Game On: Redfall, will it be more than astale bugfest?
A review of Microsoft and Bethesda’s Redfall
Hyderabad: Sharing a launch window with Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom can be daunting for the best of games but for Redfall it was going to be doubly difficult owing to its delayed launch and the expectation the game carried with regards to Microsoft and Bethesda’s new alliance.
In terms of corporate strategy and PR optics, Redfall was supposed to not just excel as a game but also pave the way for Starfield as the duo were expected to gave players the world over a reason to purchase into Microsoft’s vision for the gaming industry.
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Developing an open-world FPS game is not new for Bethesda and Arkane (after all, they are the makers of Deathloop), but after playing Redfallfor a few hours, I found it to be lacking in polish, imagination, and execution when compared to its predecessor.
Although Redfall has a more intriguing premise (with vampires blocking out the sun) and a wider range of playable characters, its gameplay feels outdated and reminiscent of 2016 games. While not an exact comparison, I found a game from that year, like Watch Dogs 2, to be a superior experience.
Despite its limited gameplay mechanics, Redfallsuffers from several bugs and glitches as even movement in the game feels jittery and jerky. During my play through of the game (on a PC with a series X controller), I couldn’t get my character to use the med kits from the d-pad. The combat was simplistic and repetitive, as I hunted vampires and cultists with abandon to accumulate new guns and perks.
Redfall offers almost no novelty to its players, which becomes quite apparent early on in the game when it requires you to free trapped civilians in a fire-station. When you reach the station, the game prompts a dialogue box which tells how you can breach the building in three possible ways, just reading the dialogue box triggered memories of similar features in 2014’s Assassins Creed Unity.
Despite Redfall’s unique visual aesthetic and strong narrative foundation, the game is too limited in terms of mechanics and I don’t believe that is a dimension that updates or patches can fix.
