When it comes to video games, there are few genres I enjoy as much as first-person shooters, especially when it involves no small amount of strategic thinking. I’ll shoot anything once, and if I like it, I’ll shoot it for years. So, when I read about Redfall a few years back, I was immediately excited. Arkane’s various studios have consistently been creative with their approach to making video games, and Redfall is no exception. It’s everything you want it to be, and then some.
It’s downright gorgeous, the enemies are dangerous and varied, and the combat allows you to approach each scenario in multiple ways — just in case you keep getting wrecked by vampires. Redfall has taken lessons from Arkane Lyon’s Deathloop, tightening up the gunplay to make for relatively smooth handling of even low-tier weapons. It wouldn’t be enough to just have some easy-to-use basic weapons, so Redfall ups the ante by adding in scores of interesting guns to UV freeze, stake, and blast every enemy you meet.
From the moment the game begins, the beautifully realized gouache-style artwork pulls the player in. Instead of fully-animated cutscenes, the main story is told through simple images accompanied by voice-overs. Outside of that, Redfall doesn’t force you to learn anything about its world. Instead, juicy tidbits are scattered around in the form of journals, notes, and radio broadcasts. Even with the story taking a backseat to the combat, it’s still intriguing and gives incentive to thoroughly explore locations, something that will certainly help with replayability — that is, for those interested in solving the mystery of Redfall. But Arkane knows that not everyone is interested in turning over every stone, so the world is there for players to discover only if they want to.
The game starts with a bit of exposition around the mysterious “patient zero,” a southern belle who’s experienced a boatload of trauma and was somehow used to create the beasties and supernatural powers that now plague the once idyllic little town of Redfall. Right off the bat, the game showcases some of the more spectacular vampire powers with the entirety of the coastal town’s bay pulled away from the shoreline into a massive, impassible wall of water. It looks quite stunning on the Xbox Series X, and the otherworldly look of the water wall — as well as the eclipsed sun — lends the quaint little town a rather unnerving atmosphere.
Once Redfall gets you past its linear introduction — where players get a snippet of what’s going on as well as an introduction on how to survive — you’re dumped out of the first safe house and immediately given a few tasks from the surviving locals. From here, the world opens up and truly becomes a free-for-all, rife with things to explore.
The survivors in the main hideout have various fetch, leave, or locating quests for the player to try out. These quests vary in style and usually culminate in enemy-abundant areas that players can approach however they see fit. It’s this open approach to combat and exploration that really makes Redfall shine. Anyone familiar with Arkane Studios knows its level design includes at least three viable approaches to any situation, and Redfall is no exception. Players can choose to blast, sneak, or climb their way into any location, story-driven or not. Depending on how many vamps or humans there are, you’ll definitely have to experiment to see what works best.
The ease with which you traverse the world makes exploration fun rather than tedious. Players can climb almost anything they can reach, and with certain characters’ powers, the rooftop’s the limit in most cases. Between ducking, sliding, and the ability to climb anything you can jump to, it’s easy to outrun humans. Doors can be shut behind you to help throw the AI off your trail, but don’t be fooled — if you kill one of their buddies, the town’s inhabitants will continue to look for you for quite some time. Fall damage is minimal, but for those extra-long drops, characters that have telekinetic powers can cushion the fall. Not every character gets one of these abilities — I knew I would mostly explore Redfall on my own, so I chose Layla for her traversal abilities. For those who decide to play with friends, it’s key to build your co-op teams with that in mind.
Special abilities vary from character to character, and rather than go into each one here, we recommend checking out the trailers posted on the game’s YouTube page. The skill tree will be familiar to anyone who’s come across one before — it doesn’t add anything new to the concept, but players can reset their build at any time. So, if someone started out solo, they can retool should they ever decide to join some friends. The psychic powers are well and good, but I personally found them second best to the litany of weapons and environmental traps at your disposal.
The weapon variety allows you to mix and match until you find the perfect combination, though I never figured out what the heck I was supposed to do with flare guns aside from lighting everything on fire. Over the course of the game, you’ll make use of several different types of shotguns, revolvers, pistols, sniper rifles, assault rifles, machine guns, stake launchers, and UV lights. Humans and vampires have different weaknesses, and certain vampires require several different weapons to counteract their many telekinetic attacks. In classic vampire style, only a stake through the heart will kill the bloodsuckers, so you’ll have to make sure you have a stake gun or are in close proximity to one when you take an undead baddie down.
Combat is pretty engaging, with different groups responding to your presence in their own unique way. The basic Hollowmen Cultists are untrained fanatics — weekend commandos who watched too much Rambo as kids — and pose almost no threat. Players can easily wreck these untrained goons, though their vampire companions can kick up quite the ruckus. Bellweather, a paramilitary group, poses a much greater risk. This privately-contracted militia is well equipped, can hold their own against vampires (and you), and will even strategize with one another to take their foes down. And that’s all just in the first area. As you move through Redfall‘s expansive maps, you’ll run into other cultist groups, and their tactics will change depending on the Vampire God they serve. Seeing as how the game’s core audience is looking for something outside of the human element, Arkane made sure that the vampires take the cake as far as fighting goes.
Even low-level vampires can teleport and deal high melee damage, but after hours of gameplay, you’ll learn the ins and outs of avoiding the bloodsucker’s attacks and find absolute joy in staking every fanged foe that tries to touch you. When the bloodsuckers swarm, things get much hairier — even if they are only basic vampires. A group of just a few fledglings can cause real damage and exhaust your supply of medkits, and these life-saving packs take several seconds to use, so trying to heal in the middle of battle can put you in harm’s way.
They’re persistent buggers too — they’ll chase you until you die, reach a safe area, or finally turn to face them head-on. With all the areas to run, hide, climb, or teleport, there are definitely moments when you’ll be able to outmaneuver them, but they are incredibly determined once they catch a whiff. After night falls, the vampire element gets kicked up to a ten — you’ll find packs of monsters roaming around, with the much more dangerous variations scattered throughout.
High-level vamps have a slew of abilities — laser beam eyes, shields, the ability to explode, sucking the blood out of your body from a distance, summoning lightning and shade minions, creating pockets of light destroying darkness; the list goes on and on. They’re deadly, and can really rain on your vampire-crushing parade if you aren’t cautious, or if you fail to carefully manage ammo reserves for your vampire-specific weapons. Needless to say, you’ll want to keep UV guns and stake launchers in your inventory at all times. Each one serves a specific purpose, and a well-timed stake will save your life, even against a Vampire God.
Speaking of which, the Vampire Gods control the scores of cultists, and each one has a unique powerset — for both themselves and their minions. Once destroyed, they drop Remnants, which can be equipped to unlock special abilities. These Vampire Gods live in their own trippy realms that are well worth exploring. Their lairs look very similar to the vampire nests scattered throughout the neighborhoods, which give any nearby bloodsucker extra health, strength, and even a bit more attitude. Players will hae to fight their way through these nests to their centers, triggering an explosion once destroyed. It’s a mad dash to the exit that gets the blood pumping, and it makes for a raucous good time, even when playing solo.
Beyond the combat, Arkane Austin has done a bang-up job setting the ambiance for a fight. Let me try and paint a picture for you of how incredible the various design elements work together in Redfall.
It’s the middle of the day in an idyllic oceanside town. Crisp, autumn leaves tumble through light-dappled air. The cobbled streets are completely empty, silent save for a crackling radio voice that keeps whispering “The Blood,” like a horrible baseline. Suddenly, the near silence is cut short by a blood-chilling, inhuman sound that strikes fear into your heart — a sound that means a vampire is now hunting you. As it gets closer, the alarm repeats more often, getting louder, until you’re suddenly overtaken by a sick electronic track that gets your blood pumping — just as a vamp appears in front of you from out of nowhere! It somehow never loses its zeal, and that first alarm conditioned me to duck for cover, almost 20 hours into the game.
Redfall‘s sound design is a labor of love. The ambient noise helps to amplify every move that you or an enemy makes. When a vampire is nearby, houses creak so loudly that it sounds like they are one step behind you. Your powers make the most satisfying effects when used, and every gun sounds a little different than the last (especially when you start finding legendary weapons). And the visuals are gorgeous to boot.
I never encountered any noticeable lag or frame rate drops, even when I hung back to watch a score of Bellweather men get absolutely wrecked in a shower of red lighting. The only issue that ever slowed my roll was one consistent problem that popped up at the end of missions, interrupting my ability to pause or crouch. It’s not ideal, but I solved that bugbear with a bit of self-sacrifice, letting the game reload the last safehouse.
After 25 hours, I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of what Redfall has to offer. It seems like each region will have a main set of story quests that span between nine and 12 missions long, so each area should have plenty of content for a determined gang of vampire hunters to work through. A word of caution — you can’t return to an area once you leave, so anything you leave behind will become permanently inaccessible, solidifying the need to see everything before you move on to the next area. I know I’m going to head back to the start as soon as my cryptid-hunting team can join me in all the vampire-destroying madness.
Redfall has quickly landed itself as one of my favorite games of the year so far, and with it coming to Xbox Game Pass on day one, there really is no excuse for gamers to pass this one by.
This review is based on the Xbox Series X version of the game. A copy was provided to us for review by Microsoft.
