Strafe (PS4) Review
Release Date: 9 May 2018
Date Played: 18 June 2022
Strafe has a cool premise: Blend the fast and tight gameplay of old school shooters like Quake and Doom with the popular rogue-like stylings that are worming their way into every game these days. It was a good enough concept, but it totally failed in almost every conceivable way. It was developed by Pixel Titans and published by Devolver Digital. It was met with a less than lukewarm reception on consoles, but fared slightly better on PC.
Gameplay:
Strafe is an absolute mess of a game. There's no other way to put it. Not only is it poorly designed and relatively unfun, but it's also a buggy mess that is barely playable much of the time.
You're a scrapper who's sent out into a hostile environment to collect... scrap. You start off the game by selecting from either the shotgun, railgun, or machine gun and then teleport into the first level. In rogue-like fashion, you'll soon discover that all of the levels are procedurally generated and have a randomized layout. This seems good in theory, but falls very flat because these fast-twitch shooters rely on precise and well thought out level design that can be memorized. The ability to fly through the levels while blasting away all the baddies is the main draw to these games and gives that sense of momentum that is so exhilarating. Obviously, that's what the developers had intended. But, unfortunately, you can't do that here. You have to hang back and play more conservatively than you want to because there's no way to know what's coming up ahead. You'll find yourself funneling the mindless and frustrating enemies into choke points just to mow them down.
However, just because you're killing tons of enemies, don't think the game is easy. Strafe is unfairly brutal in a bad way. Most of the early enemies just run directly towards you no matter where you are. This can be a huge issue since there is an overwhelming amount of them. They will pop out of previously cleared areas and make no sound, so you have no idea they are behind you until you take damage. You have to pop around corners to try to observe the upcoming rooms and find a course of action. Of course, there are enemies that hang onto the walls and ceilings just out of sight that love to drop down on you once you pass by. Of course, they are silent and you won't know they're there until you've already taken damage. It's an annoying gameplay loop, and there are so, so many instances of unavoidable damage. That's a real issue since you only have one life and health refills are rare.
Your starting weapons are puny and don't feel good to fire. There's no impact to them or sense of weightiness. Not only that, but the upgrades and other weapons you find throughout your run of the game don't improve matters much. These upgrades are scattered around the levels that increase your fire rate, health, armor, etc. But they don't really seem to make you feel any more powerful and the awesome synergies that can be found in most rogue-likes are absent here. Also absent is a perpetual progressions system. There is really nothing to unlock other than difficulty modifiers and teleporters to let you skip the first few levels of the game. So, you're not going to be able to improve or alter the way the game plays on subsequent runs. The game will play exactly the same as the first time you played it. It's a real oversight on the developer's part. These meta-progression systems are an essential staple of rogue-likes, and without them, any failed run feels like wasted time.
In addition to this, the game has real framerate issues on PS4. Aiming can be difficult because of the choppiness of your movement, and hitting enemies can be a challenge. This is even the case when the enemies are right up in your face and it feels like you can't hit the broad side of a barn. When rooms fill up with enemies, the framerate drops into the single digits and makes the game neigh unplayable. Since you only have 1 life, this usually spells the end of your run. Even if the game performed well, the aiming feels very slippery and you can tell it's more suited to a keyboard and mouse setup. It's obvious that this port was an afterthought and PC was the main focus during development.
There are 4 levels in the game that are each broken up into 3 sections. Sadly, because of the randomized nature of everything and the necessity to play so conservatively most of the time, things begin to all blur together and get pretty boring rather quickly. Although, I can't say I was ever able to make it to the latter levels because of the buggy nature of the game.
I also encountered bugs that included key items falling through the floor, shops taking money for ammo and not dispensing it, and numerous crashes between the levels. On my best run, I got stuck on some terrain and wasn't able to progress. I had to start over. The game has a pretty substantial patch that seems to fix some of these issues. Personally, I played the game with the patch, and still encountered all of these issues. I can't even imagine how bad it would be without the patch.
Presentation:
The game is supposed to look like a game from 1996, and I guess it does. It has those clunky graphics like Quake and does a good job of evoking the look of games from the period. Sadly, even though it looks the part, the game has no artistic style and is boring to look at. Almost everything is the same gunmetal gray corridors and rooms. As you progress further into the game things never really change much and remains underwhelming. The enemies are also really boring and uninspired. You can blow off parts of their bodies, which I guess is novel. But it really messes with the kill animations of the game and sometimes it's difficult to tell if an enemy is actually dead, or if parts of them are just falling off. The peashooter feel of most of the guns don't really help to remedy this.
The music is also extremely underwhelming and has no memorable points whatsoever. It's kind of a synth-guitar sound that tries to rip off better games from the 90s, but totally fails. There are no cool hooks or riffs to latch on to and just seems to meander around while you play.
On a very positive note, this game has the best tutorial I've ever seen. It features a live action training presentation with a fantastic VHS filter on it that stars a sexy lab tech who is training you on how to be a metal scrapper. Hillary Vetter, the actress, does a phenomenal job in this role and is the best part of the game. It's full of fantastic humor, great sets, memorable one-liners, and enough charm to almost justify purchasing the game. Her delivery of, "There's more to scrapping than just collecting scrap and scrapping it" is one of the hardest I've ever laughed playing any video game and if the rest of the game lived up to the caliber of its tutorial, it would be one of the best games of all time.
Conclusion:
Strafe is not worth playing. Even if the game worked (which it doesn't), it is a boring and tedious mess of bad gameplay design and failure to capture what makes the games it's trying to emulate fun. Literally every part of the game, excluding the tutorial, is a waste of your time if you decide to play it on PS4. Perhaps you can have some fun with the PC version, but the version I attempted to play just doesn't function. I feel like the developers had a simple concept of blending Quake with a rogue-like and just had no idea how to achieve anything they wanted to do.
This is one of only a couple of games I've played in the last several years that was so buggy and poorly performing that I literally couldn't finish it.
Pros:
The most interesting, funny, and awesome tutorial I've ever seen in a game
Cons:
The game is a buggy mess and doesn't work
The framerate is so bad you can't aim
The randomized levels make the game less fun, not more interesting
The enemies have annoying A.I. and deal cheap damage
Boring and uninspired presentation
Final Status: Played
Final Score: 3/10 (Terrible)
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