El Paso, Elsewhere Review (SquidLord)
Max Payne with a goth vampire mommy, including the fucked up parts of Max Payne. I do quite like how it's written. It's depressing as hell and funny and bittersweet. It's an aesthetically pleasing game, and it feels good to shoot and stake enemies. Each level is never just 'another level' there's always some sort of gameplay or aesthetic gimmick going on. The humor is that trademark Xalavier goofiness combined with a truly depressing narrative about addiction and abuse. We love the meat oblong.
Now for the negatives (and apologies for how long this is, because I did really like the game). I think enemy behavior is simple, and has a tendency to be a little cheap. Enemies can swarm you or attack before you notice them. Having to go down a corridor to fight a puppetmaster is tedious. They're an enemy that runs away and summons smaller minions that track you down and head to your direction, but in a small space you wind up shooting them without progressing towards the main body, because more have shown up. Bosses can be trivialized with the slow motion mechanic and the Uzi, disintegrating a health bar before staking them. This does make the final encounter anticlimactic. Also the aim assist is a *little* heavy and can get in the way of precision aiming.
I think that it's a little weird that the game is like 'wow you did it you saved the hostages' after you get the good ending, because the good ending is achieved basically just by playing the game. You sorta have to go out of your way to kill hostages to get the bad one. It's kinda like the Bioshock kill the little sister binary choice in that it's not really a hard decision. It's not really a negative but it's sorta got me perplexed. I can't imagine anyone seeing that ending on their first playthrough on their own.
Edit: Xalavier did a whole TikTok explaining it, and it's sorta what I thought they were going for. It's that saving or killing hostages both mean one less sacrifice for Draculae, and that it's a choice that the game has to contend with narratively. But my issue here is that it sort of isn't pragmatic to do that. It'll save a second or two per hostage maybe, but if James decides to kill all the hostages, he's just a freak, but he's never treated as such. Killing the hostages doesn't actually make his life easier.
In a perfect world, Strange Scaffold gets like five times their budget. Most quibbles I have with the game are scope or polish related. They made a satisfying, fucked up shooter. It looks great with its low poly aesthetic and modern lighting. It sounds *great.* I love the horrorcore soundtrack. I love the different genres it goes into. You're always hearing something new. This game is unique and special and I've been looking forward to it for a long time. It's absolutely worth checking out at full price, but the experience could be smoother.
Edit: I originally brought up a bug that caused weapons in a level to despawn upon death, forcing me to do a deathless run of a level that had you retrieve your weapons after losing them. The bug has since been patched. They did also adjust puppetmaster behavior, looking at the patch notes, so it's possible that you won't have the same issues that I did.