A Killing Cure
HIGH The ideas here have serious potential.
LOW Everything except the ideas.
WTF Why am I fighting this boss a fifth time?
TRANSCRIPT:
Hi everyone! Eugene Sax here with another review from GameCritics.com!
A hundred years ago, the world was overtaken by a plague that turned most living creatures into monstrous chimera. A small group of survivors has managed to find safety, but one of their number has become infected while foraging for food. Donning knight armor and wielding a shotgun, this infected survivor must make a pilgrimage to find a cure amid scores of enemies.
Remedium is an isometric twin-stick shooter where players take control of the armor-clad survivor searching a city for an answer to the sickness. Players can shoot, throw grenades, and dash to take out creatures, picking up armor and materials along the way. These materials (sulfur, mercury, and salt) can be used for special ammo for guns (fire rounds for the shotgun, for instance), or to help stave off sickness.
As the progress in Remedium happens, players will eventually end up getting various symptoms like nausea, megalomania, or buboes, just to name a few. These illnesses will cause debuffs like lowered fire rate, lower health regeneration, or even maximum health loss. However, players can find items which can change these ills from debuffs to buffs. Buboes, for instance, will lower heat resistance, so players take more damage from fire-based enemies. When cured, it will grant players a damage buff to fire ammo in their guns.
All of this seems great, and the base ideas have potential, but the execution kills Remedium quicker than a host of viruses.
To start with, enemies give so many resources on death that the player never needs to choose between ammo or curing disease.
The bosses, which should generally be a high point in most games of this kind, are identical to each other. This isn’t an exaggeration, they’re all exactly the same except for the final boss. Players will fight and re-fight a sentinel that has a shield until the player takes out some turrets, then they can take down the boss.
A similar sense of repetition and sameness extends to the mob enemies, the mostly grey environments, the single looping song in the background… everything in Remedium repeats a single, somber note.
Adding insult to injury is that it’s buggy. I’ve fallen through the floor, I encountered visual bugs that made weapon customization impossible, and health bars sometimes failed to appear for bosses, making them invincible!
I feel like there’s potential here — it just needs to be realized. The idea of using resources for special ammo or cures for illness is great, but needs balance. I like the weapon customization, but it’s too buggy to use. There must be more variation in the bosses, and they can’t glitch out to be invincible.
Remedium is currently in early access with the first act playable, and two more acts to come. While I can’t recommend it in its current state, I’m hoping that more polish, more content and much-needed bugfixes are in its future.
For me: Remedium gets 4 identical robotic bosses out of 10.
Disclosures: This game is developed by Sobaka Studio and published by ESDigital Games. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 3.5 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed multiple times. There are no multiplayer options.
Parents: The game doesn’t currently have an ESRB rating. Players will be shooting monsters with guns, causing blood to spurt out of them. Some can explode when hit with the player’s grenade.
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes in this game.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There is text in-game, but text is not resizable. Audio mostly serves aesthetic purposes and is not needed for gameplay. The game is fully accessible.
Remappable controls: Controls are not remappable, and there is no control diagram. Players can move with WASD, Dash with Space bar, shoot with right click, throw grenade with left click, aim with the mouse movement, use a health vial with Q, equip special ammo with F, and interact with E.
While Sonic and Street Fighter were great places to start, his first love was Final Fantasy X when his dad bought a PS2. Ever since, that love for gaming has evolved -- there are a number of game worlds out there, and he intends to explore them all. RPG to horror, platformers to casual and everything in between -- if it’s available, he’ll play it.
While his time is short between writing reviews, tabletop gaming, and attempting to start a cheesecake business, he has caught all 806 pokemon and can speedrun Star Fox 64 in less than 40 minutes. He’s always looking for new things to try and new challenges to conquer. You can find him on Twitter -- @eugene_sax.
- The Fabulous Fear Machine VIDEO Review - November 16, 2023
- Remedium VIDEO Review - October 24, 2023
- Born of Bread VIDEO Preview - September 11, 2023
