As a seasoned gamer with over two decades of experience under my belt, I must confess that Redacted left me feeling somewhat underwhelmed. After investing 17 hours spread across 40 runs and 14 escapes, I found myself yearning for more engaging gameplay mechanics and a more enticing final reward.
At first glance, it might not be apparent, given its vibrant comic book aesthetic and rebellious punk-rock vibe, but Redacted (styled as [REDACTED]) is set in the same science fiction universe as The Callisto Protocol from 2022. While the latter was a third-person survival horror game aiming to recapture the essence of Dead Space, Striking Distance Studios has opted for a distinctly different route with this spin-off. They’ve reused various aspects from their initial project to develop an isometric roguelike dungeon crawler instead.
The new series deviates significantly from its original format by moving away from graphic melodrama, brutal fights akin to Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em, and replacing them with comedic references and twin-stick shooting gameplay. Despite this change, it retains a familiar feel due to its obvious inspiration from Hades, as suggested by the title itself, which seems like a tribute to Supergiant Games’ renowned roguelike. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it can be challenging to overlook the game’s design that appears to mimic its main source of inspiration. Redacted offers some unique concepts of its own, yet it doesn’t always reach the same level as its primary reference point.
Similar to The Callisto Protocol, the game Redacted is set within the icy, industrial confines of Black Iron Prison. Here, mutated creatures known as biophages run rampant, transforming both prisoners and staff into aggressive, zombie-like beings. In this scenario, you play as a humble prison guard who must navigate through the penitentiary to reach its final escape pod and flee the area. However, your journey is complicated by other survivors – fellow workers and inmates called Rivals – who also aim to escape, resulting in confrontations with both mutated creatures and hostile human counterparts.
With each unsuccessful attempt to escape, your guard’s demise adds to the horde of infected, but you don’t start over completely – instead, another guard takes up the challenge to reach the exit. In your journey, you gather various forms of in-game currency like contraband and security codes that persist through each guard. These can be used at the game’s starting hub area to buy permanent weapons, skills, and more for your next character. This gradual progression not only makes your journey feel rewarding but also ensures that failed escapes don’t seem futile, as they make future attempts slightly easier.
As a gamer, I find myself in a familiar yet challenging setup reminiscent of Hades. I’m tasked to battle my way through four distinct zones, each ending with a formidable boss. The zones themselves are populated with random arenas, and upon defeating every last enemy in an arena, I’m given the choice of doors to enter. One door offers temporary buffs for my current run, which they call ‘experiments’, while the other rewards me with valuable currencies that can aid me in future attempts.
Ultimately, the experience unfolds into an engaging gameplay cycle, though it may not immediately captivate due to a less-than-impressive introduction. Initially, each attempt starts you off with two weapons: one for ranged and another for melee. However, the early choices for these weapons are not particularly enjoyable as they fire slowly and lack the satisfying impact you’d expect. On the other hand, the heavy, awkward swings of your melee options remain unchanged even after unlocking all weapons, which is disappointing. Certain potential enhancements offer improvements, but unfortunately, you rely on the game’s random number generation (RNG) to make combat enjoyable.
Luckily, as you progress, your battle choices become increasingly dynamic and action-packed, with each skirmish taking on a more intense and rapid tempo as you acquire permanent weaponry. The atom gun’s searing energy beam makes short work of melting biophages, while dodging projectiles to blast enemies with twin blasters adds an exciting element. However, melee combat tends to lose importance over time, making it less engaging. While using the melee attack to smash an enemy can be handy in certain situations, I soon found myself prioritizing enhancing my firearms rather than focusing on melee enhancements.
This results in combat feeling somewhat one-note, although the sheer variety of enemy types keeps you on your toes–forcing you to evade all kinds of projectiles, exploding mutants, and melee-focused threats. You can kick enemies, but I never found this to be a particularly useful skill. You also have access to The Callisto Protocol’s kinesis-like GRP ability, letting you launch enemies backward to create breathing room or send them hurtling into various environmental hazards. Flinging a biophage into a vat of toxic green acid is certainly satisfying, but your use of GRP is limited.
It’s great that the game, Redacted, maintains a visually appealing look throughout. Its comic book aesthetic stands out vividly, with an attractive brightness that adorns explosions and smoke trails with half-tone dots, making your powerful attacks shine through the chaos. This, combined with its twin-stick shooting mechanics, manages to support Redacted’s combat effectively, although it can become repetitive in later stages.
Initially, your primary goal is to navigate through all four zones successfully and break out of the prison. Once you manage this for the first time, various weapon enhancements become accessible, and you can enable a range of difficulty settings to intensify the gameplay and garner additional rewards. This could involve reducing your total health, adding a countdown timer, or boosting the number of enemies in each chamber; there are numerous methods to alter the game’s dynamics.
You’ll encounter your former guard, who will rise among the undead soon after death. Engaging them in combat is an option, but it essentially depends on whether you want to reuse any upgrades they had. The strength of these zombified guards can vary based on their equipment at the time of death, making them potentially tough opponents. I rarely found the potential rewards justified the significant risk involved.
As for why you might want to escape Black Iron Prison more than once–there is a lone incentive. Unlike Hades, where the story propels you through one successful run after another, Redacted’s stimulus isn’t quite as appealing, but I’ll get to that in a minute.
In the midst of every attempt to flee, you’ll find that the game’s adversaries, who were once fellow inmates, pose another challenge. These characters are a mix of stereotypes, ranging from an excessive Dungeons and Dragons enthusiast to a disliked ‘Karen’, and a punk-rock Cockney. The storyline is not particularly complex, with most of their dialogues centered around humor that relies heavily on references. While there are some humorous moments, the joke often depends solely on the reference itself, whether it’s a nod to The Simpsons or Hades themselves.
In each run, Rivals distinguish themselves by introducing an unexpected factor. A total of eight Rivals exist, but at any given time, you’ll face only three. Similar to you, they are all vying for the final escape pod, making each run a fast-paced dash towards the finish. You can hinder one Rival at a time by reducing their health using remote attacks, but beware! They will retaliate with gas leaks that need immediate shutdown and bombs falling from the sky that require careful evasion.
In addition to remote work, there are instances where you’ll encounter one of your rivals in a mini-boss battle reminiscent of classic games. If you successfully defeat them, it reduces the competition when reaching the escape pod; if not, you’re thrown into a survival challenge with all remaining players. This feature sets Redacted apart from other roguelikes, introducing an exciting twist to its otherwise familiar gameplay mechanic.
After successfully escaping for the first time, your main objective to reach the game’s ending becomes dealing with your rivals. Each rival has a secret file containing intriguing details about their lives, but what you’re really after are the hidden codes within those files. You need eight such codes, one for each prisoner, to unlock a vault filled with unknown contents. This final challenge might not be much of an endgame, but it’s what Redacted has in store for you. Therefore, you set out searching for rooms labeled “Computer” in every run. Inside these rooms, you can unveil one paragraph from the 10 files dedicated to each rival. In total, there are 80 such files to discover. During a single run, you might find up to four or five Computer rooms at best.
This task turned out to be quite a long, drawn-out process. In all, it took me 17 hours to make it to the end, which included 40 attempts and 14 successful escapes. As a reward for persevering through it all, there’s a final, high-stakes run back through the prison. If you die during this run, you lose everything you’ve earned, but if you succeed, you unlock some new permanent equipment. Regrettably, that prize doesn’t seem particularly appealing. After 17 hours, I couldn’t fathom wanting to continue, especially since the reason to carry on was taken away. Granted, this isn’t uncommon, and Redacted still has a lot of potential for repeated playthroughs. It’s just unfortunate that the final reward is so underwhelming when the effort to obtain it feels like a grueling march.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and it’s hardly uncommon in the video game industry. Nonetheless, it’s difficult to recommend Redacted when both Hades and its sequel exist and do almost everything it’s attempting to do with much more aplomb. The Rivals system is a compelling breath of fresh air for the genre, and its combat is engaging–even if parts of it are severely lacking. There’s a good game here, somewhere in the middle, once you’re past the lackluster opening and monotonous ending. Redacted doesn’t really expand on The Callisto Protocol universe, but I’m glad it exists. For as flawed as both games are, I still haven’t lost interest in seeing more stories from this world, and I hope Striking Distance has a chance to tell them. Redacted just falls short a few too many times.
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2024-10-28 23:39