Recent reviews by Rex Bellator

In today's world of hyper-reactionary gamers, where decent games are routinely dog-piled by the community and even minor issues are denounced as game-breaking travesties, along comes a game like Dark Raid to remind us of what a truly bad game looks like.

In fact it's probably a compliment to call Dark Raid a game; better games have done more with less. Dark Raid is only a game in so far as it pretends to be one. It might be more accurate to describe it as a first-year student game development project, except the student(s) in question started this project late and only had a day to complete it.

This game just screams "minimum effort" on the developers' part; everything from character design and AI, to weapons, story, animation and level design are attrociously underdeveloped.

Level design, in particular, bears the unmistakable fingerprint of amateurs at work. Dark Raid's levels consist of either identical, mostly empty, rooms (literally) copy-pasted together or huge nearly-featureless rooms with platforms and ramps; rinse repeat for 5-6 levels until you've beaten the game. Levels consist mostly key/button hunts while clearing rooms of robotic enemies who relentlessly aimbot (no pun intended) you from the other side of the level.

Were Dark Raid a free game one might forgive its failings, but as a commercial game it is inexcusably lazy.

Overall Dark Raid is a joyless, tedious experience unworthy of its retail price. I was (ahem) lucky enough to get it in a bundle at a fraction of the steam store price and I still feel ripped-off.

There is nothing it can offer that other better, more complete games can at the same price. Save your money and buy them instead.

This game has all the tell-tale markings of a mod turned into a commercial product. It feels thrown together with no clear indication of gameplay balance, direction, or vision by its developers.

Even on a high end system this game continues to be a resource hog that takes forever to load. Only a game this badly made could make the Unreal Engine, a pretty decent engine that works great in other games, look bad.

Stylistically it is ugly and unimaginative; the aliens look like they were designed by kids out of lumps of Play-doh and the marines look like something out of a 90s sci-fi made-for-TV movie.

The gameplay itself is a mess thanks to its feckless devs who probably were too busy sharing memes instead of play-testing their own game.

Weapons and weapon handling are garbage even by 2010s standards. Playing as a marine you'll last for precisely 3.5 seconds because a bunny-hopping alien player runs up to you and chomps you twice despite the fact you dropped an entire magazine's worth of ammo into them.

Game is populated by a handful of sweat-stained "veterans" who've been playing for years because they can't afford any other games and spend their time barking orders at you over the voice channel.

This game is supposed be a cult classic, probably because you have to be in a "cult" to appreciate it. This game wouldn't even be worth your time if it were free.