Wrath: Aeon of Ruin

Listen to this post:

Ah, to live in the world of a 1990s FPS! You might have problems, but they’re all solved with your hyperspace arsenal of weapons and an endless array of health pickups. Thinking? Who needs it? The only ideas anything requires come in very, very large calibers. That’s the kind of world that the modern “boomer shooter” revival hopes to bring back, and it’s what you’re after when you play Wrath: Aeon of Ruin. Thing is, it’s hard to say how much Wrath itself understands the concept.

via YouTube

The world is in danger! You’ve got to save it! Wrath: Aeon of Ruin is a modern game with classic sensibilities, so it doesn’t really need much more of a plot than that. You’re quickly geared up with a wristblade and tossed into a Quake-esque hub area to get to work. Choose a level and hop in; you’ll rapidly replace that wristblade with something a little shootier, and at that point it’s time to introduce yourself to the locals. You’ll get along just fine.

Quake fans are probably going to be a bit divided when it comes to Wrath’s gameplay. On the one hand, this is a game that wears its inspiration on its sleeve. On the other hand, we’ve seen boomer shooters en masse lately that have done precisely that, so the novelty is starting to wear a bit thin. Retro-styled shooters that try to do something new, like the superlative Nightmare Reaper, tend to be a bit more impressive, but Wrath plays it safe and ends up feeling like an also-ran from the 90s.

This is a very Quake-ish game, sure. The weapons certainly support that notion, with a fang-throwing nailgun that might as well have its ammo come in NIN-branded boxes as just one example. Quake was a claustrophobic, focused experience, though, where Wrath meanders about, revelling in its ability to make levels that are big for the sake of being big.

You’ll rapidly get used to quickly turning around and checking the corners behind you just in case there’s an unseen baddie there waiting to chip away at your health. At their best, retro shooters don’t need to do this – you’ll die just fine from a lack of skill thanks to solid encounter design. It’s a shame, since your arsenal does feel pretty fantastic in action, from the aforementioned fang-nailgun to the unbelievably satisfying wristblade charge attack that you’ll use both in battle and to extend your jumps while searching for secrets.

Speaking of the secrets – Great Romero’s ghost, the secrets. When you look at your menu to see that a level has twenty secrets to find, it straddles the line between awe and exhaustion. Sure, you don’t have to thoroughly scour every single level, but consider DOOM Eternal, which had both hidden goodies and a solid combat-to-searching ratio that other shooters would do well to emulate. Wrath, meanwhile, is happy with you clearing out all the baddies in a level and then spending twice as long to go back through it, poking around for tricky jumps or suspicious walls.

It’s great that there’s so much hidden stuff, but maybe we could’ve just done ten secrets and spent the rest of the time and budget on tighter and more abundant combat setpieces? That’s not to say the experience is bad, because it’s not – it’s just unpolished on a level that you wouldn’t expect from a game that spent years in Early Access.

At least Wrath nails the classic look and feel. This is an unquestionably great-looking game, capable of running nicely on pretty much any hardware you’d care to throw at it. The Gothic horror aesthetics help make Wrath’s sometimes-questionable level design a little easier to bear, since all the levels do look fantastic, and there’s enough graphical fiddling available that you can make this game look lovely on even the fanciest modern screens. Presentation is definitely where Wrath excels.

Wrath: Aeon of Ruin isn’t a bad game at all. It’s totally playable and enjoyable, in fact! Perhaps we’ve just seen so many me-too boomer shooters at this point that the genre’s starting to wear a bit thin, or perhaps titles like Ion Fury came a little closer to perfecting the formula than what we see here. Regardless, if you’ve gotten through the pile of other, similar shooters, you’re out of DOOM WADs to play and you’re still hankering for more, you could certainly do worse than Wrath: Aeon of Ruin. Maybe consider ignoring the secrets listing on the menu, though. Just for the sake of your sanity.