I've always enjoyed the Boomer Shooter genre, and the revival that's been happening to these types of games over the last few years have kept my nostalgia satisfied. So here we have Amid Evil, a really good entry to this whole Renaissance of Arena Shooters (or DOOM Clones as they were called many years ago).
Let's get the lesser stuff out of the way, the story is pretty barebones as usual, it's just a classic "Go here, kill something evil" that these types of games use as excuse to start the genocide. Spread throughout the levels are pieces of text that delve more into the lore of the various worlds, which was a very welcoming addition and lead to some interesting insights about the creatures you're slaughtering. With that out of the way, let's get into the real meat of this game: the gameplay.
As expected of these types of games, it's really fast paced, with the player having to constantly move around and jump in order to dodge enemy projectiles. The weapons are really creative, they go from a staff that fires homing bullets, to a claw that launches motherfucking planets that explode at the enemy. Each gun has it's niche, and they're all pretty useful, serving their purpose. There's even a Soul Charge mechanic, where you fill a bar by killing enemies and collecting their souls, and when activated it supercharges your guns. Unfortunately, it doesn't bring anything novel to the table in terms of changing how the gun works, all it does is make them shoot faster and do more damage. The enemy design fits into certain archetypes a bit too much, you have your melee goons, your ranged snipers, your tanky close ranged behemots, the flying enemies, all pretty much expected.
The art direction is stellar, with special attention just to how varied the levels are. You have your standard mountains and caves and temples, but later you go into a futuristic machinery type of place, with some aspects of brutalistic architecture, and even a Void are that is geometrically unconventional, almost Lovecraftian, which will have you walking in the walls and in the ceiling through it's levels.
Now, the lingering question that everyone has in these types of games is: is it difficult?
No, not at all. I played this game on the secret, highest difficulty and it wasn't much to sweat at. Some of the later levels gave me some trouble, but nothing that couldn't be solved by tryharding a bit.
So is this game good? Yes. Is it great? Not really. It's a frantic FPS that will take you around 12 hours to be done with, and while not a masterpiece, it goes on to achieve all it intended to do.
Let's get the lesser stuff out of the way, the story is pretty barebones as usual, it's just a classic "Go here, kill something evil" that these types of games use as excuse to start the genocide. Spread throughout the levels are pieces of text that delve more into the lore of the various worlds, which was a very welcoming addition and lead to some interesting insights about the creatures you're slaughtering. With that out of the way, let's get into the real meat of this game: the gameplay.
As expected of these types of games, it's really fast paced, with the player having to constantly move around and jump in order to dodge enemy projectiles. The weapons are really creative, they go from a staff that fires homing bullets, to a claw that launches motherfucking planets that explode at the enemy. Each gun has it's niche, and they're all pretty useful, serving their purpose. There's even a Soul Charge mechanic, where you fill a bar by killing enemies and collecting their souls, and when activated it supercharges your guns. Unfortunately, it doesn't bring anything novel to the table in terms of changing how the gun works, all it does is make them shoot faster and do more damage. The enemy design fits into certain archetypes a bit too much, you have your melee goons, your ranged snipers, your tanky close ranged behemots, the flying enemies, all pretty much expected.
The art direction is stellar, with special attention just to how varied the levels are. You have your standard mountains and caves and temples, but later you go into a futuristic machinery type of place, with some aspects of brutalistic architecture, and even a Void are that is geometrically unconventional, almost Lovecraftian, which will have you walking in the walls and in the ceiling through it's levels.
Now, the lingering question that everyone has in these types of games is: is it difficult?
No, not at all. I played this game on the secret, highest difficulty and it wasn't much to sweat at. Some of the later levels gave me some trouble, but nothing that couldn't be solved by tryharding a bit.
So is this game good? Yes. Is it great? Not really. It's a frantic FPS that will take you around 12 hours to be done with, and while not a masterpiece, it goes on to achieve all it intended to do.