This is a worrying trend from Bethesda. Redfall has been released in a buggy, glitchy, and practically unplayable state as Bethesda seems to have completely dropped the ball on this new IP.
And the most broken, boring, and useless game of the year goes to…Redfall! Hooray.
Despite going into this game’s launch with really low expectations, I was profoundly disappointed and unimpressed with how bland, buggy, and outdated this game felt as both developer Arkane Studios and publisher Bethesda Softworks really failed to deliver with this game. And I mean badly failed to deliver.
I’m not going to go too in depth with story details or anything like that as the game is barley a day old, but it’s very impressive how Arkane Studios, a game developer that created classics like Dishonored, Bioshock 2, and Prey, managed to make a storyline involving three rival factions fighting to find destroy a science experiment gone horribly wrong into a lame, cumbersome experience.
I mean, you’ve got a game about humans turned into insane, bloodthirsty vampires and you can’t even make it exciting or scary? Seriously?
This studio really has fallen far from the lofty heights of its past as the studios last four game releases are Wolfenstein: Youngblood (6/10 Steam rating, 2.5/10 Metacritic score), Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot (6/10 Steam rating, 1.9/10 Metacritic score), Deathloop (7/10 Steam rating, 6.5/1o Metacritic score), and now Redfall (5/10 Steam Rating, 6.5/10 Critics Metacritic score). Yeah, this Redfall game is getting in the mid 6’s from the critics on Metacritic, which is about as rare as Disney making a good Star Wars project.
So, you know everyone hates this game.
And it’s well-deserved hate as everything from the gameplay, graphics, shooting mechanics, gun assortment, enemies, etc. are either boring or extremely outdated.
Every gun in a gun class pretty much feels the same (and especially for rifles and handguns as they have practical no individuality aside from the skins, and even those are rather uniform), the shooting mechanics themselves are rather wonky as there were moments when I had a dead-on aim on an enemy, yet the bullets would either fire over, behind, or even through the enemy with no damage.
Now, that didn’t happen too often and maybe my horrible aim could be to blame, but some of the bugs I encountered make me doubt that.
Nevertheless, the world itself is super sparsely populated with large swabs of the map (which is huge, to Arkane’s credit) with no enemies, friendly characters (ex: other online players), or interesting side quests/environment quests. Sure, there were plenty of these side quests/environment quests (aka: quests that rely on environment clues to solve) populated in these areas, but they were (in my opinion) boring at best.
Oh, and I don’t know why this game doesn’t allow players the option to go back to different locations once you complete the level. It’s a really weird design choice on Arkane’s part.
And, as for the vampires and other enemies themselves, they were decently designed. If that.
(Microsoft/Bethesda-Redfall-Official Launch Trailer)
I actual quiet like the concept of the vampires and them being humans brutally transformed into horrid abominations after a science experiment gone wrong, but they just aren’t that scary as their models and the game’s marketing would have you believe them to be.
In fact, they’re actually kind of funny as they have some of the most random, cliché fight-dialogue lines one could possibly imagine like “I will split you open like a ripe fruit” or “Give me a taste, bloodbag”. Oh, and the vampire are a lot slower than I would have thought. It’s not my biggest complaint from this game, but the vampires meander around more like a rabid bunny than a bloodsucking, vicious, immortal lab creature.
And don’t even get me started on the Hollow Man Cultists. They honestly make the Skyrim guards look like genius.
Anyways, as for the most important, interesting part of this mini review: the bugs and glitches.
Simply put, there’s a lot of them.
Whether it’s downright stupid AI roaming around the map as if they were lost, the irritating movement system, the shooting glitches that essentially make some enemies immortal (well, more so than they already are) to all gunfire until they swoop down and kill you, or the 2010-era game assets you’d could download for free, this game will go down as one of the most unpolished disasters in 2023. And it’s only May 2nd!
I don’t know what Bethesda was thinking allowing this game to hit the markets considering the degraded state it currently is in, but I have a feeling this game was mandated to come out by Bethesda’s overlords: Microsoft.
As of me writing this article, this is one of the premier titles featured on Xbox Game Pass (which is how I played the game), it is currently the 3rd (at least in my Game Pass display) listed game under “Recently Added”, it’s an Xbox Exclusive title, and I’ve been getting “ads” (under the What’s Happening category) marketing me Redfall-themed controller designs and rewards points.
(Microsoft/Bethesda-Redfall-Official Launch Trailer)
Do you need any more proof that this game was supposed to be a “heavy hitter” for Microsoft coming out of its Bethesda purchase? Well, how about Redfall having its own feature slot at Microsoft’s 2021 showcase and the first premiered Bethesda game at the 2022 showcase. Need I say more?
This game is an unpolished, unfinished, uncared for disaster that doesn’t deserve my time to write a review about it, let alone your precious time playing the game.
In its current state, Redfall gets a 2.0/10 from me.
Images Source: Featured Image: (Bethesda/Microsoft) (Redfall – Official Launch Trailer – YouTube)
In Text Image 1: (Bethesda/Microsoft) (Redfall – Official Launch Trailer – YouTube)
In Text Image 2: (Bethesda/Microsoft) (Redfall – Official Launch Trailer – YouTube)
