Sprawl Review - A flashy but flawed retro fps 

the review is spot on. felt alot of the same things, though i considered the level design to be bland, but mods like arcane dimentions and deathwish probably made my standards insane.

Devs, please don't do things that take people out of the game. They might just realise that they'd be happier playing something else. This isn't the early 2000s anymore. We don't have to put Internet things into everything.

It's always interesting watching a review where I agree with all the critiques made, but still would rate the game positively. I fully agree some additional tweaking would really help this game shine and I hope it gets the time it needs.

The Ghost in the Shell inspired music truly elevated this game for me. So good...

Really good and in depth review, well done man!

I really liked how critical you were in the review and how well you explained your criticisms. I beat the game not long after release and agree with a lot of what you said. I especially liked your point about how it doesn't feel like you're pushed to use slow-mo; playing without it is perfectly viable and somewhat trivializes the mechanic.

All cyberpunk is the dirty kind where everything is garbage. The neon opulence is always a counterpoint to the urban decay, showing an emphasis on commerce over the actual material conditions of human beings. And the plots for this and Ghostrunner are just lifts from Neuromancer.

Another great video. Kirk, you are rapidly becoming my go-to game reviewer on RU-vid. As for the game itself - I wanted to buy it on release, but after reading through Steam reviews I decided to wait for sale. Especially jarring is the decision to put lore in QR codes that open external sites. I mean, it was a cool gimmick in 2000s (Martian Buddy cabinets from Doom 3), but what purpose does it serve now? Maybe it's okay in adventure games, when you have to find some info on Internet. But in an FPS it just kills immersion.

This game really reminds me of ghost in the shell

Good review, I was interested in Sprawl so I watched a few other reviews but none of them really mentioned anything you brought up.

The story of being strung along by an AI for a sort of mutual benefit, the style of the HUD and the text terminals... This is all a dead ringer for Bungie's Marathon!

I dig the visual style of the city in this game.

Will you review the Quake 2 remaster?

The resurgence of this kind of cyberpunk games makes me wish for a sequel to Bungie's Oni...

I picked this one up on christmas after having my eye on it for a little while. I think I agree with you in that the game really feels like Ghostrunner with guns, Set in Half-Life 2. And I think, much like Ghostrunner, much of my reservations in loving this game stem from how blisteringly linear the entirety of the experience feels. Shadow Warrior 3 had that problem too, but it was such a fun and satisfying romp that it didn't bother me. But Ghostrunner and Sprawl are like, being squeezed into a 1-lane highway with an 80mph speed limit: you're really cruising, but you're also claustrophobic and stuck in place like a heard of cattle. It really feels like there's just 1 correct-to-execute set of moves for any given part of the game, and you get looped into trial and error until you make it to the next checkpoint. It doesn't feel like, say, Turbo Overkill, where you can really think about how you want to approach an encounter or area. It could be a blast but idk. I also honestly feel like Bullet Time has been a useless inclusion in almost every FPS I've seen it in, outside of what people say about F.E.A.R. (still haven't played it yet, but it's on my list). Turbo Overkill and Dread Templar are two examples that come to mind. They're abilities that technically function, but feel sort of useless when compared to the rest of the tool kit that has such obvious and helpful ways to implement them. Bullet time almost feels like ADS in a retro shooter, in that, I don't think it really makes sense for most retro shooters to have it, but a number of them still will just because it's a feature that a lot of people are just used to seeing. I would much rather that button be used for a more interesting and useful ability 9 times out of 10. Biggest exception I have personally played, though, has to be Severed Steel. Absolutely critical to go bullet time in that game, and it feels truly built around the mechanic, rather than having it tacked on somewhere along the line.

14:00 - When looking at the positivity rating on Steam (this applies to other sites as well) you have to take it with a grain of salt, or understand the caveats at least. Since it it just a thumb up/down option, generally speaking, you only need to pass a certain bar of quality for enough people to get an acceptable/good score, ESPECIALLY at the beginning (this is because many "early access" and "wishlisted" people are going to review it first). Also, the binary up/down causes more generic, mediocre games to get higher ratings than a more focused, niche titles. Again, these are things to take into account when looking at Rotten Tomatoes, RU-vid, Facebook, Twitter, etc. as well.

I agree with you, first time I played it the game just did not click on me and the ia had issues that affected the experience. Good thing is that the last patch 1.2 did fix some of the issues like the drone one and its better experience now and I actually like it a lot.

I agree with this review, but, only on the lower difficulties. On the highest difficulties, the game reveals to have way more small mechanical problems. It is a truly flawed game, and I can't say I think it's any good.

I am currently playing this. I never noticed that the projectiles were slow. I don't know if they patched this. I also find that the bullet time is necessary in survival. I'm gonna check if standing still is still viable with the drones.

The Killzone influence is what I noticed the first time I saw Sprawl

Good and accurate review. I enjoyed this game quite a lot but there's plenty of room for improvement. The last part of the game was an absolute slog.

Anyone know the VA of Father? He sounds like the Narrator/Skills from Disco Elysium but I'm not sure..

A very good, in-depth review, while still being fair with regards to the issues when the size of the team ( I THINK it's two? Someone please correct me if I'm wrong) means the release deadline when you have a Publisher leaves you with a lot less options and resources to go through everything and fine tune, rectify as many problems as possible. Hopefully they'll remain receptive and after listening to player feedback will make adjustments to the issues you mentioned and others brought up on different channels. It's absolutely one of those games where it's got such great potential if those issues are rectified. Thank you for the awesome Sunday watching! =) Enjoy whats left of your weekend bud.

The wall running in FPS games was cool at first but now it's just groan inducing.

always thought it looked fun

this game is waht happens when you get the visuals right, something that turbo overkill failed as it looks like a unity asset flip with bloom and reflect set to all, but it plays better than this...and when you did a top notch job in music but not in gameplay. I like slow mo, but i am not a fun of the fear 2 slow mo that when you go into slow mo every enemy lights up like a christmas tree. Then you got the doom eternal influences of limited ammo and having to use enemies to recover health and ammo. Combat feels a bit off, i bet the reason enemy projectiles are so slow is so the wall running and slow mo works as ways to avoid fire.

weird what version did u play

Oof that intro.

8:55 you didn't have any problems because you were playing on normal difficulty... on the hardest difficulty even the most common soldiers 3-shot you and without bullet time it's unplayable

I quit after the first hour. Dumb enemies, boring visuals, confusing map design, awkward weapon handling and the worst wallrunning I've ever experienced.

Looks like Turbo Overkill but without all the glitz and shiny lights. Unfortunately, I hate wall jumping in both games

You're really comparing a AA game with 2 AAA games?

The gameplay clip from Realms Deep made this look awesome but this game is really disappointing. I did not want an irritating, handholdy tube fest like ghost runner where you're forced to go through a linear series of little locked in jailhouse challenge rooms that are set up to be moved through in a specific way and which you have to finish before moving on. I wanted the wall-running and shotgun jumping in a game with actual open levels that plays like Quake & DN3D, something where you use the wall-running out of choice, not because the game locks you in a hallway that is specifically set up for you to do a specific platforming sequence with a totally mandatory, locked in order of operations path. Bullet time has always been a really really boring mechanic and having to do it in this game makes it even lamer. Hopefully someone someday who's making an actual, real "boomer shooter" will incorporate wallrunning, ledge grabbing, sliding, ect. Sprawl is basically a ghostrunner clone with some fake boomer shooter trappings to make it look like something its not.

I didn't like the movement at all. There's a clear lag/delay between mouse movement and player movement in the game, giving it a muddy and laggy feel which I didn't like at all. I immediately found myself poking around in the settings trying to fix this, to no avail. This is not what you want in this type of game, so for me this was very disappointing when the game looked so good in the trailer.

With so many amazing shooters out at the moment, it's so easy to give stuff like this a miss.

I 100% agree with everything he said here besides one thing "the wallrunning is decent" in my opinion its very bad and killed the experience for me, if the wallrunning felt better, i could have easily looked past all the other flaws the game had, but alas, you get a max of two wall jumps, cant mantle but can jump straight up a wall(counts as a wall jump) and you have to be holding the key towards the wall as well as the forward key to gain momentum and height otherwise you basically just fall off the wall, which i found very annoying.

I played this game right after Turbo Overkill and ... oh boy ... i was disappointed. I quit after Episode 1

So gameplay stolen from Severed Steel and plot line stolen from Ghost Runner?

I watched 2 minutes, and the game already made me drowsy from boredom. This is clearly a game that does not have "game preservation" in mind with those QR codes and it's lore OUTSIDE of Sprawl. 3/10 for that game. Money saved. Thanks for the review, Kirk!

first!!!