WRATH: Aeon of Ruin

What should feel like a quake game with fast movement quickly degrades to a cover shooter because how spammy the enemies are with their attacks. Seriously, these bipedal enemies that shoot these white attack balls simply do not stop, they fire away like their lives depended on it. Many levels are corridor like and that's the antithesis of quake-like design. And all this on the normal difficulty. Jumping mechanics are janky making ledge mantling a pretty tedoius experience. The dagger dash move is pretty cool but is ruined by oddly elevated eldges and platforms. Had high hopes for this game and felt let down by many bizarrely frustrating design choices. Not refunding it, hope these issues will be fixed or modded out someday. The game really seems like it has solid potential to be among Dusk and Amid Evil.

Do try and abstain as much as you can from that blue tint of the "Positive Review" icon. My impressions of this game are effectively very mixed even if, all in all, this is some solid boomshoot. It's not that there are many levels here, there are about 15, but each one is absolutely HUGE. I'm talking about 45 minutes up to one entire hour to beat and this without attempting 100% secret hunting. Thing is, my playthrough has been made across an entire year or two because I always reached a point where either by frustration over getting lost or just pure saturation, that I simply left the game and never really felt like playing again for a couple months. I know this sounds awful but the levels are effectively decently made and they look stunning. There is simply too much of it. Every time, I felt like the level I was in was going on for way too long. By the third act, you start getting some instakill floors bringing along the annoyance of redoing a chunk of a level because you forgot to quicksave (with an absolutely redundant "quicksaves-as-resource" mechanic I might add) before slipping into a pit of lava. It's game that might be easy to like at the start, if you are a fan of the genre, but you'll come out the other end almost exhausted. If I had to take a guess, I'd say the non-linear hub design played against it as they clearly weren't able to design proper progression for the many ways people would play through each Act of the game. With all this said, I can't help but appreciate what the game does have going on for it. Once again, the levels look stunning, the overall mood is very ethereal in contrast to the carnage happening onscreen (a great part due to Andrew Hulshult flexing his ambient muscle). The arsenal is quite interesting and varied, even if familiar, with weapons helping sell the satisfaction that the limited effects and enemy animations can't really do. It's an undeniably well-produced shooter. Just a shame that this just feels way too bloated. Too much of an okay thing.

I played the demo for this game years ago when many early access titles would release only to be forgotten. I forgot the name of this game since then but I was so happy to see this gem again on my store page, finally complete and still keeping its original flow.

I tried to muscle my way through this awful game but eventually gave up. Basic controls are a nightmare and you just fight the same four enemies over and over in huge windy samey looking non-environments of hallway and room after hallway and room, using the same textures with no landmarks or map. God help you in any section that forces you to backtrack. What did it for me in the end is that you have zero control of your character in the air. This sounds like not a problem, but after the first chapter, much of the game is fps platforming on downward sloping ledges. When you move your character over ANY change in elevation, you become airborne. Going down a single step sends you flying uncontrolled in that direction, and ALL of the ground in this game has entirely random raises and downward slants, with almost every single jumping section being from one downward sloped edge to another, forcing you to jump long before stepping to the edge of the platform and by some miracle identifying where the slope begins because it's all one texture with no line break. This means that going anywhere that isn't a perfectly flat hallway floor (which is half of the game) has you randomly lose control of your character, and any time there is an instant death pit (more than half the game) you WILL fall down it. The game limits your saves for whatever fucking reason, then gives you hundreds of the item used for them, making the only limitation that you can only have one save at a time, so the quick save spam you would use to bypass this shitty design is gimped. The secrets are also a train wreck, but there aren't any permanent upgrades to miss so ignoring them is the way to go. Secret hunting with zero clues or indications of where one is to find a key that opens a chest in another similarly hard to find secret, only for it to spit out a randomized assortment of 3 basic pickups, is not worth it. There is an item in the game that gives you more than max armor that is super rare and could be the reward for these chests, but since it's entirely randomized, you will likely get a single ammo pickup, a single basic health pickup, and a usable inventory item, none of which actually tell you what they do. Do not give these people money.

I am enjoying it, personally I say turn the infinite saves on tho. your player character is way too squishy and the enemies are far too spongy and the levels too large to not have quicksaves.

This game is fricking amazing. Great setting, solid gunplay, cool idea with sword-dashing and creepy enemies.

I don't hate WRATH: Aeon of Ruin but boy does it feel like a chore to play sometimes. The game boils down to "what if Quake but the levels were way too long" and that's about it. The game desperately needs more gameplay elements or systems or variety or SOMETHING to break up the tedium. On the plus side it looks and plays nice and I think the sound design is pretty good. I just wish it were more...fun.

One of the best boomershooters out there. Great for a quick 30 minute game during lunch. The maps are amazing without being over stimulating. One of my alltime favorite games.

Don't let my playtime fool you, I've played a fair amount of WRATH on a copy of the game that I "acquired" through various means simply because I was very curious about the game and wanted to try it out before I bought it. I had played a LOT of Quake 1, and desired a game that felt and looked similar to it. Before I knew it, I had played through the game up to the 3rd hub world and was close to completing it and realized that I had played through most of the game. It was then that I decided to buy the game proper. [h1] Look and feel [/h1] WRATH looks VERY good, especially since it's running on a sourceport of the original Quake 1 engine called "dark places." The levels are fantastical and striking in their design and architecture, and despite how MASSIVE these levels are, all flow beautifully from one combat zone to the next. Traversal through these huge levels is also fun, especially once you get the hang of the timing for Quake bunnyhopping in combination with your Ruination Blade melee weapon. Movement feels snappy, responsive and smooth as hell, and if you've played a significant amount of Quake 1, it all feels extremely natural and fluid. Playing WRATH feels just as good as it does playing Quake 1, and that is an incredibly good thing especially considering the sheer intensity of combat you'll be engaging in on an almost constant basis. [h1] Hit em fast, hit em hard [/h1] WRATH has an excellent lineup of weapons and tools that are at the player's disposal, and they ALL serve a purpose in combat. You can also, although it isn't required at all to succeed but can MASSIVELY improve your DPS, quickswap weapons like you can in DOOM Eternal. Some of my personal favorites are the double barreled dopamine factory shotgun, the lance which is essentially a railgun, the fang spitter which is a supped up Quake 1 nailgun but no less satisfying to use, the crystallizer which is INCREDIBLY powerful once you learn it's intricacies and finally a really cool concept for this game's equivalent of the BFG called the devastation mace. But really, all of the weapons in WRATH feel incredibly satisfying to use and all have fantastic feedback. The sound design for these weapons is just awesome as well. You also have power-ups that you can collect and use whenever you please much like Quake 2's power-up system, and they can turn the tide of a fight if you find yourself being overwhelmed by the hordes of creatures who want nothing more than to watch you bleed and suffer. [h1] If it bleeds, it can die [/h1] The enemies in WRATH are incredibly aggressive and hard hitting, and all of them serve particular roles on the battlefield. From the lumbering zombies who exist to get in your way, to the nightmare fuel and absolute bastards called heretics who are essentially super pissed off and powered up cacodemons, they are all very well designed and provide good audio feedback when they appear on and attack you in arenas. Each enemy asks the player to fight them in a particular fashion not unlike something you would see in Quake or DOOM, and they feel fantastic to dismember and annihilate with extreme prejudice. Some later fights in the game can get VERY dicey and difficult, but are extremely fun to overcome when the dust from an insanely chaotic fight settles. Like in Quake and DOOM, [b] NEVER [/b] stop moving or you'll be dealt a swift death. [h1] Conquering the challenge [/h1] As someone who enjoys the sensation of my hopes and dreams being ground to dust, WRATH provides a surprisingly hardcore and difficult experience. But for me, someone who has beaten everything DOOM Eternal has to offer on ultra nightmare and Quake 1 on nightmare, I couldn't help but grin with the arduous road laid before me. I have yet to unlock the outlander difficulty, but I have played most of WRATH on hard and found the challenge to be extremely gratifying to overcome. WRATH is a much more difficult game than Quake 1, and assumes the player is familiar with combat from games like Quake and DOOM. If you're fairly new when it comes to boomer shooters and want to play WRATH, unless you also thrive on chaos and perfect split second decisions, I suggest playing WRATH on a lower difficulty so that you can get properly adjusted to this game's particular sense of malice and cruelty in later levels. But once you've mastered the game's mechanics, weapons and enemy roster it is so, so satisfying to enter into arenas at mach 10 and zip around the battleground at breakneck speed demolishing the opposition before they even have a chance to even remotely harm you. [h1] At the end of all things [/h1] WRATH has a unique save system that I'm sure you have heard of by now, but if that sort of save system is annoying to you, you can simply go into the game's options and turn on infinite saving much like how it is in Quake and DOOM. I personally keep limited saves on, as it forces me to really think and ponder on how I should use my limited resource instead of quicksaving before every somewhat challenging fight. Beyond a few gripes I have with maybe like a level or two being longer than it should be, I love WRATH and feel that it is absolutely worth the playtime and investment. If you're someone who has played a ton of Quake 1 and delved into that game's modded levels community, then WRATH will more than likely be right up your alley. However, WRATH isn't for everyone and demands a LOT from the player in it's combat and map traversal. But if you're not put off by the hostility and malice of this crumbling and dying world, then you'll find a lot to enjoy about WRATH as you bring about ruin upon your foes. Absolutely fantastic and mesmerizing FPS game that rewards skill, cunning and perseverance.

Simply the best modern retro fps I've played. I love feeling lost in worlds like this.

"FPS inspired by the icons of the '90s" and they don't give us a normal save system normal save/load system = good game quicksave/quickload system = great game wrath: aeon of ruin = let's make it annoying

Very disappointed by the save system. Not playing a game where I cannot save when I want.

Excellent shooter, much better than Doom.

dog turd trash game avoid like the plague

Quake like FPS in a hellish medival style. Good stuff