Unreal 4, Unreal 5? No no no, take me again to the previous Unreal: Dealing with Worlds (opens in new tab), unbeatable soundtracks, “Sure, this can be a screenshot (opens in new tab),” now that is the stuff. Upcoming FPS Ghostware (opens in new tab) turns the indie boomer shooter renaissance’s propensity for reinterpretation and revitalization of previous classics on Epic (Megagames)’s unique hits, utilizing the vibes and visuals of basic enviornment shooters to stealthily current a story-heavy, single participant recreation.
You get up in what appears to be a aware recreation of a ’90s shooter throughout the recreation’s fiction. The “Wizard,” a recreation grasp with the so-cringey-it’s-charming bearing of the Simpsons’ Comedian E-book Man, has trapped your consciousness on this digital world, and needs you to duke it out for eternity along with your fellow amnesiac, quirky, anime-style prisoners.
The setup jogs my memory loads of Neon White, and like Neon White, the dialogue’s a bit, uh, goofy. That is not an issue for me although—I am an ideological Sardaukar warrior who will all the time take up arms to defend Neon White’s goofy dialogue (opens in new tab), and I already discover Ghostware’s self-conscious Toonami dub dorks rising on me.
And the capturing underpinning all of it feels nice. There’s all the time been one thing to advocate simply loading into an enviornment shooter with a bunch of bots and going to city, however including in story and a marketing campaign construction actually makes it pop. Ghostware does an amazing job of emulating the cadence of enviornment shooter gameplay, and your opponents all nail the notably squirrely, slippery nature of such a recreation’s AI opponents.
Ghostware additionally blends genres and goes off the rails in attention-grabbing methods. In between ranges, you’ll be able to chat up your fellow gamers in a hub space, verify collectible lore entries, and revisit empty maps in quest of secrets and techniques. This final function jogs my memory of the Haunted PS1 recreation, No Gamers On-line (opens in new tab), and equally captures the eerie loneliness of being on an empty multiplayer server. When you hunt for boomer shooter stage secrets and techniques, a form of Slenderman-y, glitchy poltergeist slowly pursues you, making certain you can’t dawdle.
Equally, there is a extra puzzle/exploration stage inserted towards the tip of the demo and offered as “unfinished content material” you’ve got glitched into. It has an amazing eerie atmosphere to it, and the demo culminates in a enjoyable boss battle that seems like a extra easygoing model of Ultrakill’s V2 (opens in new tab).
Ghostware additionally has an amazing Y2K vibe to its menu and UI: most of its interface has that translucent, chunky, aero vibe of Deus Ex’s UI parts, whereas the primary menu is a cheeky mockup of a Home windows 98-style desktop. Ghostware is about to launch in early entry on April 12, and you’ll presently wishlist it and take a look at the demo on Steam (opens in new tab).