Rekoil Review

To say Rekoil is a bad shooter is an insult to bad shooters. Hell, it’s an insult to bad games in general, because this bland FPS is awful in almost every conceivable way, and the only redeeming feature of such bad design is that Rekoil is playable; a fact that I’m not sure is even positive. Picture, if you will, every element that makes an FPS entertaining. Got it? Right, now flush those thoughts down the toilet and what you’re left with probably resembles a game akin to this one.

It seems developer Plastic Piranha have either forgotten about every advancement the genre has made in the past 10 years, or has chosen to ignore them. Either way, the intention is clear: Rekoil is supposed to be a shooter not bogged down by killstreaks, customisation or gimmicks - it’s supposed to be a pure arena shooter, à la Unreal Tournament. There’s nothing wrong with that at all, but PP’s attempt has gone very far south, and it’s just not fun… at all.

This online-only shooter has plenty of maps, guns and character skins to choose from. But when these components are put to use on the battlefield, they equal dull and uninspired gameplay, and you have to ask yourself if your wallet deserves the punishment of being used to purchase such tripe.

Not only do the 11 stages on offer look dreadful (mind-boggling considering Rekoil utilises the Unreal Engine), they’re the setting of some truly dire combat. The devs have boasted the inclusion of 40 weapons to play around with, being doled out to specific classes of soldier. With the exception of the Rocketeer’s RPG - which causes laughable explosions - every other firearm handles almost identically, so if you prefer SMG’s over assault rifles, your choice of class will depend more on how fast you want to run rather than how much damage or accuracy you want.

The control scheme suffers as well, feeling like its been pulled out of the Iron Age. You’ll need to familiarise yourself with the oft-underused D-pad to switch weapons and equipment, making on-the-fly combat a fiddly mess, and with constant movement so important in an arena shooter, you need to ask yourself if the other face buttons wouldn’t better suit the already clunky gameplay.

If, for some unfathomable reason (you must be a masochist if you enjoy Rekoil) you stick around to experience everything, you’ll be greeted by several generic game modes seen in every other FPS since the dawn of time, only they do it better. Of every match played, all but one devolved into a team-killing nightmare, and with no apparent penalty either; the matches ended with every player having a negative score instead of being booted out.

If you value your pay packet, you’re better off saving it for anything else, as Rekoil shows all the signs of having a quick and painful death on its way to digital oblivion. Most players must have come to this conclusion already, as, within an hour, it was almost impossible to find a full match. Some would call that a lucky break.