Redfall is Getting Torn Apart in Reviews
Arkane released their latest game on the 2nd of May 2023, their first release as a Microsoft owned developer, and reviews so far have been overwhelmingly negative across the board.
You may remember Arkane as the developers of the Dishonored series, Prey 2017, and Deathloop – all of which are critically acclaimed releases from a studio that went from strength-to-strength with each new game, but their latest FPS adventure has left players and reviewers across the board with a bad taste.
The pitch for Redfall’s gameplay seemed good at first – a Left 4 Dead style co-op shooter made by an experienced team of developers with a focus on story driven action. But as reviews began to roll across gaming websites and steam users, things began to take a turn for the worst.
Redfall currently has a ‘Mostly Negative’ rating on its Steam page, with over 70% of 1,127 reviews completely tearing this game apart for a number of reasons including framerate issues, shoddy AI, optimisation issues for the majority of high-end PC hardware, one user even referred to Redfall as “this years Fallout 76” – make of that what you will.
Game Observer haven’t had the chance to test out this release yet, but reviews from some of the most popular gaming sites don’t leave much to the imagination.
IGN’s review in progress states:
With Redfall arriving at IGN just a couple of days ahead of its official release date we haven’t had enough time to complete a final review yet – certainly not without becoming a nocturnal monster myself and staying awake all weekend. However, after several sessions – solo, co-op with a friend, and also in a group of three – I must admit I’m thoroughly underwhelmed by Redfall’s vanilla missions and lifeless world, and very disappointed at its lengthy list of display issues and bugs.
Steam User, Ark, logged 12.1 hours on Redfall, writing in their review:
I played and beat this game before any day 1 patch was up, I don’t even know (if) there was a day 1 patch. The game ran pretty alright, it hitched every once in a while on high and medium, so i nuked it down to low. The game itself is a very uninspired amalgamation of many different co-op shooters that manages to not get any of them right. It has no idea who its target audience is. That being said the exploration is bland, the shooting is blander, i see more variety at the baskin robins than i do in the enemy types. Story and characters exist as much as my self worth does.
tl;dr it’s a game with a neat concept that ends up disappointing. While i don’t recommend it, i wouldn’t talk you out of it
It’s difficult to see such a prestigious studio gain poor reviews on what was meant to be an extremely exciting release, particularly as this is one of Microsoft’s only first party releases since their acquisition spree began last year. Redfall should have been their chance to prove that moving to Microsoft as a first party developer would mean better quality games from fan favourite studios, unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case so far.
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