Scathe review

Back to the old-school

There's been quite a resurgence of shooters in the last few years that are in the same vein of shooters that came out during the heyday of the genre. From the middle of the '90s to the beginning of the 2000s. It was a time when the FPS formula was much simpler than it's been in recent times. Where there was no consideration taken for a story, player hand-holding, or cutscenes. Instead, you were someone who with the help of multiple guns would blast away at enemies, level after level. It was a much simpler time, but it was also the time when some of the best FPS games ever made came out. Classics such as Quake, Doom, Duke Nukem, Unreal, Half-Life and the list goes on. Once that era ended, we started getting fed with shooters that usually were cover-based, that had uninteresting stories with dialog and cutscenes. It didn't necessarily mean that there didn't come out any good FPS games during this period, it was just that, the genre had hit a bit of a slump. People were yearning for that simpler time again. A time when strafing and blasting away at enemies was the only thing on the menu. Just look at how well-received Doom (2016) became and later on its sequel. One might even say that's when that resurgence started especially on the indie scene. After Doom was released we got games like Amid Evil, Dusk, Project Warlock and several others. There sure is no shortage of these types of older-styled FPS games today and that is something that will hold true for the foreseeable future. One entry seeking to enter the arena and give the other titles a run for their money is Scathe. With its own spin on the genre, it tries to distinguish itself just enough to stick out from the rest of the pack. But not to the point for it to veer off.

Scathe does wear its influences on its sleeve, it's immediately apparent from which game it has taken the most inspiration. That game is Doom. You play as Scathe an enforcer from hell, tasked with taking down the forces of hell and taking down its leader. It's a Heaven versus Hell story that's as deep as a rain puddle. Which should be par for the course, given what this game tries to be. You are basically sent to hell, to make away with hell's forces and collect six items called Hell Stones. The way Hell is structured here is that it's an interconnected maze that you will be able to traverse in any order you decide. Being that the game is not linear, you can choose the path on which you progress.

Same but different

As stated earlier Scathe is a shooter with a different kind of flavor, it has a couple of various mechanics that most shooters don't have. Most of these mechanics work quite well while others not so much. Scathe also belongs in the category of shooters called bullet-hells. This is the type of FPS where the screen usually fills up with enemies and bullets and moving around is usually a must, standing still for just a couple of seconds will most of the time end in death. Scathe also implements some roguelike mechanics where instead of being able to quick-save and quick-load you are limited to having lives. Once all your lives run out you will respawn to the nearest area of significance and need to start over. These areas of significance are usually color coded and have something important for the player. Green is a safe zone where you will find new weapons, yellow is a boss area that houses one of the Hell Stones and red means that there lies some kind of magic spell. Apart from just shooting guns to dispose of the various enemies, Scathe also has access to different spells that can help him during his journey. One will heal him, another one will freeze enemies or my favorite. Crush all enemies on the screen into a bloody paste. One interesting, and quite cool feature that Scathe has is that his helmet will on occasion get dirty from blood or slime because of all the carnage. To remedy this the player will have to press a button to wipe off the muck since a lot of the view will be blocked otherwise. It's a nice little touch that helps in showing the carnage being created. Players are free to choose the path they want to take through the game and tackle the various bosses in any order they like. This can mean that some might have a harder experience than others while others might have an easier one. This also goes for the various weapons and magic abilities as they might also be found in different orders depending on what path the player decides to take.

Even though with all this distinction and various mechanics, Scathe never really hits any high notes. For the 10-15 hours long journey, the game will really be hitting only one note the entire time and I mean both figuratively and literally. For some reason, the game has only one single track for the entire game. While initially it's cool, and gets your blood pumping and gets you into the mood. After a while, you get sick of it, as you do with every tune that you listen to over and over for several hours. What's worse is that on occasion for no apparent reason the music will just cut off. Seeing that this game is a bullet hell, it is baffling to me how the developers thought that fighting in tight corridors would be a good idea. One game that came to mind several times while playing this was Serious Sam. I would argue that the number of enemies and projectiles isn't that much bigger, if at all from this one. However while in Serious Sam you can move and maneuver in wide open space, here you will be hitting wall after wall. I was doing this on so many occasions to the point of frustration. Another frustration that I had with this game was a particular enemy type that was prevalent in almost every area that I'd visit. Not only is the attack pattern somewhat pretty basic but I consider it to be also just lazy enemy design. It's basically just a ball that rolls towards you at great speed but once it hits you it explodes causing heavy damage. It is very much reminiscent of the Lost Souls enemy from Doom or the Beaheded Kamikaze from Serious Sam. While the latter two just come towards you in a straight line, usually being easy to dispatch. The balls here are all over the place as they bounce off walls and ceilings, making them quite annoying but pretty deadly. Overall the enemy design is pretty lackluster with a few basic ones showing up over and over. The enemy A.I. isn't something to write home about either since the enemies either stand and shoot at you from afar or just beeline towards you in a straight line. The only enemies that are an exception to this are the Mages that work as the game mini-bosses and fill the screen with projectiles. They also move quite swiftly and teleport making them both a great and fun challenge. The bosses are somewhat of a mixed bag with some being a genuine and fun challenge while others just boil down to a fight off attrition.

Just a stepping stone

Visually the game looks good. While it doesn't house the kind of graphics that might require an upgrade of your hardware it's good enough to be considered more than passable. It has the visuals that I would say are one of the game's bigger selling points, not because they're of any higher order but more because of the amount of detail and care that has been put into them. At one point I caught myself admiring the flames being reflected on my gun. Moving and flickering on it in the same way as they were on the wall. Another impressive feat that the game manages to pull off is by running smoothly throughout my entire campaign without any hiccups. This is doubly impressive considering how much action takes place on-screen and how much the screen fills up on occasion. To note is that the rig I ran it on only runs what might be considered mid-tier hardware. Which makes the game highly optimized and deserving of praise in this regard.

Scathe tries to carve out its own path in a soon-to-be overcrowded genre, but makes quite a few stumbles along the way that hold it back from greater success. Hopefully, this will just be a stepping stone for the devs and going forward they'll be able to create something great, from something that's just good enough.