What's wrong with me, I always try to play niche games online that nobody cares about...
As you can guess from the uninspired name The Scourge Project isn't exactly a terribly new idea, it's basically Gears of War with Left 4 Dead level coop (and it's 20$ on Steam, ignore the "episodes 1 & 2" suffix, AFAIK all that means is that they plan on DLC episodes later on). Unfortunately it's terribly flawed. Not in its core but there are so many issues with it that can turn it from a fun romp into a pool of frustrating madness almost instantly. The bot AI in singleplayer is terrible and if one player doesn't get revived within 30 seconds of dying the whole team fails so when one bot dies where you can't quickly help him it's game over, reload from the last checkpoint. Cutscenes are unskippable (probably to let people see them even in coop when playing with some impatient people but terrible in SP) and really grate on your nerves when they are on a particularly hard bit. Yet between all this frustration it's quite fun, I hear when you play with all four spots filled with players the frustration of bad bot AI goes away quite well but I haven't tried coop much yet (yes I know, should probably do that since it's the main purpose of the game...).
Versus multiplayer is also quite nice but the lack of dedicated servers or even host migration make it somewhat impractical. When you get it running a decently sized deathmatch (unfortunately I've played all my team games so far on a forest map where you can never find anyone) can be quite fun and often requires considerations about how you plan to move without exposing yourself and the "ambrosia" abilities can be used quite cleverly in the right situation too.
Destructoid tore the game a new one but unlike their reviewer I don't think the game is beyond hope, all the flaws I can see are fairly minor and could be corrected with some coding work (well, besides the AI but I think that can be adequately mitigated by removing the game over timer). Looking at the game really makes me feel sad, getting it to look on par with HD games certainly was no small feat for an indie dev and these issues could have easily been fixed before release to avoid the terrible first impression the game gave many people.
I can't recommend the game in good faith until they fix at least a good chunk of the issues but at least it's worth keeping an eye out for when they do. There was supposed to be a fourpack on Steam last Friday but I guess something delayed that. If you've got three friends with good gaming PCs you might get some mileage out of the fourpack if it ever arrives even before the patch.
Topic: The Scourge Project (PC) (Read 2061 times)
