Sprawl Review (RickyWL)
For starters, I've played and loved movement FPS games for a long time. Titanfall 1 helped me rediscover my love for shooters with its fast paced movement and I've put over 2k hours into the series at this point, along with a significant amount of time put into other retro FPS style games too (Doom Eternal, Dusk, Ultrakill, Turbo Overkill etc.), so believe me when I say I genuinely feel bad for posting this, but I just can't recommend Sprawl. I can see what it's going for, but it feels like the game is actively fighting your attempts to have fun with it at every step of the way.
Level and environmental design simply don't mesh well with the gameplay, initially throwing you into cramped rooftop areas with such repetitive and dull visual design that it can be confusing to figure out where to go at times; admittedly not for long, but enough for it to frustrate. Industrial cyberpunk sounds really cool on paper, but in execution it is not fun to experience. I'm halfway through Act 2 at the moment and while the environmental and arena design does improve past the first couple of levels when they start to open up, it still never felt fun to actually play through. it could be argued that this is due to the oppressive atmosphere the game is portraying, but Dusk had a much darker, grimmer atmosphere and I loved the design of that game, so I'm not sure that's the case.
The gameplay itself is fine. I think Sprawl doesn't help itself with the fact that it released just after Turbo Overkill, but the movement is fairly awkward, since you have to hold strafe against wallruns to not slide down rather than automatically attaching to them. This is compounded by the arbitrary 3 wall jump limit, making it feel like movement is neutered by bizarre design choices that hinder rather than aid the game. There's also a lack of overall speed due to momentum not seeming to carry between movement options. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the platforming sequences don't excite and the only times I felt a rush during combat were those few moments where I felt I had any sense of speed, which is unfortunately rare (Unless I just didn't figure out how to conserve momentum).
Gunplay does feel satisfyingly punchy, but the fire rate on the shotgun is absurdly slow, and the pistol fire rate in slow motion is painfui too. While I understand that this is to incentivize weapon switching, low ammo caps for the SMGS and grenade launcher add another layer of frustration to the proceedings. I think what doesn't help the combat is that there's a lack of any setpieces or variety. There's one boss battle at the end of act 1 which was so easy I almost thought it must've bugged out, but there's every encounter feels functionally the same. Turbo Overkill mixed things up with new movement abilities and weapons at an almost breakneck pace, while Dusk was simplistic but had incredible level variety and unexpected moments From what I can tell, the actions you take in the first level in Sprawl will be almost exactly the same as the end of the game, barring a few extra weapons.
Overall I'm just disappointed. The clip based nature of the marketing on Twitter etc worked really well for Sprawl because they showcase those few moments where the game feels like it's achieving it's potential, but on a moment to moment basis, my general feeling was boredom rather than excitement to see what's next. Despite how critical I've been I don't think the game is terrible by any means, but it feels like a simply okay game to play, lacking in anything that would set it apart from the rest. Frankly, there are much better retro fps games that you can play instead of this.