Re: [Team Krama][FPS] Rape of the Dead
I finally got around to playing this, and good god what a mess. I'd be willing to forgive it if certain things were different, ie female PC, CR (If there is any I've missed it cause it's so damn easy), and more non-humanoid enemies.
Let me preface this by saying, I'm all for more hentai FPS games, and credit where credit's due - Making games isn't easy. I'm also only basing this on the first level, about to play the second so I'll correct myself where I'm wrong. (Disregard, I played through and finished it)
The first shit thing about this is the gunplay. First, the superficial aspects; the weapon models, sounds and animations. Most of their animations are bugged in one way or another, especially noticeable on the pistols - When you fire, you'll see the slide cycle 2 or 3 times. Sometimes, when going into ironsights while shooting, the model will be off to the side. Beyond that, they're all robotic, clearly made by someone who has little idea of how actual firearms function, and look poor by 2002's standards.
The models aren't particularly bad, but a weird choice of viewmodel FOV, lighting/shaders and aforementioned awful animations make them seem worse.
Often, sights will be misaligned - usually the point of aim ends up being above the sight (P90, MP5), or obscured by the gun its self (Mossberg, Deagle, WTF SPAS12, the blue thingy), so at least there's a bit of added challenge, even if for the wrong reasons.
The cone of fire when hipfiring is ridiculous in how quickly and to what degree it expands. You can't hit targets point-blank if you've fired more than a couple shots or moved for more than a second. It feels like I'm playing the first Deus Ex while suffering from AIDS and a brain tumor. The difference is, in DX1, the abysmal cone of fire mechanics served a purpose - slowing the gameplay down, making you pick your shots and making positioning important. None of that is supported by this game's mechanics.
The shotguns are especially bad for this. If the target is more than 3m away you might as well be sneezing on them, aiming down "sights" or not, but at point blank they will obliterate.
Speaking of which, with the mossberg, you can "quickscope" between shots to override the pump animations and roughly double its rate of fire.
The sounds severely lack impact. With few exceptions, the weapons sound like BB guns, and their shots are often quieter than the hit sounds on enemies. Also if you're more than a few steps away from the girls their already quiet guns become silent.
So on this aspect it gets a -1/10. Maybe in 1999 it'd have been something special.
Two: Enemy design & AI
There's really not a lot to say here, so far. Enemies make a bee-line for you and the girls, you either shoot them or move away before they get close enough to do damage. They're not evasive, their movement patterns don't vary, they only attack in melee, there's very little terrain for them to exploit.
Addendum:
So the other three (?) enemies do make themselves slightly harder targets, and one of them has a projectile attack. At least there's that. You can always hit the worm whether or not it's burrowed, you can unload the shotguns into the big guys' faces easily with aforementioned exploit, and the spitting things go down easy. Nothing to write home about.
The friendly AI is equally poor. They're either moving to catch up to you, or standing still and shooting at dumb enemies. They don't require any management or attention except when one gets mobbed and their AI craps out so hard they stop fighting back. They don't attempt to put distance between themselves and the zombies autonomously, and from a purely gameplay perspective it'd be more fun if they weren't there.
Also, the girl with the minigun will often be unable to shoot enemies who are crowding her because they're stood inside the minigun's barrels lmao
2/10. Having played a lot of the two games this apes, it doesn't hold a candle in terms of interesting challenges.
3: Level design
First, AI spawning. They just spawn wherever the fuck. Both L4D and Killing Floor had specific areas to spawn enemies, out of sight and line of fire of the player(s), with lots of blind corners, second-floor windows - areas otherwise inaccessible to the players - that they can pile out of.
Rather here, enemies spawn wherever the fuck they like, there's only any logic to it in one wave of the last level, where they spawn on the upper floor and drop down. But in the other waves and all the other levels, they spawn in plain view, often mixed in with the player and NPCs.
As I alluded to earlier, the maps are boring. Open streets with a couple overturned cars, an open facility with few obstacles, It's very rare that there'll be something blocking your line of fire (or sight) to an enemy with the exception of the hospital level. There's no strategy required to where you decide to hold up, because most parts of the map are the same in strategic terms. Your choices are either backed into one of the alleyways/rooms to funnel them in from one direction, or out on the street/in corridors where you can't be backed into a corner and have much better sightlines.
Speaking of the hospital level, enemies would often poke their heads through walls and the girls would try to shoot them with little success, instead of the friendly AI only shooting enemies they can hit, and the enemies being able to path their way into the rooms consistently.
Now, the game does do something well, in relative terms. Not much value in this form, but applied to something like Killing Floor it'd be interesting. I'm talking about the fact there's a continuity, linear progression between levels, and the different scenarios in each of those levels. It's generally a cycle of wave defense > point defense > get from A-B. My favorite level was the one where you start off alone, and have to go through several "arenas" to rescue each girl, adding them and better weapons to your arsenal as you go along. Otherwise, the others are unremarkable from a gameplay perspective, but some of the environments look cool.
3/10
4: Mechanics & Hentai Integration
The game lacks those that make either L4D or KF interesting, like welding doors, meaningful weapon choices, economy, support items, any form of distinguishing one player's choices from another. You've got very basic weapon classes (Pistol, Bigger pistol, Shotgun, better Shotgun, Submachinegun, better Submachinegun, et cetera) and which ones you have access to are determined solely by the level - not by any type of exploration, economization or generally earning them. Most weapons are clearly worse than others. Grenades carry no risk and you can start pretty much every wave with five.
As I said earlier, there's no strategy to the game. You run around, collect your guns, fuck a girl or two and sit there until it begins, then just shoot everything. You might have to poke out to kill one of the worms or pull out your shotgun to blast a big guy, but otherwise the pace of it is monotonous, tedious and a slog. The lengths of the waves and levels is way too long for how little variance in gameplay each one affords.
The "healing" mechanic is awful, can often bug out and leave the girl in a T-pose. Being the primary source of the game's H content, don't even think about enjoying it, because you have to watch a bar and play a timing minigame while the animation is going. You can perform it at pretty much any time, the enemies don't do enough damage to kill you before you've finished and regained a load of health.
As for the combat rape, there's very little opportunity for it to take place, let alone be enjoyed, since it will kill the girl pretty quickly. But you have to really not give a shit for them to end up in the downed state in the first place, and it takes all of 15 seconds to get them out of it. So yet again, if you want to see (in this case, about a third of) the game's H-content, you have to sabotage yourself, or beat the game and watch it through the gallery.
On the other hand, the game also does have H-scenes at the end of most levels which is nice, but they're all vanilla so in my opinion, boring as fuck.
There's also clothing damage which is always nice, but it's tied to HP so it cancels out. It has no bearing on the gameplay but to be an indicator of their HP.
Beyond that though, the NPCs' 3d models are bland at best. They're anime as fuck and un-detailed. Suspension of disbelief is a lot more fragile in 3d. The sex animations themselves are also very basic, with very little interesting going on. Furthermore, half the enemies don't have H-scenes, only the two humanoids. Enemies-without-H always screams "low-effort" to me.
2/10.
TL;DR, boring, basic shooting, enemies and level design, mediocre h-anims of boring content, dumb AI, little variety, bugs abound, tedium. I would sooner recommend sticking a fork in a power outlet than spending money on this.
All that said, I wouldn't want this dev to stop making games. I love FPS and I love Hentai, the two rarely coincide. If they go and make a sequel that addresses at least some of these criticisms, they'd show that it can work and maybe more would get made.