Redfall has finally received a substantial update, but does this make the game worth playing, or does it still suck?
Redfall is a game that disappointed me more than most. I am a massive fan of Arkane’s work, with my first experience with the studio being way back in Arx Fatalis. I had high hopes that Arkane would knock this one out of the park, and sadly, they knocked the ball right in my face and left me with a black eye.
From the second I booted up Redfall, I knew something was wrong. Everything looked off, the game played terribly, and as a whole, the world felt empty and devoid of not only life, but passion and polish. I persevered because it was my job to do so, but eventually, I threw in the towel and moved on.
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But here we are, half a year after Redfall’s disastrous launch we have an update that could fix everything. Nearly everything that was blatantly wrong with Redfall has been addressed in some way. I decided to grab my raven buddy and take the stake-like plunge into the heart of Redfall once more.
The game still sucks. That’s the short of it. Redfall is undoubtedly improved, but the game is still a shadow of a project in the earliest stages of design. If you bought the game at full price like Muggins over here, you will feel the pangs of disappointment like the chill of inevitable death creeping up your spine. If anything Redfall has cemented itself as the perfect game for Halloween since the horrors that plagued the game more-or-less remain.
But let’s be less negative for a moment and have a look at what the update brought, what it did, and why it ultimately ended up not impressing when all was said and done. Firstly, the bump to 60 FPS is amazing. Everything else aside, Redfall running at 60 FPS is almost a game-changer in and of itself. That sluggish, motion-sickness inducing smear on your screen now runs both crisp and smooth based on your preferred terminology.
Out of everything this update brings, the frame rate is the big winner – it might be the only winner now we think about it. Still, a huge win for fans of Redfall. Games like this beg for 60, and now it has it. Cannot overstate how much better Redfall feels to play with this change.
Sadly, nothing else really comes close to catching that fire again. Let’s look at the enemy density as an example. Redfall now isn’t a barren wasteland filled with shoddily and sporadically placed enemies. No, no, no, Redfall is now an overpopulated wasteland filled with shoddily and sporadically placed enemies.
This makes the world feel more alive, sure, but since the game hasn’t really changed anything else in relation to this, things like ammo and healing get stretched to their limits. Sure, this gives Redfall a new survival feel, but I am not convinced that was the intention here. It’s like Redfall spent months being one thing, and then hard shifted into a new genre of game by accident.
Enemies aren’t harder to kill, there’s just more of them and less stuff to go around. It’s not like these enemies are dropping anything of worth either, so your reward for slogging through the hordes of living and undead ends up being vapid at best.
But let’s move on again and look for something positive. Sadly, there isn’t anything positive. The combat still feels crappy, the graphics are still hideous, the gameplay is still repetitive, and the cutscenes are still unfinished. Nothing about Redfall screams complete, and considering it took six months to get an incomplete game to an almost equally incomplete state, is almost impressive.
Of course, it’s hard to put the blame for Redfall’s failings on the developers themselves. There is no such thing as a lazy developer, but there is such a thing as a rushed project. Redfall, despite spending a lot of time in the oven, still has a long way to go. So long in fact that I think Redfall should gracefully bow out.
Sure, the game has promised content like new characters and whatnot, but at this point, who cares? Is anyone still playing Redfall? Probably not, and after this update I suspect the player count has returned to near-zero. Redfall is just not a game worth salvaging. There’s nothing here worth going back to, and this update has been highlighted with a planet-sized UV lamp.
Download the update, give it a whirl, and then do the only thing a sane human can do – sigh and move on. If Redfall does rise from the ashes, then I will be back eating my words with a spoon made from a refurbished stake. I wouldn’t hold my breath though.
That’s all we have on Redfall for now. Be sure to check out our other guides, lists, and walkthroughs for more Redfall content.
