Steam Next Fest's best demo is Mario Party for murders, and the full game is out tomorrow
Straftat rocks, and it's coming out this Thursday.
It's been a quiet week in Shooter Town. Last night I jumped into No More Room In Hell 2 after evangelising for it and even playing it last month and it er, it's a pretty buggy Early Access experience so far. There's a fair helping of jank right now, and it seems like the hitboxes on the zombies are bust. I survived my first run and died two times after that, eaten alive by swarms of zombies while my friends watched ineffectually. I would steer clear at this early stage.
I've been slugging away at Escape From Tarkov despite not really feeling it currently in the hopes of getting an achievement for surviving 300 raids in a single wipe. I didn't get it last wipe, but I've currently survived 219 raids, so I'm just trying to force my way through this so I can play something else.
There's a bigger question here about why I'd spend time playing a game I don't actually enjoy, but part of being an adult is doing stuff you don't want to do just to feel a sense of accomplishment – so what can you do? Also, I've played 2,218 hours of Dota 2 despite writing an article back in 2016 talking about how I couldn't play it because it makes me miserable. The problem is me, I guess. Expect weekly updates on how many survives I have, because pain is better shared.
I tried a few different demos in the Steam Next Fest. Delta Force remains a blast, but the real hit is Straftat, a 1v1 shooter that pitches two players against each other in a series of ridiculous arenas. The matches are absurd and the arenas have a variety of thematic and conceptual ideas that they rattle through at lightspeed. The only constant is Straftat's commitment to looking like a scuffed-as-hell Source mod but it takes the shooting incredibly seriously regardless of how comedic the settings might initially appear.
The shooting is messy and imprecise, but it means fights aren't decided in a single bullet. Instead, you're using automatic weapons to suppress your singular enemy and move around the map. Firefights feel chaotic, and if you do have a gun capable of delivering a one-hit kill, it's often an elephant gun or a giant laser gun that has its own quirks to balance that. Headshots will do more damage, but Straftat forcefully rejects realism to create something more chaotic, correctly surmising that chaos is fun.
This isn't to say that realistic shooters aren't fun, something that should be painfully obvious to people who read HitReload, where I go on about them each week. Straftat is an active pushback to multiplayer shooters that bury their good ideas beneath a constant procession of unlocks and progression. There are a few hats you can unlock here for things like breaking windows or performing a rocket jump, but the focus here is on who's better in a best-of-three on a series of different maps. It's a far cry from the bigger impersonal firefights in many modern shooters. As anyone who has ever played a fighting game or Star Wars Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy will tell you, a one-on-one deathmatch is about as personal as a knife fight. Straftat keeps that feeling, and throughout a five-map duel, you learn a lot about the person you're playing against.
Here, Straftat most effectively channels the feeling of golden age Quake 3 Arena. Straftat isn't just about snatching a win but about outplaying your opponent, with everything that entails. You'll shift your playstyle as you learn more about theirs, using close corners and shotguns against someone better at range, and inverting that when you play someone that's good up close. I quickly learnt to avoid my friend Jess when she got her hands on a meat cleaver, because it would be instant death for me, for example. It's a compelling experience and one that I'm keen to try more of when the full version releases on Thursday.
There were only 25 levels of the 100+ that Straftat claims it will launch with, but these arenas are where we get the Mario Party vibe. One level might start you in a dark Twin Peaks-esque L-shape with a portal at each end. You're alone for now with just a single-shot instant kill gun for company. But those portals are connected and any minute now your opponent is going to come through one of them. But which one? A personal favourite level starts you both, along with every weapon, tumbling down a slippery slope endlessly while trying to murder each other. Another puts you in a room full of doorways clutching a gun that can shoot black holes while the gaps above the doors have just enough room to bowl a grenade over the top. Pull this off and you'll get a scream of resentment, chased with cackling. Because there are no real stakes and the only prize is bragging rights, none of the deaths sting that much.
Besides being a joy to play, the 25 levels here all spotlight thoughtfulness and creativity. If the developers, brothers Sirius and Leonard Lemaitre, can keep this sort of creativity alive in each level, this is going to be a great way to spend an evening. If they keep supporting the game, I'd love to see a competitive scene spring up. I'm excited to see kill montages, already.
The big issue with Straftat is that as a 35-year-old, finding someone to play against is tricky. Big thanks here to Rick Lane of Demo Disc (and also previously my esteemed colleague at the now-closed Bit-Tech) for not just putting the game on my radar, but also for playing it with me.
Out this week
Obviously the biggest release of the week is Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. I played a tiny bit of the beta earlier in the year and found the whole omnimovement system just led to me getting my arse kicked, but I enjoyed 2020's Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War's campaign so I'll be playing it a bit Friday.
Last year's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was pretty disappointing (I reviewed it and was scathing), but generally Call of Duty is like pop music, made for the most amount of people to enjoy. I'll sink a few weeks into the multiplayer and the campaign will be a blast. I'm going away for a little while for work after release and I suspect it won't run on my Steam Deck, but I'm sure I'll play it at some stage and have thoughts.
Otherwise, it's thin on the ground out there. If I haven't convinced you to try Straftat or No More Room In Hell 2 in the newsletter, that's on you.
- Straftat - October 24
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 - October 25
Gibs
- Blindfire was revealed and dropped into Early Access at the Xbox Partner Preview stream on October 17. It's a multiplayer shooter where you can't see your opponents except when they're firing. The idea is nice and I enjoyed a few games of it, before spending a bit of time exploring the world's most pointless cosmetics page. The room is pitch black and you'll navigate only bye sounds and flashes of gunfire, but a cool thing happens at the end of each round, when the move into overtime is signalled with the room starting to light up as neon graffiti starts to glow or lights and sirens are activated. I'm not sure if this has any long-term appeal and I was certainly done after a handful of matches, but it's cool to see people exploring new multiplayer ideas.
- There won't be a Riot Shield in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, which is important news if you, like me, don't like being charged and beaten to death by a walking tank.
- Rick Lane's review of Starship Troopers: Extermination makes me want to play Starship Troopers: Extermination. I'm installing it right now.
- Litany is playing in London soon - I can't attend as I'll be busy with work, but it's a good excuse to encourage people to listen to her best track, Bedroom.