Redfall

Redfall is a bafflingly bad time across the board. Plagued with bland missions, boneheaded enemies, and repeated technical problems, Redfall simply wasn’t ready for daylight in this state.

Arkane takes a stab at infusing the genre du jour with its signature style, but the end results are a bloody mess.

Arkane's vampire thriller is muddled and deeply compromised, but has moments of real charm.

Redfall's empty open world, flimsy shooting, and siloed systems make for a flat, dull experience.

If this tone takes center stage in the back half of the story, combined with plot developments that add some momentum to the proceedings, it may be easier to overlook the game’s weaker aspects and appreciate it as a compelling narrative work. At this point, though, the town of Redfall is sucked too dry of liveliness for players to be invested in whether its vampires triumph or not.

Redfall is ultimately not up to Arkane's usual standards. It feels rushed, unfinished, and unsatisfying to play.

Looking at the world of Redfall, I become sad by its wasted potential. For every great location, there are a handful of forgettable ones. The result is an empty-feeling game with several puzzling problems, like a lack of proper stealth takedowns, a tedious quest and waypoint system, and the inability to pause gameplay in single-player mode. Rampant technical issues hinder brighter moments, including frequent server crashes during multiplayer, inputs failing to work, broken animations, and numerous other bugs that make playing Redfall a frustrating experience. For a game about fighting the undead, Redfall feels soulless in all the wrong ways.

Despite occasional flourishes, Arkane's latest game feels fundamentally at odds with itself

Redfall is a compelling adventure with killer combat and an atmospheric setting in which you can easily lose a weekend. Even though it feels watered down by Arkane’s systemic standards, it’s an ambitious, primarily successful experiment full of narrative nuance and unique ideas. Hopefully, Redfall’s shakeup of the genre will pave the way for more inspired looter shooters in the future and, selfishly… another immersive simulator?

A hollow open world FPS which feels more like you're playing through an already abandoned live service, as opposed to a fully supported one.