[REDACTED] offers fluid and incredibly fast-paced action in a roguelite mode that balances difficulty and upgrades quite well. The focus on speed and urgency drives much of the tension, which makes each run still feel important since you not only need to complete it but do it fast. The narrative is light and doesn’t offer much outside of edgy humor that doesn’t really land. The focus on speed and a nice variety of challenges makes for a solid experience.
[REDACTED]
Developer: Striking Distance Studios
Price: $22.50
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC (reviewed)
A PC code was provided by the publisher for this review
[REDACTED] is a fast-paced and difficult isometric action roguelite, taking place in the same world as Striking Distance Studios’ previous game, The Callisto Protocol. While perhaps not the most inventive roguelite, it does excel in its gameplay and meta progression, making for an experience where you almost always feel more powerful on the next run. Its story is fairly light, but its reference heavy humor dips too far into edgy frequently, resulting in more eyerolls than laughs.
The premise of [REDACTED] is that as one of the final guards at Black Iron Prison, you need to try and reach the last escape pod as infected monsters and malfunctioning machines take over. You aren’t the only person gunning for the escape pod, as eight other survivors are looking to beat you to the escape pod.
The last part of the premise is where [REDACTED] puts its flair on the action roguelite. While speed in these games is almost always an important factor, here it’s essential. You need to beat your rivals to the escape pod, with them always moving forward as the timer ticks up. The timer only stops when you are in a menu, whether it’s you pausing it or selecting your next upgrade. This emphasis on speed makes the already difficult action feel even more tense, forcing you to lock in to not get sloppy.
In each run, there are four sections, with each section culminating in a boss fight. After clearing out a room, you get to choose what path to take, based on the rewards presented to you. In addition to the currencies you need to collect to buy upgrades in between runs, you can also find elemental upgrades as well, like making your melee weapon inflict critical damage or your ranged weapon inflict burning damage. These upgrades are crucial and can drastically improve your run, but it doesn’t feel like they advance too much beyond increasing your damage or other stats. At no point did I feel like an upgrade truly changed how I was playing the game.
Speaking of weapons, you can choose your preferred melee weapon and ranged weapon. There is a decent selection of both, although once you find your favorites there aren’t any rewards or incentives to run a different loadout. The same can be said of the different guard suits you can use, which provide mostly passive boosts. Where the upgrades really start to feel dynamic are the skills you can choose to equip. These can be as simple as more health, with more complex ones giving additional damage at full health, or providing a damage boost if you rapidly switch between ranged and melee attacks. [REDACTED] also lets you get pretty creative with the combinations, as the number of skills you can equip gets pretty high. In my final run, I had 12 skills equipped and I could have unlocked at least one more slot, maybe even more.
The enemies are pretty varied, although you will start to get familiar with each region’s usual baddies. The regions themselves don’t quite reach the same level of variety, with most taking place in a familiar feeling prison environment, even if some of the smaller details have changed. Bosses fall into the familiar pattern recognition patterns, but they all feel like they have good difficulty curves, rapidly moving from almost impossible to beat to a minor inconvenience. The third boss leans too heavily on a more bullet-hell attack pattern, which results in way more time dodging than actually fighting.
The combat itself has a nice flow to it, thanks to the numerous tools you have at your disposal. In addition to your two weapons, you have the GRE which launches enemies away, along with a dash and kick. Many of these can be combined like a dash attack or a sliding kick. All of these abilities flow together really nicely, letting you move at a frantic pace while still feeling in complete control of your actions. You also aren’t overwhelmed by all of these moves, since you can ignore some without feeling like you aren’t fighting at your best and focus instead on whichever you have found the best upgrades for. Every single move can have a power applied, leading to a large variety of powers that you can have and different attack types you can utilize at once.
After you complete a run you can activate difficulty modifiers to give yourself a harder challenge and more currencies. These changes all feel more stat based than game changing and it took a few danger levels for it to feel really impactful. This also gives you more chances to uncover information on your rivals, feeding into the narrative of [REDACTED] over multiple runs.
As you engage and battle with your rivals, you will occasionally find information rooms, where you can uncover information about them. This provides stat boosts against them in combat, but it also lets you eventually get their key. The narrator, Mr. Green, wants into the warden’s vault, but you need codes from all eight rivals to access it. To get a code you need to fully uncover their dossier. Opening the vault leads to a challenge mode that is interesting on paper but doesn’t feel enticing enough to keep pushing through runs for.
The narrative has a very joke-driven vibe to it, to match the comic book visuals and upbeat music. It relies pretty heavily on references, with one of your rivals’ entire personality just being the internet Karen stereotype. Most of it doesn’t land, but the storytelling is fairly light, and you get most of it while playing, so you don’t really have to sit with it. On rare occasions, it does veer more into silly territories, like with the therapist rival or half-zombie rival, both of which have sillier jokes that have less to do with references.
[REDACTED] thrives when you are moving as fast as possible, cutting through infected enemies in a rush to finish a run. This frantic combat flows together incredibly well, so you never feel held back by the game when you are gaining momentum. There is a nice selection of weapons and numerous upgrades to take advantage of, to create a nice power curve over multiple runs. Its narrative isn’t particularly deep and much of the humor leans heavily on edgy internet memes and references, but it occasionally lands a joke, typically one of the silly ones. Luckily, much of your focus will be on the solid action that moves at a break-neck speed.
The Final Word
[REDACTED] is another action roguelite in a sea of games in that genre, and while it doesn’t reinvent the wheel, it does have some unique ideas. A focus on fast-paced speed and defeating rivals throughout each run provides a nice twist and the fluid action matches that speed, making for a fun experience. The narrative is lacking, but it also doesn’t take up too much time anyway, letting you focus on slaughtering enemies as fast as you can.
MonsterVine Rating: 3.5 out of 5 – Fair
