![]() I surveyed corridors painted in red and covered in gibs and, while the computer-y music played, I felt, if just for a fleeting moment, to be bathing in the aura of old-school shooters. Not that Doom or Quake had this much blood, but blood and gibs were a part of those games – a part Strafe highlights to a ridiculously gleeful level.An electro project that will forever be remembered for their quintessential track "Set It Off," Strafe is actually Brooklyn native and producer Steve Standard. The other part of Strafe that is both blissful and throwback is the amount of blood. The soundtrack kept me hypnotized and immersed in the experience more than any other part of the game. Parts of it harken back to games like Doom or Terminal Velocity. No joke, Strafe’s music is computer-y, techno-bliss. While struggling to find scrap and grappling with the game’s difficulty, you will enjoy a very nice soundtrack. It would help if such a crucial pickup were more pronounced. I can identify scrap now, but only with much scrutiny. Most of the time I only heard the pickup noise associated with scrap without ever seeing it on the ground. There are food stations on the walls, one per level, that provide some health, and there are wooden and metal crates to shoot for some pickups, but collecting scrap to use at the recycling stations is vital for success. Strafe is tight about pickups for health, armor, and ammo. The lower-priced ammo and armor refills amount to very little, so you’ll be smart to save up for the bigger armor or ammo refills. ![]() Armor is vital, but so is ammo, and each goes quick. You may also collect scrap – you are a scrapper, for crying out loud – and use this scrap to make ammo or armor at special recycling stations. STRAFE SOUNDTRACK UPGRADEI usually avoided upgrading my weapon because even if I had cleared an area of all enemies and could afford the time without my gun, the resulting upgrade may not be an improvement. This upgrade may be better or worse and while the upgrade station’s cute little droid is upgrading your weapon enemies pile around you while you have nothing but your fists to defend yourself with. In each run, you may choose to use weapon upgrade stations to give your gun a new firing mode. Killing each enemy or speed-running yielded success or failure equally in my experience, so there is no surefire strategy for Strafe. Speed-running and bunny-hopping your way through each level may destroy you in the long-run, too, as you’re ignoring any upgrades and are more likely to screw up. I approached the levels by killing each enemy and pacing myself, but this strategy crashes down in the long run if you burn through too much ammo and get into too many close encounters. Even after dozens of runs you may not develop a working strategy. In the least, it helps stay the monotony.Īs noted, Strafe is very difficult. The entry areas to each level remain the same and the architecture is simple, so take the random generation for what you will. Each run offers a chance to progress and with randomly generated levels also offers different paths to jump, shoot, and be killed down. Maybe you’ll last more than one second on stage 1-3. Maybe the next time you’ll make it one stage more. I never got tired of blowing the heads off of the little grunt creatures and the pain of “permadeath” bears with it the pleasure of progressing ever further on each try. ![]() Knowing what kind of a game Strafe is, though, you may enjoy it. The game’s advertising has been shamelessly misleading. Strafe is no more a throwback to Quake as Spelunky was a throwback to Super Mario Bros. But these parts of the game are superficial. ![]() There are some old-school first-person shooter elements in Strafe: bunny hopping, strafe jumping, an exorbitant amount of blood and gore, and a great computer-y soundtrack. There is a choice for one weapon to start each game with and the option to pick up secondary guns or upgrades while playing. There is no difficulty setting – the game is very hard as is, with enemies hoarding around you, and your armor, health, and ammo depleting quickly without any regular pickups to replenish it. There is no saving or loading and you start the game over with each death. Strafe, no throwback first-person shooter, is a roguelike first-person shooter. I had expected the game to play like Quake with randomly generated levels. I was a little peeved by how misled I had been. You wonder why the developers marketed it as such. Turns out, the game isn’t built like Quake or any other classic first-person shooter at all. ![]()
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