems like great care was taken in to tightening this one up So it isn't a giant mess and it isn't just - be prepared because this one is gonna wreck you. The penultimate level is- Oh Jesus fuck they're back! Is that you, Jacob? You ready for round two, motherfucker? "This is the heart of all evil, champion! We are with you." She means in spirit. You're on your own. Certainly the hardest boss in the game. I was not disappointed. This one doesn't get cheaped out. Sure that alt fire on the Star of Torment seemed to hurt him the most. However He has certain attacks that'll practically one-hit kill you. These four torches give off different colored Mana And you'll need those! Because even if you came in with full mana Which you didn't, He takes a serious beating I wasn't sure I was even doing damage until I saw his health bar flashing! Your soul mode fills up because he get a little bit every time you hit him. I thought that he might be regaining his health every time he hit me too Which was pretty negligible because of how much he was taken off to begin with Oh this one here, if he goes for the green torch run the fuck away! "No, you shall not fall today!" You're goddamn right! I didn't come all this way to kill the source of all evil to get killed by vast nothingness! That's it kids! We did it! Amid Evil on Evil difficulty! Normally the hardest difficulty is a real pain, but I thought it was pretty fun Just remember that running backwards isn't gonna help you. These guys are faster than you and - wait. We're not done. The Evil still lives. I knew of it only by rumor talked up in hushed tones It may not have been real but I needed to find out the final quest is one You cannot prepare for the path fraught with peril Hidden deep in the gateway of the Ancients is the final test of any champion. Steel yourself. You have never faced this kind of evil Evil is vanquished! I am a champion! And after slaying every rotten bastard monster that's taken over these seven realms You will be too! Go for it kids. It's blast. Wait, stop. I found something to bitch about. This is the champion! This is the first time I've seen him, he has four eyes He's got a helmet with two eye holes and don't tell me he sees out of the cracks. That's bullshit! Indefatigable could have given us Quadroscopic gaming and they fucked it up! 0 out of 10! No - yeh, this game is good, y-you should play it. [Outro - "How'd I do?" - Lee Jackson]
New Blood Interactive is on fire recently.
DUSK was great.
AMID EVIL just launched and now there's Maximum Action which looks pretty promising, especially with those upcoming updates.
Ooooooh yeah, was waiting for this. Civvie is great chef kiss
I really really like this game personally.
That planetary staff weapon would give me so much anxiety, thinking the next planet I am going blast at some enemies balls was going to be the planet I am on.
This fuckin' guy is great.
Everyone needs to subscribe to this man so the government may finally grant him amnesty for his war crimes