The fact that the industry has been continuously releasing new games, remakes, reboots, sequels, or simply new intellectual properties over the past ten years, along with pushing the limits of multimedia development that any video game production entails, doesn’t preclude the sporadic appearance of “retro” games using earlier hardware.
There is an entire sector of independent developers working hard to recreate those qualities that, despite appearing basic and underdeveloped to the player born after 2000, nonetheless hold a very particular sentimental value for those of older age.
It’s similar to the unique enjoyment experienced when engaging in hobbies like listening to “long plays” performed by a monophonic horn player. or read a printed book.
These items have a very certain pleasure associated with them that is geared toward people who like historic transductions and the simplicity that got us to where we are now.
However…Different video games have a slightly acrobatic and surgical distinction between them and others that merely aim to fit in and add a chapter to an already written will. Some video games, for whatever reason, win their place in the retro-gaming museum.
It is essentially the situation we have with the idea under discussion today.
Impaler…
Instead of standing on its own and inspiring players of all ages to keep playing it, it gives us solid justifications for picking up Doom, Heretic, Hexen, Eradicator, or Wolfenstein once more.
It is a game that successfully manages to bring back for us some of the most iconic features of the earliest first-person shooter incarnations that have been witnessed throughout history.
A new intellectual property from scratch, with the point of origin remaining in such a remote and particular location, may not have been the ideal idea in this particular case.
A retro game that’s also not all that retro…
Impaler is a wholly independent intellectual property, it should be emphasised.
It’s not so much a redesign or relaunch of any previous shooter; rather, it takes all the features and creates its own mythos with the purposefully constrained toolkit.
Our primary character maintains a regular collection of various types of weapons. From close combat and crowd control to precise distance battle.
The unique aspect of the gameplay is a weapon that, true to its name, kills foes by raising pillars or pointed stakes out of the earth to “impale” the target.
This has been the “special” weapon designed to set the game apart from others of its era that utilise technology.
The issue is that there isn’t much left to enjoy after this.
The elimination zone, where various foes with various designs and attacks continually come, is where the action takes place.
A challenge-symbolizing rectangular chamber with walls, columns, or other destructible architectural elements irregularly appearing in it.
To be generous, there aren’t many surprises the game can bestow upon players beyond a change in tone for the map’s colouration or modifications to the style of 8-bit music obviously influenced by “Bobby Prince” compositions.
As we play different games, we amass the game’s basic currency, which we can use to purchase new weapons and character enhancements. This first suggests that the game’s difficulty will scale in an incredible way.
The one disadvantage with a game of this kind that tries to scale the challenge is that it stays in a basic quadrant, which, given how the modern FPS aficionado has developed, can make a difference in levels of challenge. The challenge is minimal.
But when you look at it objectively, you can see that 25 years ago, Impaler would have been the game that made your grandmother’s blood pressure rise, forcing them to have you attend church every week as a result.
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