There are two roguelite FPS with cartoon graphics and metaprogression in EA, both are cheap (between 10 and 14€) and both have Overwhelmingly Possitive steam reviews : RoboQuest and Gunfire Reborn. I’m intrigued by both and by the mere fact games that similar are being developed in parallel, as if people in different parts of the world noticed there was a market for this, so I decided to try them for ~80-90 min each, and refund them if I’m not convinced, or keep them, or maybe wait until t hey are out of EA.
RoboQuest has very nice gunplay feel for a indie game and despite the variety on weapons, which seems pretty good. There are uzis, sniper rifles, dual pistols, ak47 clones, grenade launchers, flare gun, carbines, shotguns, throwing knives, dual crossbows, laser pistols, beam weapons and more. Movement is silky smooth, too.
However, the combat itself is just decent, and it’s a pity because it could been better.
The first issue for me is the double combo of 2 weapon limit + infinite ammo. Technically, there is a starting artifact you can choose to increase the limit to three, however that means giving up another weapon. I would have made the base game limit 3, and 4 with the artifact. In any case, the biggest issue is no having ammo management whatsoever.
It also doesn’t have a quick grenade throw button. Well, in fact there are no grenades. Come on, if you are going to copy Halo/Borderlands combat, at least copy all of it. This, together have no ammo management, makes the FPS experience feels more sparse and basic, it’s all about just shooting accurately and avoiding enemy fire (all enemies are projectile based) quick enough.
You at least have a single ability that you can use depending on your class, and well, it’s all a copy of stuff we have seen before: stealth for a few seconds + extra damage or first short, put a barrier you can shoot through, deploy a turret, etc. It was dull when Borderlands 1 did it many years ago, and it’s even more dull now.
The second issue is the enemy design and variety. First problem, like the title indicates, it’s all robots as far as the eye can see. The don’t react to being shot with pain states, nor shout, nor there is gore, and I know this is making me sound like a psychopath lol, but it lost some part of the visceral feel that other games have.
The second problem is that most basic enemies are very similar and there isn’t a lot of types. The three basic robots are almost interchangeable, after that we have a turret that is just a turret, and a flying one that it just hovers not doing a lot. They all move slow, and they shoot similar projectiles, with similar RoF and projectile speed.
There are advanced versions of the enemies that are slightly more interesting and more differentiated (although still nothing great), they appear from the second world onwards (after the first boss), butt the first world is dull as hell after the first 7 or 8 playthroughs. Later there are levels with a single new enemy. Still not enough imo, they need 4-5 more enemies, and more interesting ones at that. Where are robots that are able to charge at you? Where are the robots who can repair their allies? Or use stealth camo? You get the idea.
Something I liked is the enemies dropping xp orbs upon killing them, you only have 10? seconds to collect them, so you can’t play passively firing from afar, or you will miss the xp.
The build variety is also not very good. You have three slots to put cores, that are just +1, +2, +3 bonus to two stats (see image)
which produces a way of playing that usually is just “pick the highest rated cores the RNG gives you, and then limit yourself to shooting weapons of that color”, hurting weapon choice even more.
You also gain a perk every time you level up, but many are things like “+% dmg to non elemental weapons”, or “+dmg to melee”, “+% dmg in close rage”, “critical dmg increases when you don’t crit”, “crit has a change of doing shock dmg”, stuff like that, I don’t find them particularly interesting. One allows you to have a shield like in BL. Some examples
