Glory to the boomer shooter. After a console generation overly worshiping John Soldierman, we then got a resurgence of “old school” shooters, focusing on explosions, mobility and violence. They’re cartoonish, visceral and high-execution: AKA recipes to catch my attention.
Devilated, by developer Trunka and published by Neon Doctrine, is all of these crammed into a small package. The game feels like the kind of Image Comics parody you’d enjoy with a wry smile- it’s deer-skull-adorned protagonist is constantly seething and muttering edgy catchphrases as you dance around its various arenas trying to kill enemies and finish them off for health.
In a sense, you can definitely feel the love for boomer shooters radiating off Devilated- its movements aren’t just about aping the genre, instead about pushing it forward with Trunka’s own specific vision.
You see this especially in the melee animation, which looks more like something coming out of a character action game than a first-person shooter. There’s a visceral swoosh with every swing, and it integrates into the rest of your kit so well, that I almost wonder if “first-person Revengeance” was an early pitch for the game.
As a concept, Devilated soars with flying colors. You’re constantly moving around, eating corpses off the ground to keep your rampage going through Doom 1-esque levels as you dig around for keys to get to big boss fights. Time stopping during shootouts to better hit multiple targets or even doing cool things like slicing up grenades is incredibly satisfying, and the game makes sure you feel badass for the things that you do.
Yet, the biggest pitfall for Devilated is in the finer details. Even on the normal difficulty enemies are surprisingly resilient, which makes encounters take longer than I’d personally like. It’s especially frustrating when you feel like you have to keep the bullet hose running just to deal with a particularly problematic enemy, thus bringing all that kinetic movement to a halt.
It’s frustrating because the game clearly wants you to have this fantasy of soaring through enemies, but it just doesn’t pan out the way you want it to. On one hand, it’s not that I’m opposed to difficulty- god knows the satisfaction of a boomer shooter lies in learning to rip and tear in style. It’s just that as far as difficulty metrics go, enemy tankiness is just a boring one to go by, especially when you’re using the game’s dodge and time stops to avoid getting insta-gibbed.
The Price Of Trying Something New
Speaking of the movement, it’s definitely a per-user basis but be wary of motion sickness. The human body wasn’t made to move at these kinds of speeds, and the game currently lacks any kind of control for the motion blur which can make you a little queasy especially if you’re corpse-running certain rooms. It’s a genuine shame that I’m one of these victims- the heart craves more gun combos but the flesh is very, very queasy after my 50th time running from a bunch of TV heads.
Still, if you’re resilient to such frailties of the flesh, Devilated is definitely worth checking out. It’s a boomer shooter that’s free of the chains of nostalgia, and takes some swings with it in ways that I think really enrich the overall playing field for the genre. For its price point its a great ask to try out something new- a small bet for what might genuinely be your next favorite game if you can stomach its quirks.
Final Score: 7/10
Game reviewed on PC. Review copy provided by Neon Doctrine
