Redfall Review

After being announced last year, Arkane Austin and Bethesda’s open-world, co-op FPS Redfall is now available. Is this vampire-slaying game worth the time, or should you sink your teeth into something meatier?

Redfall Review

When you first boot up Redfall, you get a brief intro to what happened before you start playing. The town of Redfall has slowly been getting smaller and smaller without many noticing. By the time people figure out what is going on, it’s far too late. Vampires have been taking people, and now a full-blown vampire invasion is happening in town. You try to escape, only to have the sea cut you off with a massive tidal wave.

With escape no longer being an option, you can only do your best to survive in the town of Redfall. You play as one of four characters:

– Jacob is the stealthy sniper guy who can scan for nearby enemies
– Layla has kinetic abilities and can summon a vampire ally
– Devinder has anti-vampire moves like UV rays and lightning
– Finally, Remi gets a robot companion and C4

It’s a good selection, but the gameplay in Redfall is rough.

With Arkane Studios’ rich pedigree, I was expecting more stealth options. The lack of backstabs is a disappointment, though players can still melee from behind. The AI can be downright brain-dead when detecting you as well. On the other hand, sometimes a sniper will drop you from an insane distance and have you wondering where the shot came from. More times than not, though, the AI is lacking.

The bad AI translates into Redfall’s combat as well. You will mostly face off with various vampire types and cultists. The cultists do try to take cover, but then they will just sit there and get shot. The basic vampires rush you and eat bullets while they try to slash at you. Some of the different vampire types are fun, but those are few and far between. That and the gunplay doesn’t feel great. It feels like an Xbox 360 game – even if the flare gun is awesome to burn vamps with.

The town of Redfall is fantastic, but the gameplay is so bland. It’s mostly going here and killing vampires and other enemies, or going there and collecting something to bring back to the base. You can also open up various safe houses in town, and those have side quests with them as well. Vampire nests are another side activity you can do, but also proves to be not that interesting.

While I didn’t care too much for the combat, I did like each of Redfall’s unique weapons. I mentioned the flare gun earlier, which can set vampires and humans on fire. There is also a stake launcher, which is exactly what it sounds like. Finally, the UV gun shoots out a laser that turns vampires into stone – a thrilling feeling. These are all cool ideas, but they are held back by subpar combat.

After completing enough story missions, you will unlock the Rook. As you kill vampires and beat missions, the Rook meter will fill. Once it fills up, the Rook is summoned, and you must face this hulking vampire. However, you will get some powerful loot if you can bring him down.

For some reason, this game doesn’t have matchmaking with random people. If you want to play with others, you will need some friends who want to play. Also, even if you play co-op, the host is the only one who keeps the story progression. That means if both players want to beat the game, they must go through it twice.

While I didn’t run into any crashes, the game doesn’t always hit the target of 30 frames per second. On top of that, you get T-pose bugs and stretchy limbs on specific models. Nothing game-breaking, but still there. Oh and you have to sell your items one at a time, which is insane with the amount of loot you get.

Redfall is a fantastic idea that just doesn’t pan out. Clunky combat, horrible AI, and boring gameplay make this one an easy pass.

This review of Redfall was done on the Xbox Series X. A digital code was provided by the publisher.