There has long been a perception that the FPS genre is “stuck” with things like health regen, 2-weapon limits, and on-rails sequences betting on a polished and epic experience. This ends up boring some of the players because they fall into the same old clichés (I’m looking at you, turret sequence in modern shooters). What was needed was for independent shooter developers to come out and offer us installments that at first seem like emulations of classic games in the genre, but after taking another look at them we see their full potential.
This is the case of CULTICan arena shooter that takes inspiration from BLOOD Y resident evil 4 to surprise us with a result that makes it a unique experience. Do these additions work? Should you try to fix something that isn’t broken? Stay, because in this review we tell you what we thought CULTIC.
i live again
The first thing to note is that CULTIC It was developed by one person: Jason Smith or “Jazzos Games”, who programmed, wrote and designed the world of cultists with supernatural elements in which you will find yourself trapped. A monumental task. The story is simple: you are a nameless ex-cop who decides to investigate on his own the thousands of disappearances in the area. That is all. The only thing you have, besides that information, is an ax that you find after waking up to neck-deep corpses in a mass grave, and a great desire to bust cultists left and right.
We know that Boomer Shooters set aside narrative elements to focus on the fast-paced and visceral combat that the genre offers. The rest of the story you will discover as you explore the map to find small stories in the form of notes, left by other visitors with less luck than you.
Familiar taste, but different
CULTIC it shines in its gameplay and combat loop – those 30 seconds of destruction that repeats itself throughout the game. Although it is a Boomer Shooter, the innovation is seen in the combinations that you can achieve with your arsenal. Also, there are small tweaks to the classic formula that make you ask more than once: why hasn’t anyone thought of something like this?!!! For example, while in other games your thrown weapon is a fragmentation grenade, a Molotov cocktail or remote detonation charges, in CULTIC you can combine the first 2 to create an explosion that vaporizes the cultists and leaves the less fortunate survivors engulfed in flames.
The same goes for the gun. While in most shooters the pistol loses relevance as soon as you find a better alternative, CULTIC he keeps it as an integral part of your tools of destruction. Ammo is plentiful in combat arenas, and after upgrading this weapon, its secondary fire will allow you to fire in bursts, useful for taking out anyone in front of you with one click.
Your entire arsenal is perfectly calibrated to be useful in different situations: the mid-range rifle that will regularly reward headshots with a few seconds of slow motion; a double-barrel shotgun whose pellet explosion makes you feel that John Romero himself gave it his blessing; the grenade launcher that can paint an entire room red in a fraction of a second; a flamethrower that will get you out of trouble when you lose ground, and that will be your last line of defense when you want to incinerate everything in front of you.
Added to this combat loop is the ability to interact with items scattered on the map. For example, we ran out of bullets in the magazine and then grabbed the eyes of a destroyed skull to throw them directly at a hooded man, who exploded in a bath of red pixels.
CULTIC Get creative as you use the environment and chop up the enemy in different ways. This, coupled with the map design, creates a polished, visceral, and frenetic gameplay loop, where prioritizing objectives is crucial, and being aware of your surroundings will save your life. You also have to add inventory management, use of medical kits in combat, tables to improve weapons, movement techniques to move faster and puzzles that require exploration to progress.
This variety of combat could be one of the problems when playing CULTIC, because although many of us grew up with this type of mechanics in arena shooters, it is not easy for those who are new to the genre to understand and enjoy it quickly and easily. In fact, it can be overwhelming, so a tutorial or level to experience these mechanics and hone skills wouldn’t hurt.
We implore you to be patient with the game mechanics if you are about to go down this rabbit hole. We promise that if you hone your skills you will have the satisfaction of cleaning an entire room in seconds.
The art of creating pixels
CULTIC It doesn’t fall short in its presentation either. The color palette and pixelated styling do an excellent job of selling the retro vibe. The sprites of the cultists, zombies, ghosts, and monsters you’ll face involve a brutal amount of work for one person, and the result is excellent. Imagine that cracking open a cultist’s skull and seeing the perfectly animated blood geyser is reward enough for hitting the mark, but the spectacle is still on screen in a balance that’s hard to strike.
The barrels, blades, weapons and chairs made with volumetric pixels (Voxels) are a nostalgic trip reminiscent of games like Duke Nukem, Shadow Warriorand of course, BLOOD. This never made life difficult for us in the combat arenas, since the signs of color, light, and silhouettes of the enemies are perfectly legible in the middle of the coven.
We knew, for example, that the shotgun cultists wear red cloaks, while their brethren with submachine guns wear black cloaks, while the poor interns’ cloak is brown; they only have an ax that glows red when coming towards you, allowing you to dodge them more easily.
The visual style and frenetic combat of CULTIC They make you think that creating effective horror sequences would be impossible, but the sound design comes to charge the atmosphere to make your hair stand on end. Very early in the game we were in a dark cavern and only had a lighter to light the way. As we walked through the narrow corridors full of entrails up to our knees and with corpses hanging from the ceiling, we listened to the bones crumbling in our wake and the echo reverberating in the walls; suddenly, we find a teddy bear and the note “GOOD NUMBER OF FILLED BARRELS TODAY, MAKE MORE AND BETTER BARRELS TOMORROW”.
The silence was broken by a deep cavern-echoing laugh, followed by the sound of a chainsaw and a shadow running directly towards us. In our panic, we stepped into a bear trap that rendered us immobile. We switched off the lighter, fired at the trap to free ourselves, and began emptying what little ammunition we had left on whatever was chasing us in the dark. It consisted of a circular arena, with an enemy that was common in the rest of the game, and that gave us goosebumps the first time we got to that part. The game is full of sequences of this style.
CULTIC uses a mix of visual and sound design to mold the right atmosphere for each encounter without hitting the beat. Each transition is natural, and the result is a very effective combination of horror and action.
A shooter that leaves you wanting more
We will get to the point. CULTIC it’s a short game. The 10 levels, including 2 boss fights, left us wanting more. While $10 is a good price for the quality and fun that Jason Smith so passionately created, it took us just under 4 hours to finish the game on our first go. Fortunately, it’s only the first chapter of the game and a second one is on the way, although we don’t know when it will be out. What we know is that it will be DLC, so we will have to pay some extra money when it comes out.
It also pains us to mention that in the end we were a little disappointed, because it leaves us with a somewhat run over cliff-hanger. We will not go into details so as not to spoil, but we would have liked a less abrupt closure. The game has some replayability for different tastes: achievement hunters have challenges involving horde mode; there are collectibles for those who enjoy searching every corner of the map; there are leaderboards for speedrunners; and an “extreme” difficulty for masochists.
Seeing as demanding, we would only love to see a map editor to complete that “Old School Shooter” stamp in which games like DOOM Y Duke Nukem They have found very engaged communities. Unlikely, we know, but it is worth dreaming.
It is clear that Jason Smith, a fan of the Boomer Shooter, wanted to create a game of the genre for the fans. The almost perfect blend of old and new, and the potential for growth make CULTIC a shooter that stands out among the sea of other incredible installments. In a market that needed a breath of fresh air, CULTIC It shows us that it is possible to create a frenetic, brutal and innovative experience, returning to the roots of the shooter and forging another path for the genre.
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