Hi Ravens! During Steam’s NextFest Summer 2022, I demonstrated no self restraint whatsoever with what demos I’ve been playing! Here’s some (relatively) brief thoughts on some of them!

Okay, I need to confess that I actually played the ADACA demo a week before NextFest, but this is the perfect excuse to talk about it, so here we go!

In the words of the developer: “ADACA is an episodic sandbox FPS heavily inspired by story-driven titles of the late 90's and early 2000's.” Your character is a prisoner sentenced to work for a mercenary group to pay off some corporate debt who wakes up with a robot hand that is basically the Gravity Gun from Half Life 2. The game has a lot going for it, but it has a few small flaws as well. First things first, the protagonist is confirmed as non-binary, which is pretty cool. Gameplay-wise, the demo is huge! I spent nearly 4 hours playing it between two sessions. It appears to contain most if not all of the first episode in it and a bonus open world mode called Conscript Missions, which is a pretty impressive offering for the whopping price of $0. I also love that the difficulty settings that do more than just tweak enemy health and damage up or down, but they make tougher variants of enemies more common and give them some advanced behaviors. The low poly graphics and the babbling style “voices” help sell the late 90s and early aughts aesthetic, but can still produce some impressive visuals with modern lighting. I also really enjoyed the soundtrack, especially the 4 note stings that played over level transitions since they reminded me of one of my favorite movies, Annihilation.

The world is absolutely fascinating and I‘m genuinely excited to see where the story goes. 

However, ADACA has some flaws. The Conscript Missions require you to select an open world mission from a console in the hub world, confirm your selection, exit out of that console, talk to an NPC standing behind you for a briefing, and then walk to a dropship to begin the mission. While this is somewhat annoying on its own, it becomes doubly so when it’s possible to not actually confirm your selection, walk all the way to the dropship and then be told that you need to go back to the briefing room.

The game also has something of an identity crisis regarding combat. The enemies are huge damage sponges but weak to objects thrown with your gravity hand. The levels are typically well populated with throwables, but many of the levels have enemies engaging you from a very long distance, making throwables far less effective. Admittedly, this is more of an issue with the Conscript Missions than the main story missions, but it crops up there as well. This is exacerbated by enemies being staggered by headshots and massive damage. While the player can use this as an opportunity to steal an enemy’s weapon with the gravity hand, this only works at close range and it makes stacking 3 or more headshots on an enemy at range aggravating.  Throwables are also held dead center in your screen, which is really, really annoying since it obstructs your vision. Melee attacks also do very little damage and don’t seem to strike where the crosshair is.

Despite my complaints, I think ADACA is an extremely promising game with a very interesting story that only needs some minor weapon balancing to really shine. You should go check out the demo ASAP.

Peripeteia is an immersive sim set in an Alternate History cyberpunk Poland that is very heavily inspired by Deus Ex, System Shock 1 and 2, and the Thief Series. You play as a cybernetically enhanced female mercenary named Marie who is trying to make a living in an alternate history post-Soviet city. Everything from the dialog to the late 90s style muddy textures absolutely oozes post-Soviet grime and depression. 

I actually really love the setting and the game absolutely nails it.

In terms of mechanics, the combat can be a bit janky and brutal, but clever players can talk, sneak, or bribe their way out of a lot of dangerous situations. The parkour-like climbing mechanic is a pretty neat idea, but it can be somewhat buggy.

Peripeteia has THE BEST hacking mechanic in any game ever.

Each letter in a password is randomized and the best way to guess it in the short time limit you’re given is to mash letters on the keyboard as fast as possible. While this sounds frustrating, it makes you feel like a hacker from a cheesy hacker movie. Do not change this ever– or, I’ll be sad!

The big downside to this demo was the level design. The levels are way too large for how sparsely populated they are with enemies, NPCs, and things to actually do. There’s a corridor in the demo that runs from one section to another that has one branching path and dozens of non-interactive doors that takes a solid 20 seconds to sprint down. So, there’s a fairly good chance that you will be running the length of this corridor several times while you figure out where to go. The levels also have little to no signposting and the emphasis on free climbing means that even the intended routes feel like you’re sequence breaking rather than following the intended path. I’m not certain that I would recommend Peripeteia at this time, which is a shame because I see a ton of potential in this title. Hopefully, the full game will have more populated or smaller levels and have more polished level design.

A retro FPS that is very heavily inspired by mid 90s console shooters. This was the shortest demo I played for NextFest, so my thoughts on this are also brief. Agent64 is a big ol’ copyright-free nostalgic hug for elder millennials that takes me back to the hours and hours of Goldeneye and Perfect Dark I played with my friends back in the 90s. The graphics almost perfectly nail the N64/PS1 era graphics style but they, fortunately, have a much higher resolution. The story is fairly bare bones, which may disappoint people looking for a more narrative-focused game, but is entirely era-appropriate.

The controls feel EXACTLY like playing a console shooter from this era.

This is definitely a plus for people looking for a nostalgia trip, and a con for basically anyone else. Agent64: Spies Never Die is a definite recommendation for anyone who wants to have a nostalgic trip back to their childhood, but doesn’t want the hassle of trying to get original hardware or emulators working. People who don’t have nostalgia for this era may find the game clunky, stiff, and dated since it imitates the N64/PS1 era of shooters so perfectly.

Trepang2 is from the people that brought you F.E.A.R., one of my favorite shooters from the early aughts. In Trepang2, you play as an amnesiac super soldier named Subject 106 who is broken out of a black site by a mysterious group known as Task Force 27, starting you off on a quest for answers to your mysterious past and very gory revenge. 

First things first, the combat in this game is absolutely top-tier.

The guns feel very impactful (especially the shotgun) and more or less every part of the arsenal feels like it fulfills a specific role. The AI is very clever and will use cover, squad tactics, grenades, and flanking to get the drop on the player. The Player has slow motion and cloak powers that they can use for a limited time. They can also dual wield more or less any weapon and use enemies as human shields and then arm grenades on the enemy and throw them into their teammates. This is deeply hilarious since the player can basically yeet soldiers in full combat gear across the level. All in all, the whole gameplay loop is a massive shooty and explodey delight that allows the player to feel powerful without being too easy.

The demo consists of the prologue level, a hub world, a single-side mission, and a horde mode with three maps. The prologue level isn’t necessarily the best; it takes place in a very poorly lit series of basements and tunnels and takes a while to get to the actual combat. Additionally, the hub world has you spawn in at the helipad, walk across the base to a console, select a mission, and then walk back to the helicopter to start the mission. Hopefully, there will be more to do to make this less tedious or this will be changed to be quicker.

All in all, Trepang2’s demo is a must-play for any fan of F.E.A.R. or fast-paced shooters.

This is being published by Funcom, so it’s REALLY stretching the definition of an Indie game, but when else will I be able to talk about a heavy metal-themed rhythm shooter?

The player is a half-human demon called The Unknown whose goal is to fight through hell to kill someone known as The Red Judge. As for the gameplay, Metal Hellsinger is basically part first-person shooter and part rhythm game. The closer your attacks and dodges are to being in rhythm to the soundtrack, the more powerful your attacks become and the more intense the soundtrack becomes. As more of your attacks are on beat and you build up a higher combo score, more of the tracks in the song start playing. At level one, this is typically a simple rhythm track, but as you get to the maximum combo levels additional guitar tracks and even vocals unlock.

The soundtrack absolutely SLAPS.

It includes artists from the bands System of a Down, Lamb of God, Arch Enemy, Trivium, Soilwork, Dark Tranquility, Jinjer, Refused, INVSN, and Black Crown Initiate. I’m actually super excited to see that Alyssa White-Gluz is part of the lineup for this game since I’ve been an Arch Enemy fan for a long time.  The level design and art make it look like you’re fighting through the cover of a heavy metal album, which is an excellent touch.

This being said, there are some things that need to be discussed regarding the gameplay. Firstly, DO THE CONFIGURATION WHEN YOU START. I skipped this and the first few minutes of this game were utter misery. This was exacerbated by my attempting to manually adjust the delays around audio and video cues. I also had a fair bit of difficulty getting my head around the gameplay and I really struggled for a fair chunk of this demo. Some of this may be due to the aforementioned configuration issues, but most of it is probably due to my inability to carry a tune. With that said, once I managed to figure out how rhythm worked, the gameplay loop in this game really blew me away. Being able to build your combo score up to 16x and hearing the vocals kick in on the soundtrack is satisfying in a way that I really cannot put into words.

If you’re any kind of a heavy metal fan, play this demo.

Selaco was the highlight of NextFest for me.

The game basically takes the combat from F.E.A.R., the interactivity and world-building of Doom 3, and some of the story from System Shock 2, and runs it all in GZDoom. Running a game this complicated and this well polished in GZDoom is nothing short of techno-wizardry and Selaco absolutely deserves your attention.

The Player is Dawn, a captain in the Selaco security force. Selaco is an underground bunker that houses the refugees that fled a dying Earth. The story in the demo is a bit bare bones, but it sets up enough of the world to show a lot of promise for the full release.

The combat is very well polished. The movement allows you to quickly reposition and play very aggressively if the situation calls for it, but you can also hang back and play defensively very easily as well. The arsenal is very well thought out and very well balanced, every weapon is good at certain specific things and none really overshadow any other ones. It’s also good to see that the difficulty scaling in Selaco is very granular with 5 different difficulty settings available. The enemy variety is small in the demo (4 in total, counting one boss), but the AI allows the enemies to use squad tactics, such as suppressing fire and flanking, to keep the fights interesting.

The environments are gorgeous and filled with interactivity and distractibility.

You can flip tables for cover, turn lights on and off, use vending machines, close armored shutters on windows, and even pet the cleaning robots. Almost every object in the game is destructible to at least some degree.

The game is running all of this on an engine that was originally coded in 1993 and it’s a good sign that my biggest, and only, complaint about the demo is the fact that there isn’t more of it.

All in all, Steam’s NextFest Summer 2022 had a bumper crop of really freaking cool demos for shooter fans and has definitely given me a lot to look at (and wishlist).

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go play the Selaco demo until my eyes bleed.