I had a ton of fun playing, so much so that I’ve played another 10+ hours since the review. My bias is “it’s fun to me” 
7 Likes
Yeah, and this is it- whether it was Forspoken, or the Saints Row remake, or Gotham Knights (or even Jedi Survivor), I have seen people play these games and enjoy them. The difference between Redfall and the other games is you have to buy the other games- you can play Redfall on Game Pass. It’s as the advertising blurb goes- “Find your next favourite game”. It’s not a dumping place for poor games.
One man’s poorly optimised game is another’s pleasure.
Dude you cant compare any of those games with jedi survivor. That game reviewed extremely well.
I think for Jedi he means in the sense that the issues some are having with performance haven’t stopped others from simply enjoying the game (like me)
1 Like
I thought I would have dropped this game by now, but I ended up putting a bunch of time in the game today and I think I might end up beating it. I still stand by my previous criticisms - and more and more this game feels like the developers bit off more than they could chew and they knew it. A lot of the game feels like it was quickly scraped together to get something functional out the door - but ultimately I am still finding it generally satisfying to progress through. Though I agree with Jonny above, this game is weirdly hard at times - enemies hit like god damn freight trains. Feels like this was tuned for co-op when people could revive one and other more than single player. The first major boss was a miserable experience as a result and I am not entirely looking forward to fighting more like that.
Ya it’s really odd how gaming review and movie reviews differ. If you see a movie rated 2/5 that means it’s ok. A 3/5 is good. But with games a 7/10 or 3.5/5 is considered ok. It’s nonsense.
1 Like
Played a few hours last night with a friend.
It was fine. It was fun! Janky fun, sure, but Left 4 Dead was all about that jank.
2 Likes
I don’t even care about the online Redfall discourse at this point. All I know is that I was dying to play Jedi Survivor, and I am alternating play right now with Redfall because I am so sucked into the gameplay loop of exploring, looting, and killing vampires (the nests are pretty cool). I actually love the art style and game world here.
7 Likes
I am enjoying this but ugh the bosses are an absolutely miserable experience, everything hits so hard you are constantly one tiny slip up away from dying.
1 Like
I ended up just setting it to the easiest difficulty. Clearly certain areas of the game were balanced for multiplayer.
Made it to the second map last night.
1 Like
issues are completely overblown on consoles. on PC yes its pretty bad
Still in the first area, recently started using the stake launcher and the damage that thing does is kind of broken. My current launcher has 586 damage per shot and has been one shorting every vampire I have run into so far.
Also just learned about the equipable vampire blood. I had found one previously bu didn’t know what to do with it until the gift from Eva side quest. Now I have 170 health and a better regent when health is low.
Finished the game tonight, it was definitely a flawed experience and I get the strong feeling there was some kind of a reboot sometime in development. The open world feels big and well designed but everything you do in it feels thrown together at the last minute. It wasn’t perfect but ultimately I enjoyed my time with it and I am glad gamepass allowed me to just try it for myself and find out though.
I don’t say that to dismiss any negative reactions to the game though, it is definitely flawed and I do not blame anyone for their negativr reviews. But overall I think this game is the product of Arkane being pushed into making something that the former Bethesda thought would be more proftable. It’s a shame, because of all the studios I was most excited to see Arkane under Xbox. For such a critically acclaimed but niche studio I thought they could really find their audience through game pass.
I don’t think that will happen with Redfall, but i am still hopeful we will see a bright future for Arkane under Xbox.
Definitely, I played the entire thing on console and outside a couple small bits where the game struggled it was relatively smooth. Game felt good at 30 and I didn’t encounter much bugs.
That was a comment about Jedi Survivor.
Whoops so it was, well, Redfall felt fine to me on console too 
I just rolled credits on Redfall and I thought I’d share my overall thoughts on the game. The Good, the bad, and the in-between. I tend to start with the good, and finish with the bad, but I’d like to end this review on a more positive note.
The Bad:
- The technical state of the game, at least on my end, has been overblown, but I will be the first to admit that every player will have a different experience. My Cyberpunk 2077 launch nightmare confirms this. Regardless, while I only encountered one minor crash, Redfall’s performance was less a bunch of blatant issues and more a case of a thousand papercuts. Failure to register inputs, failure to load in minor textures properly, frame drops whenever the game overplays its hand (too many vamps at a time, for instance), and audio and visual stutters evocative of playing the game over the Cloud. Redfall is not a broken game, but it is a fractured one.
- The game itself feels designed primarily to be enjoyed with friends. The complexity we have come to expect from Arkane has been stripped back significantly, and this feels more like a Borderlands and less like a Dishonored. This is totally fine if a little disappointing except… . The loot system in this game is not fun. It is not properly distinguished from other buffs. The weapons all feel, look the same. It’s basically like playing Prey but adding a couple buffs/debuffs on top.
- The difficulty in this game is off. The game is a little too challenging on Hard, too easy on Normal for my single-player playstyle.
- Stealth mechanics feel underbaked and tacked on. This was the first Arkane game I played completely guns blazing like a loud firecracker.
- Far too often, there is one answer to a given situation. Wanna get into a house? You need the key. Want to progress, you need the Macguffin, etc.
- The graphics of the game are underwhelming. While the game can, in many instances, look super pretty, in daytime it is very unflattering. If anything, I would equate the look of the game at times to that pre-launch Halo footage.
- Cursor on console. Please. Make it stop!
- The AI. Just, the AI. It needs some serious work full stop.
The Mixed:
- The 30FPS mode (and so far on console, only mode) makes strong use of motion blur to feel and look halfway decent. But at times it overdoes it to the point of headaches.
- The story has some really interesting themes and a clear thesis on what constitutes a modern-day vampire. However, the delivery of this story is where things get a bit more underwhelming. The static cutscenes would have benefitted from a more stylized look if putting in-game cutscenes was unfeasible.
- The abilities (for Layla) are a mixed bag. The Umbrella was very underwhelming with a limited use case. Her vampy ex-boyfriend, Jason, saved my skin a lot more but is a cut above useless without proper investment.
- The boss fights are fun but excessive. They go on a little too long and have some cheap instakills on Hard.
- The open world is small and well-contained but also rather empty and lifeless.
- The Vampire Nests are a fun concept with good level design but are recycled far too frequently.
The Good:
- The gunplay. This is, by far and away, an area of significant improvement for Arkane. The main gun types are distinguished well, feel punchy and fun to use.
- The music is exceptional. Moody, atmospheric and horrific. Loved it.
- The audio work is similarly strong. From the gnawing vampires chowing down to the creaks in the floorboards, Redfall is a great sounding game.
- The interior level design is great. Feels very Arkaney.
- The little details and environmental storytelling Arkane is known for are on full display here. Newspapers you can zoom in on with a sniper scope and read the entirety of. Little touches like a crashed kayak near where the water has stopped, a handheld console a person tried to hide between the church pews, a vampire baptizing another in a bucket of blood.
- Layla’s lift ability. By god does Arkane know how to make traversal in these games fucking fun.
- The voice acting is strong across the board.
- There are moments where the Arkane magic I know and love is on full display. Being able to go to the back of a house, travel to the top, break a window, slide to the front door, hack the turret guarding it and rain hell on the enemies. Finding a locked room and jumping outside the building, jumping to the rooftop, through the attic and then back down instead of finding the key. Saving a vampire from execution so Bellweather forces and the vamp fight, allowing me to steal the item I need and get the fuck out. These moments are at their least frequent for an Arkane game, but they are here and when they happen, they are stupidly fun.
- Having recently visited Salem Massachusetts and currently missing the everloving hell out of it, they nailed the look and feel of New England.
- All in all, I sat down with a game, had fun and played it from start to finish over 17 hours. As someone whose passion has been waning with external stressors and the switch to a new job, that honestly can’t be discounted.
All in all, is Redfall the game I wanted from Arkane? No, definitely not. Is it some disaster that spells the end of Xbox? God no! Are the scores right? Honestly, that depends. In my personal, unadjusted opinion, I would give this game around a 6-6.5/10. However, with the rampant inflation and polarization of marks in games where oftentimes something is “the best” or “the worst”, I’d argue a score of 70 is about on the money here. Around where Ghostwire landed but a bit lower.
My hope for the team going forward is they keep their chin up and are given more freedom to make a game which is awesome. There are clear moments of absolute passion in Redfall, but there are also moments that wouldn’t surprise me if they were “gently suggested” by Providence Equity era Zenimax. I do think a small delay may have helped here a tad, but at a certain point, a game’s gotta ship. All we can do now is enjoy what we have, critique areas for improvement and look forward (even if for some of us, it may be it bit warier) to what’s next.
14 Likes
16 hours later, I have finished Redfall and surmised my thoughts in writing. Word Vomit: No, I don’t really want to stay in Redfall. | by Shawn (@TheSilkiest) | May, 2023 | Medium
Redfall is a poor game, that will be a fine game once it updates. But at the end of the day, it’s a game so disconnected from the immersive sim roots Arkane has laid as a foundation that I find it being a ‘fine’ game being completely unacceptable. So this will likely be my last time engaging with the product.
1 Like
With this video (close to 2M views at the moment), we can confirm the mainstream knows about the disaster that Redfall is, being an exclusive Xbox game.
I hope I someday get to know what went terribly wrong behind the scenes, be it on mock reviewers or Bethesda upper management, because I really really doubt any actual dev at Arkane thought the game was ready to be released.
They didn’t need Dunkey, who despises Xbox, to know that critical sentiment was poor overall.
11 Likes