Wrath is the real Quake II.
In most ways, the game is just pretty good.
There are 9 weapons, all with alt-fires, separate ammo types (meaning no weapon gets superceded), and large differences in how they operate. Great.
Unfortunately, they all feel just a tiny bit too weak, the feedback when hitting enemies is underwhelming, most of the alt-fires aren't too useful, a lack of weapon wheel or even ammo display means you spend a lot of time just scrolling through them to keep track of your resources, and the effort put into making them all useful for the entire game resulted in the arsenal feeling fairly flat. There's no weapon you get to use as a treat, you're never stuck with a gun that's difficult to use for a certain situation, no gun is particularly hard to incorporate into your fights. It's solid and just varied enough, but not too exciting.
The enemy designs are good. There are different types of attacks and projectiles they use, different types and speeds of movement, and the encounters are mostly well designed.
On the flip side: some enemy types outstay their welcome, none have weak points worth aiming for, and none are weak to particular weapons or require very specific strategies. Taking damage also staggers some enemies, but the mechanic is pretty annoying due to its inconsistency.
Oh, and I'm not the biggest fan of how they behave - most enemy types keep attacking you for a really, really long time without taking a break, as long as you don't break the sightline. That means there's no organic rhythm to the combat that you might find in many modern games that like putting you up against overwhelming numbers of foes.
This "good, but not quite there" pattern is applicable to other aspects of the game, like the save system (it's pretty unique, but doesn't lead to anything interesting in practice) and movement (it's fast and the melee weapon's dash allows for some rad platforming, but the physics completely fall apart on sloped and bumpy surfaces).
However, the real draw of this title is in the level design. It feels like the levels were made by someone who started Quake mapping in '96 and simply never stopped.
The maps are very large and have impressively elaborate layouts, great attention to detail, strong art direction, good encounter design, tons of secrets, and opportunities for small skips, optimisations or sequence breaks around every other corner.
If anything, the levels feel a bit too ambitious at times - the freedom to sequence break can mess up some spawn triggers, levels take a pretty long time to finish, the amount of secrets can cause you to explore so thoroughly that you sequence break on accident a lot, and because there's so much to find, the actual rewards you get have to be pretty mild to avoid breaking the game's balance.
Still, if you love pre-Half-Life FPS level design, this is probably where that style has reached its peak.
In most ways, the game is just pretty good.
There are 9 weapons, all with alt-fires, separate ammo types (meaning no weapon gets superceded), and large differences in how they operate. Great.
Unfortunately, they all feel just a tiny bit too weak, the feedback when hitting enemies is underwhelming, most of the alt-fires aren't too useful, a lack of weapon wheel or even ammo display means you spend a lot of time just scrolling through them to keep track of your resources, and the effort put into making them all useful for the entire game resulted in the arsenal feeling fairly flat. There's no weapon you get to use as a treat, you're never stuck with a gun that's difficult to use for a certain situation, no gun is particularly hard to incorporate into your fights. It's solid and just varied enough, but not too exciting.
The enemy designs are good. There are different types of attacks and projectiles they use, different types and speeds of movement, and the encounters are mostly well designed.
On the flip side: some enemy types outstay their welcome, none have weak points worth aiming for, and none are weak to particular weapons or require very specific strategies. Taking damage also staggers some enemies, but the mechanic is pretty annoying due to its inconsistency.
Oh, and I'm not the biggest fan of how they behave - most enemy types keep attacking you for a really, really long time without taking a break, as long as you don't break the sightline. That means there's no organic rhythm to the combat that you might find in many modern games that like putting you up against overwhelming numbers of foes.
This "good, but not quite there" pattern is applicable to other aspects of the game, like the save system (it's pretty unique, but doesn't lead to anything interesting in practice) and movement (it's fast and the melee weapon's dash allows for some rad platforming, but the physics completely fall apart on sloped and bumpy surfaces).
However, the real draw of this title is in the level design. It feels like the levels were made by someone who started Quake mapping in '96 and simply never stopped.
The maps are very large and have impressively elaborate layouts, great attention to detail, strong art direction, good encounter design, tons of secrets, and opportunities for small skips, optimisations or sequence breaks around every other corner.
If anything, the levels feel a bit too ambitious at times - the freedom to sequence break can mess up some spawn triggers, levels take a pretty long time to finish, the amount of secrets can cause you to explore so thoroughly that you sequence break on accident a lot, and because there's so much to find, the actual rewards you get have to be pretty mild to avoid breaking the game's balance.
Still, if you love pre-Half-Life FPS level design, this is probably where that style has reached its peak.