Quote from: Stevie Akers on Aug 26, 2024, 11:16 PMI might check out Vladik, but it doesn't appeal to me aesthetically. Gameplay seems fun enough.I have since finished the game and started another playthrough on the hard difficulty.
I would like to note that the gameplay really isn't anything to write home about. Don't get me wrong, it's good, but there's nothing that really is exceptional. There are better shotguns in other games (notably Selaco, but it's a bit unfair to compare to that since VLADiK is a solo-project. and very much lifted up by the Unreal Asset Store). There's better AI in other games. It very much feels like Half-Life 2 AI. Which is a compliment, to be clear, but things have changed since the mid 00s.
The visual design is a little odd too. Since this game pretty heavily relies on assets from a store, some parts are at odds. For example, the panicky get-this-thing-off-of-me enemies that behave like headcrabs but are humanoid have all sorts of eyes and other offputting things on them. This is by far the most odd-looking enemy, and really stands out compared to the rest of the cast. The other ones are pretty standard-looking zombie enemies. (Of course, I'm not talking about the Combine equivalent Army grunts here)
To be clear, the game is fun, and has very good moments. It's well worth the 12 bucks, but not really something I'd say blew me away. Towards the end it kinda gets bogged down with having an excessive amount of the Army, which would be fine but it's on a fully-open arena. The previous encounters with the Army were certainly corridor-based, so planting those enemies in an arena context makes it quite difficult. Not particularly frustrating once you get the hang of it and figure out it's not them you need to kill but other vehicles, but took a little while to get there.
The dev should certainly add a horde mode. That'd be a lot of fun.
<-- tails stans
