Tarnsman
Member
Posts: 307
Registered: 05-11 |
I recently purchased Wrack and played through it because, eh... why not? So I booted it up, chose the hardest difficulty (because why not) and was immediately greeted with some sexy cell-shaded goodness and a pretty interesting environment (the cityscape in the background). And that's where the good ended.
E1M1: A pretty bland series of hallways that were extremely copy and pasted, filled enemies that could barely put up a fight against my onslaught of death, and finally against a boss that simply stood there and let me take off a good 3/4ths of his health before even bothering to counterattack. A couple of cool outdoor scenes that use the cityscape setting, but overall kind of a letdown in terms of a starting level. (I did like the teaching through gameplay style of the level though, where you encountered something in a controlled environment then had to apply it in a more complex environment.)
E1M2: Another boring near-entirely symmetrical layout with minimal usage of the engine's 3d capabilities, against boring enemies that can barely fight back.
E1M3: Same as the last except with an end boss, who couldn't hit me with 90% of his attacks as they'd just run into the raised "railing" around me and explode harmlessly. Also multiple periods of just sitting there and letting me pelt him with fire.
E1M4: See E1M2
E1M5: Starting the map I though, "Oh cool, there are some neat traps that are actually harmful, and alternate paths," then two rooms later we were back to symmetrical-snoozefest-land culminating in another hilariously easy boss.
Overall, I'd say Wrack is pretty bad honestly. The style looks great and the controls are nice, fluid, and movement is quick and precise but the gameplay and level design completely fail. The cool outdoor cityscape setting of the first level is abandoned for corridor crawls, the 3d capabilities of the engine are used like once or twice, and enemies are borderline harmless. I'd say there is a good game somewhere in it waiting to come out, but in its current state it's basically a tech demo and nothing more. A tech demo that costs 10 dollars.
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10-12-12 08:00 
