HIGH Fast, frenetic action featuring enough guns to choke a camel…

LOW… except when it forces undercooked horror sections down the player’s throat.

WTF Would it hurt to signpost objectives and pathways more clearly?

Trepang2 is an early ’00s-style throwback first-person shooter which begins with our hero, Subject 106, whiling his days away as a prisoner on a military black site. These cads don’t even have a Netflix subscription available to help pass the time, forcing him to watch boring old videos of nukes going off on loop. Enough is enough, and when he’s sprung from captivity by unknown forces, Subject 106 decides that it’s time for a little payback. ‘A little payback’ in this case naturally translates to ‘killing hundreds of people’, so let the good times roll!

After a short stint through the tutorial mission where Subject 106 learns to live, love and kill again using the game’s expansive arsenal of deadly modern-day weapons such as assault rifles, shotguns and submachine guns, players will be spirited away to a different hidden military base where they can hop into a chopper and fly across the globe to whichever hotspot is full of baddies that need a good killing, hopefully culminating in taking down the corporation that imprisoned him and solving the cryptic command to ‘break the cycle’ he’s constantly assailed by. He might even find out who he really is along the way.

…Because amnesia. Always amnesia.

During combat, Subject 106 is a capable little supersoldier. He can slow down time whenever a breather’s needed, or slide into a chameleon-style stealth mode to flank or surprise his foes. Grabbing enemies as human shields is simple, as is booting enemies into the air and emptying half a clip into them before they hit the ground. Later on, Subject 106 can dual-wield most weapons including full length shotguns — which, after finding the required parts, can then be modified to light bad guys aflame. It’s as insane as it sounds with incendiary buckshot filling the screen when enemies caught in the middle spontaneously ignite and burn to ash.

So far so good. Simple, unpretentious setup and bloody gunplay aplenty. Trepang2 does a good job with the basic premise of having players slice through enemy military units like a hot bullet through soft human kidneys, but unfortunately it begins to buckle under some of the peripheral design.

See, Trepang2 isn’t just a military shooter. It’s also a spooky paranormal horror experience!

Cue way too much walking down empty corridors while less-than-scary happenings occur around the player. Some of the jumpscares are laughably bad, and while the overall project is intended as an homage or sort of spiritual successor to the F.E.A.R. series, maybe they should have ditched this particular aspect on the grounds that it’s almost completely ineffective.

Getting back to the killing everyone in sight thing, I found myself ignoring most of the available combat options. It’s not possible to aim down sights with most firearms, and while there is aim assist, it doesn’t seem very strong. This leads me to think that Trepang2 was very much built with PC players using a mouse and keyboard in mind, and the console/controller experience was an afterthought.

It may admittedly be a skill issue, or perhaps I’m too used to the generous assistance in other games, but I’d often fail to do what I planned during firefights whenever I decided to get fancy. For example, I’d slide kick ever-so-slightly to the side of an enemy. I’d riddle the area just behind a moving mercenary with gunfire as he very slowly strafed away. I’d jump kick a wall instead of someone’s face.

In the end, after screwing up enough attempts to pointlessly look awesome, I often resorted to simply activating slow motion, running straight at my enemies and pulling the trigger until they were dead. Certainly not as cool as slide kicking some dude into the air, priming one of his grenades and hurling the poor bastard into a cluster of his similarly doomed buddies, but at least this tactic always worked when I needed it to.

Enemy behavior can be strange too. They’ve clearly been tasked with creating an intense and chaotic atmosphere, so they’ll scream and fire pointlessly into the walls if need be. They also revel in endlessly strafing sideways and running away from the player in many instances, which unfortunately robs the combat of intensity — having a loud, booming soundtrack shattering the player’s ears while wondering where the last couple of enemies are hiding creates significant tonal dissonance.

More damningly, navigation in each stage can be absolutely lousy with lots of identical doors, corridors and little direction as to which of them progresses the mission. During one side operation I completed my main objective then ran around blindly wondering where the hell I was supposed to go under extremely heavy fire, while in another I wandered aimlessly for ages after dismissing one potential route thinking it led outside the house I’d entered. Turns out it actually had a small hatch hidden away, leading further into the level. It’s remarkable that such linear design still had me getting lost or backtracking completely by accident.

It may sound like I’m focusing on the negatives too much here, but much of what I enjoyed about Trepang2‘s premise was ultimately undercut by its various weaknesses. What initially seems like a promising concoction of bloody firefights, psychic superpowers and absolute bedlam suffers from poor pacing, muddled direction, odd enemy AI and controls that are more suited to a mouse and keyboard than a controller. When it works as intended brief flashes of brilliance are tucked away in the combat, when taken as a whole it winds up being a fairly middling experience.

Rating: 5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Trepang Studios and published by Team17. It is currently available on XBX/S, PS5 and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the XBX. Approximately 15 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Blood and Gore, Intense Violence and Strong Language. The official listing reads: This is a first-person shooter in which players assume the role of an escaped soldier (Subject 106) on a mission to destroy a corporation that imprisoned him. Players traverse a corporate facility and use pistols, machine guns, shotguns, and explosives to kill enemy soldiers in frenetic combat. Battles are highlighted by realistic gunfire, explosions, and slow-motion effects. Some attacks result in dismemberment and/or decapitation, with body parts and large bloodstains depicted; players can also inflict severe damage on corpses (i.e., post-mortem damage), resulting in body parts exploding and remaining on the ground. The words “f**k” and “sh*t” are heard in the game.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized and they’re pretty dang small. It should be largely playable without sound, though locating certain enemies without their audio cues may take a little longer than usual during the mop up phase of each encounter.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.

HIGH The ideas here have serious potential.

LOW Everything except the ideas.

WTF Why am I fighting this boss a fifth time?

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi everyone! Eugene Sax here with another review from GameCritics.com!

A hundred years ago, the world was overtaken by a plague that turned most living creatures into monstrous chimera. A small group of survivors has managed to find safety, but one of their number has become infected while foraging for food. Donning knight armor and wielding a shotgun, this infected survivor must make a pilgrimage to find a cure amid scores of enemies.

Remedium is an isometric twin-stick shooter where players take control of the armor-clad survivor searching a city for an answer to the sickness. Players can shoot, throw grenades, and dash to take out creatures, picking up armor and materials along the way. These materials (sulfur, mercury, and salt) can be used for special ammo for guns (fire rounds for the shotgun, for instance), or to help stave off sickness.

As the progress in Remedium happens, players will eventually end up getting various symptoms like nausea, megalomania, or buboes, just to name a few. These illnesses will cause debuffs like lowered fire rate, lower health regeneration, or even maximum health loss. However, players can find items which can change these ills from debuffs to buffs. Buboes, for instance, will lower heat resistance, so players take more damage from fire-based enemies. When cured, it will grant players a damage buff to fire ammo in their guns.

All of this seems great, and the base ideas have potential, but the execution kills Remedium quicker than a host of viruses.

To start with, enemies give so many resources on death that the player never needs to choose between ammo or curing disease.

The bosses, which should generally be a high point in most games of this kind, are identical to each other. This isn’t an exaggeration, they’re all exactly the same except for the final boss. Players will fight and re-fight a sentinel that has a shield until the player takes out some turrets, then they can take down the boss.

A similar sense of repetition and sameness extends to the mob enemies, the mostly grey environments, the single looping song in the background… everything in Remedium repeats a single, somber note.

Adding insult to injury is that it’s buggy. I’ve fallen through the floor, I encountered visual bugs that made weapon customization impossible, and health bars sometimes failed to appear for bosses, making them invincible!

I feel like there’s potential here — it just needs to be realized. The idea of using resources for special ammo or cures for illness is great, but needs balance. I like the weapon customization, but it’s too buggy to use. There must be more variation in the bosses, and they can’t glitch out to be invincible.

Remedium is currently in early access with the first act playable, and two more acts to come. While I can’t recommend it in its current state, I’m hoping that more polish, more content and much-needed bugfixes are in its future.

For me: Remedium gets 4 identical robotic bosses out of 10.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Sobaka Studio and published by ESDigital Games. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 3.5 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed multiple times. There are no multiplayer options.

Parents: The game doesn’t currently have an ESRB rating. Players will be shooting monsters with guns, causing blood to spurt out of them. Some can explode when hit with the player’s grenade.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes in this game.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There is text in-game, but text is not resizable. Audio mostly serves aesthetic purposes and is not needed for gameplay. The game is fully accessible.

Remappable controls: Controls are not remappable, and there is no control diagram. Players can move with WASD, Dash with Space bar, shoot with right click, throw grenade with left click, aim with the mouse movement, use a health vial with Q, equip special ammo with F, and interact with E.