Redfall Is Really Disappointing

foreign [Music] I feel like vampires are one of the few things that gaming has really yet to oversaturate and after a pretty long Hiatus of memorable titles around the subject we finally got another one to add to the list here with Arcane Studios red Falls are you serious a four-player open world Co-op FPS that's just been released from Microsoft Windows and the new Xbox consoles with PS5 players sadly missing out can't at that stand when I was coming up for titles for this video I kept trying to think of some kind of lame vampire pun that I could use you know something about the fangs not being sharp enough for nailing a coffin shut but the simplest approach is often the best and I think the most accurate way to describe redfall is with one word underwhelming all right there's nothing you can do to stop us yeah look Red Bull ain't exactly the worst game ever made but it's sure as hell an unimpressive one and for something that's been delayed you've got to wonder if this is the state that it's even supposed to be released in taking a page out of Stephen King's Salem's Lot the whole thing set in a fictional Coast side American Town that's under siege by vampires even using that iconic 80s font made Popular by so many John Carpenter films and recent TV series like stranger things I clapped clapped when I saw it the intro shows how redfull used to be a thriving idyllic town before an evil pharmaceutical Corporation tried to create a biological weapon and use infected blood sounds familiar this ended up turning members of the population into more or less vampires and then they did what vampires do and go around sucking blood popping collars and wearing uncomfortable looking leather outfits we think we're dealing with a supernatural being most likely a mummy things eventually took a turn for the worse and when a bunch of Outsiders tried to intervene the vampires pulled the water up off the ocean floor like a giant aquatic barrier and prevented anyone from getting in or out and you're choosing to play as one of the four people who actually managed to get in I think they can say you've got a telekinetic girl named Layla combat engineer Remy a sniper named Jacob and cryptozoologist named Dev not to be confused with a crypto bro chasing after the unknown is my life and you're heading into the town to take down the so-called four vampire gods that are holding the place hostage beginning with one called the hollow man not to be confused with a Kevin Bacon film of the same name and from a gameplay perspective these are at least some interesting characters to play with or with vastly different abilities Remy for instance has got a little robot that can attack and distract enemies along with throwing out a remote C4 charge and creating a rally point to heal her allies yeah Dev throws out a little Javelin which does electrical damage over time he can also drop down a UV light rig which heals allies and staggers nearby enemies and also throughout a translocator like its Unreal Tournament back in 1999 bypassing roads and Pathways and taking the direct route to get to hard to reach spots skipping ahead Layla can summon a telekinetic lift which launches plays into the air she can block incoming damage with an umbrella and even call in her vampiric ex-boyfriend for help no really all right and then Jacob the sniper can send out a raven to scan the area he can cloak to stay undetected and summon in a ghostly rifle that deals heavy damage which kind of feels like the lamest Call of Duty perk ever foreign but despite every character otherwise still pretty much using the exact same weapons these abilities do make each of them feel unique I mean those navigational skills like Deb's Trends locator and Layla's elevator are actually pretty useful because the town's got a lot of verticality with its many Cliff sides Hills and tall buildings so an ability that lets you skip over these is more than a gimmick and actually becomes a handy feature unlike the recent Dead Island 2 though where every character's got access to the same Powers after a couple of hours of in-game time much like did Island 2 though this is a game that really kind of excels in Co-op making a somewhat boring and run-of-the-mill game just that little bit more entertaining which kind of makes it all the weirder how they only included campaign progression for the host and that's to say that if you play through this with a couple of mates only the person who's actually hosting has their story progress saved otherwise you keep your guns and your player level but none of the actual campaign progression is carried over plus it has no drop-in or Dropout options so everyone has to ready up from the beginning which is an awful idea because if someone disconnects or crashes then you have to reload the entire match yeah and I mean it's not like this kind of four player co-op games they're ever known for having drop-in Dropout are they still though if all you wanted was a basic easy to pick up and play co-op shooter that's available on Game Pass to play through with the boys well then there are definitely worse things out there you'll spend a whole lot of your time here killing things fast traveling around the map mostly back to the safe house where you pick up Main and side missions along with salvaging all that unwanted gear for scrap and stocking up on important items I mean yes it's a run-of-the-mill but it's functional and it works as intended and I'd probably be fine with the whole thing if it wasn't coming from the likes of Arcane Studios who are charging more than full price for this and who really should have done a bit better yeah over here in kangaroo land they're asking for 120 bucks for this thing 120 reduced and that's for the most basic Edition question is how is it achieved now first things first let's talk about how this thing looks and runs and sadly this is yet another in a long line of PC ports that seems to be poorly optimized at launch keeping things in line I guess with both death Loop and Dishonored 2 before it now I don't know if Nuvo is again to blame because I know Arcane are fond of putting that in their games at the cost of heavily impacted performance and pissing off almost everyone who knows about it either way though redfall is sadly another game that seems to run really crappy let's get moving I've got an RTX 4080 an i7 10700k and 64 gigabytes of RAM and the frame rate frequently drops to around the 30 or the 40 mark when I'm at 1440p or just regardless of what settings I've got I know that they said too that it's going to run at 30 FPS on the console so maybe in some weird way they're trying to at least keep it consistent with the PC performance as well by the way though it doesn't seem to run very well and for a rig like mine to have these kind of issues is a big problem I've ever got a mate who couldn't get the game running at all it just kept crashing after a few minutes of play time it almost seems like it's a Memory leak issue with performance being okay when you first start playing but then after like an hour or so of game time the frame rate would drop down to the 30s or so and I'd have to restart the entire game to fix it settings like dlss often fixes this kind of stuff for me at least with most other games anyway here though when I turned it on I didn't really see any change at all and it made other aspects of the visuals look even worse yeah what the [ __ ] is that so yeah first Jedi Survivor and now this not really a good week for PC Gamers is it I'm so glad I stayed but I think the even bigger problem is that it just doesn't really look that good anyway to justify running so poorly now I know Arcane games have never been about pushing super realistic Graphics but all of the previous games they've worked on have always had like a definitive look to them mostly in the way that the environments were put together but also just the way that characters looked in the overall style and aesthetic I mean artistically they were gorgeous even when they helped out working on Wolfenstein Youngblood you could absolutely see the influence coming through redfall however doesn't really have any of that and even the playable characters have just kind of generic visually and why does it seem like almost every single playable character in video games these days looks like that could be a fortnight skin there is some creativity to the vampire designs with their elongated body parts and their spindly fingers but it just doesn't feel like you're playing an Arcane game at times and those out of place weapon models with these tacked on optic sights and basic relay animations it's the absolute definition of Solace hacking into things or lock picking doesn't even have any kind of intuitive minigame or any real inputs apart from just having those easily obtainable lockpick or hacking kits in your inventory and just holding down the interact button and then the cinematics are flat and static you know they're more or less just like 3D slideshows with narration over the top of them instead of actual proper cut scenes and look to be fair this might have been done as like a stylistic choice but it just kind of feels lazy in comparison to the interactive nature of the cutscenes in their previous games personally I don't understand the appeal more than that though are the countless amounts of bugs and glitches that I experienced both Visual and otherwise foreign [Applause] from things like the lighting not really loading improperly the leaves on trees looking like it was having a seizure bizarre physics and animations through to areas where it feels like you can feel the assets loading in in real time the user interface is also kind of annoying at times because after every completed Mission this prompt comes up to say that you've finished it and to remove this you have to hold down the escape button until it goes away and that's something that's just kind of frustrating if you're still in the middle of combat [Applause] half the time I found myself just double checking my settings to make sure I was still playing on the ultra mode because some of these errors just look so Barren and flat I thought my game might have suddenly reverted back to the lowest setting or something and I just don't get it like I just don't understand how despite how far gaming engines have come over the years that so many recent games seem to both look and run worse than they did decades ago I mean damn dog if even dlss can't save us from horrible performance and frame rates well then nothing can [Applause] oh where I think the visuals truly shine is during the numerous vampire Nest you move through now these are these bizarre pocket Dimensions that remind me a bit of the upside down in stranger things and these show off really unnatural architecture and have a genuinely unsettling Vibe like you're traveling through this unstable plane of existence which you are all that's missing is a super fun happy slide super fun happy side most of the heavy narrative stuff is handled here as you learn all of the backstories for these vampire gods and how they lost their Humanity some of which is actually interesting and disturbing plus they also serve as handy ways to get new weapons with the player having to destroy these Realms while looting as much gear as you can before the whole thing collapses so it's not only unique from a gameplay point of view but also something unique visually the concept of redfall being held captive by the ocean with the water being like held in time surrounding the entire town also looks awesome and it is a cool concept really making you feel like you're trapped in this literal hell hole so you get these brief glimpses into how spooky and artistic the game could have actually been with sequences making good use of creative lighting and Eerie sound to really highlight that horror atmosphere but most of the time the environments just look like a PS4 game and those oh so scary vampires are just standing out in the middle of the open often during the daytime too which is about scaring and seeing a puppy dog wearing devil horns that is to say it's not very scary oh I feel like 90 of the houses and buildings are just completely inaccessible you know what I mean they're boarded up and locked off I've even seen doors that don't even have doorknobs like someone just forgot to put one in entirely you'll see the same couple of buildings copied and pasted across both maps to explore and even the same Interiors as well which even starts to become confusing making it seem like you've been somewhere before when in reality it's just the same environment being reused again yeah I've got a bit of a theory too that they actually plan to have vehicles in the game as well because throughout the map you'll come across quad bikes and Buggies which look like they could easily fit a couple of people on them the maps are pretty big as well and feature lots of roads and Pathways so drivable Vehicles would have made sense right but instead now they're all just props and more or less the same as exploding red barrels by the way though it all harks back to what I said before how the whole thing feels so underwhelming and I fully realized how half fake the whole thing was when I found out you can't even slide down the fire pole at the firehouse and look I mean it's not really that much of a big deal but how can you have a game set in a firehouse where you're going to be frequently going from the top to the bottom floor include a fire pole and not let the player slide down it and sickening sick wow this place is great now when it comes to the shooting and the combat side of things redfall plays like a pretty standard first person shooter that being you either run or Sprint around you aim down sights and shoot at enemies with assault rifles pistols and shotguns you come across chess which contain bigger and better weapons with the kind of Rarity States you'd find in any other RPG and items you loot can be converted into credits for buying Med kits and other items there's also stealth in the sense that you can avoid detection kind of and whack people in the ass for an easy and quick kill but it's definitely not very developed and not intended to be the focus for overall the whole shooting loop I think is fine aside from just feeling a bit sluggish friends combat is then either broken up between fighting human enemies usually different factions of cultists some with automatic weapons and then a few different kinds of vampires none of which though put up any kind of fight human enemies can mostly be dealt with by a single well-placed headshot and their reaction times are so laughable that I can only assume that the intelligence requirements for becoming a cultist these days are about on par with the kind of people who make reaction videos to movie trailers here we go it is kind of neat seeing these guys in fighting at times but I mean that's about the height of their creativity in fact I think it even might be the worst AI in an Arcane Studios game yet which is doubly disappointing considering how smart the enemies used to be in the Dishonored games [Music] you really don't have to play the game for too long here to see this as well I mean they'll do things like not even react when someone gets killed a couple of meters away from them and even the most basic task of being able to shoot and hit the player like it seems impossible to them at times I actually noticed a lot of similar enemy behavior when I was playing death Loop and I remember that some people tried to justify that by saying that it was because the enemies had masks on and we're all cooked off their chops on drugs and alcohol which may or may not have been true either way though I'd love to see what weird justifications people can come up with for why these enemies are also so brain dead for one of the main and most common enemy types to be almost completely unthreatening that's a pretty big [ __ ] up definitely not a normal day of maintenance the other side of the combat coin are the vampires then early on it's like the game tries to make it seem like this might be a bit more challenging you fight one of these very early on in the basement of the firehouse which is actually kind of creepy at first especially the way they set the whole thing up showing the shadow of it as it feeds on some poor unfortunate [ __ ] and the mechanic have only been able to kill these guys by driving a stake through their heart it seems like a neat idea but you very soon start to realize that they're really just another run-of-the-mill enemy but aside from having a bit more Health points and being more mobile there's really nothing challenging about them at all when vampire's Health gets knocked down to zero they become stunned at which point if you've got a weapon with a stake on it which are a dime a dozen by the way you can shove that thing in their heart and finish them off but there's a bunch of other ways to finish them off as well for instance if they're hit by any kind of Elemental damage in that stun State be it fire or electricity that kills them instantly flare guns are a common weapon type and against a single vampire you can just easily Whittle down their health and turn them into dust after a few well-placed shots very early on in the game as well you'll no doubt come across the stake launcher and the UV ray gun both of which are also laughably overpowered foreign does what it sounds like firing out a single stake you know more or less like a railgun which does insane damage steak let me still take steak and can often take out most vampires in a couple of hits if not just one hit sure steak the UV gun on the other hand petrifies vampires after sustained fire locking them in place at which point you can shoot or simply punch them and they'll shatter into a million pieces like the T-1000 enough of walking through liquid nitrogen it becomes so easy to do this and these weapons are scattered around in such abundance that it is a bit of a wonder how the vampires at any threat at all when a few seconds of exposure to these guns and a simple left hook is enough to completely destroy them the stake gun has been balanced out somewhat by having a very slow reload time and a slow fire rate but that UV gun it doesn't suffer from any of that and the fact you get both of these weapon types very early on in the game removes any kind of threat or Challenge from fighting the vampires to begin with I mean they could have gate kept these weapons until the late game and made them like hard to acquire something I mean it'd be like playing doom and getting The BFG in the first level there are tougher vampire variants though which have some really [ __ ] annoying attack patterns but still like the same tactics more or less apply to finishing these ones off as well if you piss off The Vampire Gods enough they even send down a super tough one called The Rook not to be confused with the Rainbow Six operator of the same name and there's a guy who walks around with a hooded robe over his head like a total Edge Lord and sounds like Dr Claw from inspect Gadget the concept here is the more noise and attention you attract the higher this meter fills up until they then send in one of these guys to make you feel humble and yeah I mean these fights are admittedly a little bit tougher but they're still usually easily manageable and the fact that these are randomly occurring happening at whatever point you filled up that arbitrary meter also means they can spawn in at really weird times and show off some janky Behavior to actually take on the vampire God in each area you first need to uncover their whole backstory but then collect the skulls of underbossed vampires which are kind of like the sub bosses in each neighborhood and you think that maybe even these ones would be a little bit tougher right nah man they're just the same as the other ones and they often go down just as easily [Applause] right throughout the map are a bunch of safe houses and after unlocking a safe house you do a side mission which then makes it possible to do another side mission to take out that neighborhoods underboss right at which point when they're killed you can collect their skull and be one third closer to accessing the area's vampire God does that make sense got the gist and the only issue is that you have to collect these skulls to progress more or less forcing you to do the side missions and it's just that same loot repeated over and over with not really that much changed [Applause] this is all on the highest difficulty mode well at least the highest ability mode you have access to for the first playthrough and I feel like you really have to have a complete mental lapse to ever be properly killed here now I played solo for maybe I don't know 70 of my game time here and I did die a few times to certain boss fights but that's only when I got kind of distracted and nowhere near as often as you'd think I would consider in the mode I was playing on I just felt like outside of the boss fights there was never like a sense of the difficulty really ramping up you just get inundated with items and weapons from the get-go in fact I got my first legendary after about half an hour of play time and it just never really evolved from that I actually would have really appreciated if some of these vampire types were more or less unbeatable unless you'd reach a certain level or unlocked a certain weapon time you ever played that game Terminator resistance well it was a really fun game set during the future Wars and for the first couple of hours of the campaign you had to outright avoid the tea at hundreds because you just didn't have the weapons to take them out head on you had to find and unlock the plasma energy weapons which could actually damage these things but before that you more or less had to run away or just avoid them entirely and I can't help but wish that they kind of did something similar with redfall no matter that could make it so you had to find the technology to First make the UV guns in the first place or craft your very own stake launcher after finding the right components but instead they took the most casual approach and made every single feature and weapon obtainable from the beginning so it just feels like there's no real room for progression you even get access to all of your abilities after a few missions but ironically they don't include better versions of medkits so the med kits you've got to use when you've got 100 maximum health points are the same when your health is reached like 400 requiring Mass spamming just to get your health back up it's all kind of sad in a way the way that the approach to game development seemed to have devolved these days and developers have to be so quick to catch the player's attention that they'll just give you every single toy and trick so early on even Dead Island 2 which yeah I just did a video on by the way did the exact same thing having you play as this zombie killing Juggernaut from the get-go remember when you used to play games and it took you like hours to finally get to that power fantasy level I mean damn dog I still remember playing Final Fantasy VII back in the day and first unlocking Cloud strife's Final limit break yeah well nowadays they just give you everything you need after a couple of hours of play time redfall will ultimately get the same usual assortments of sevens and eights out of ten from most Publications it'll probably also still get a pretty decent player base for the next few weeks anyway and like I said at the beginning if you're looking for something to play with your mates and don't really care about the whole nitty-gritty of the whole thing well then there's not really any reason to not play this [Laughter] clip I said it before it's not the worst game ever made and if they fix all the performance issues on PC well I'm sure it'll be fun to play through mostly fans of Arcane Studios and those of us who know what these guys are truly capable of though are definitely going to be disappointed and justifiably so because it's yet again another step backwards for these guys at least when the gameplay sense anyway and it's just kind of hard to digest the fact that the guys who made Dishonored and probably the best System Shock spiritual sequel we're ever gonna get have been reduced to making something like this you know what at least it doesn't have zombies I [ __ ] hate zombies [Applause] [Music] all right [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: GmanLives

Views: 518,871

Keywords: redfall gameplay, redfall gameplay 4k, redfall review, redfall 30 fps, video games, unreal engine 5, video games 2023, game review, unreal engine 5 games, redfall trailer gameplay, arkane studios, redfall impressions, bethesda softworks, redfall game review, redfall gameplay multiplayer, redfall 30 fps gameplay, redfall news, video games live, redfall gameplay pc, gmanlives, gggmanlives, dishonored, dead island 2, vampire games

Id: afLllMz1GZg

Length: 24min 9sec (1449 seconds)

Published: Tue May 02 2023