Recent reviews by r u l l e b r e t t

This is a spiritual successor to Teleglitch, it borrows basically the entire formula from Teleglitch in both gameplay and story to create this. Is this different enough? I suppose it is, but the problem is that this feels like what Teleglitch would eventually become...

The ways Empty Shell is different have introduced pain points into the gameplay, such as a "pick up where you left off" system if you die, where you stay in the same level you died but with a totally wiped clean character with none of the upgrades or weapons you previously had. This system is basically useless because past the second level, the game gets too difficult to keep going with a fresh character.

Empty shell also introduces a stamina system, where you can only run for a few seconds or dodge less than a handful of times. Of course, all the strong enemies are often faster than you and hit more than once in a row. You can buy stamina upgrades but only starting half way through the game.

An upgrade/weapon shop was also added, probably to replace the crafting system in Teleglitch, and its only real use is to buy upgrades to make your character stronger. The weapons it sells are useless considering the game throws weapons and ammo at you in every box.

All these features are absent from Teleglitch, and I feel like it works in Teleglitch's advantage. I do appreciate the atmosphere and visuals of Empty Shell (which the game itself even recommends you tweak because the game is hard to look at with default settings), which Teleglitch lacks a bit. However, I cannot fault this developer because it seems it's their first project and I can tell this was a passion project for a game that never got any love from the AAA publisher that ended up buying them. All that aside, all the ways Teleglitch are great are carried over here as well.

If you like hard games with convoluted stories with solid progression, I highly recommend it.

Excellent demonstration of the potential depth you can achieve surrounding gun handing. No other game (other than its sequel) has come close to the mechanical intricacy shown in this game; each function of your firearm is mapped one-to-one to keys on your keyboard.

If you want a game with a high skill ceiling, engaging gameplay that is as fast-paced or as slow-and-steady as you want it to be with adrenaline pumping moments, this is exactly it. I feel this game constitutes the very soul of uncompromising mastery games.

The question remains though, do you choose this game or its sequel?
- Content per dollar wise, it's tied considering this game commonly goes on sale and is still 5$ otherwise, while the sequel goes for 20$, where I do believe there is about 4 times as much content in the second.
- Believe it or not, the second game is even MORE realistic in its portrayal of guns (which is what I believe to be its most divisive feature), simulating essentially every moving part of your firearm and even allowing for jams and other various malfunctions.
- Lore (or whatever there is that you can call a story), definitely Receiver 2. You get loads of world building and delving deeper into the topics that the first just barely grazes the surface of. This is not by any mean undermining the masterpiece that are the tapes and themes of the first game, I have listened to these tapes and practically memorised them at this point.
- Skill ceiling? This is the deciding factor and it depends for the following reasons:

What I mentioned previously about the complexity of the firearms in the second game being divisive is that it simulates *as much as it can* about firing a gun. You blink when you shoot, your arms get tired when you hold up your gun to aim for too long, a magazine spring gets tougher to compress as you insert more bullets into a mag, you are not perfectly stable as you aim with slight drift that you have to wait to align perfectly for a perfect shot, the ability to accidentally shoot yourself if you unholster your firearm too quickly or if you didn't engage the safety or use other methods to make the gun safe, etc etc.

If mechanical complexity and the rigorous methodical nature of handling a firearm is what interests you, then by all means go for Receiver 2.
However, while I'm interested enough in firearm operation to love the detail the second game brings, I still want to be able to test my twitch reaction skills and my ability to take the challenge to the next level. You have the choice between slow and steady room clearing as well as speedrunning the game and dashing through rooms, dispatching enemy after enemy back to back and reloading your magazine lightning quick and finishing the game in 10 minutes flat.
A player achieving mastery in Receiver 1 can become a veritable a speed-demon.

By comparison, the second game will have you achieve mastery by smooth and deliberate slow actions, as you are limited by the speed at which the animations are actually performed, and not by the speed at which you can chain button presses back to back as you could in Receiver 1. No matter how experienced you are, you are not able to go faster than the game wants you to.

Basically:
If you want slow and steady, realistic and deliberate gun handling: Receiver 2
If you want fast and responsive, arcade style realism where speed reigns: Receiver 1

This is obviously a passion project, with a self insert of the game in the very beginning, along with heavy use of Resident Evil ideas (first zombie encounter cutscene, regenerator, etc), and easter eggs to pop culture. So I write this as respectfully as possible since I'm certain the developer will read through these.

In terms of review, in the sense of quality per dollar, is very good. However, it stays that this is still only a vertical slice of, what the ending seems to suggest, a larger pie. The main story is around 2h long if you really take your time and see every nook and cranny through. Those 2 hours are still a good showcase of what the developer is capable of, that being a good retro styled Resident Evil formula game.

As for a critique, for normal mode, I feel there are too many resources given to the player, which might not be bad if the player does end up using them all. However, I feel that this was done to compensate for some shortcomings in how the game was planned out.

My only big complaint is that you are TOO slow. I understand that limiting movement is KEY to good horror, but I feel that this might be overcorrection. When I say slow, I don't mean the movement speed is too low, I think it's fine, I mean that overall, your character is too slow. Reloading slows your movement speed down to a crawl (and itself is slow), attacking slows you down, sprinting too much will exhaust you (understandable, you don't want to abuse of sprint) but slows you to a standstill. Getting hit slows you down (and also resets your accuracy, as in, it forces you to wait again before getting an accurate shot!).

As such, since you're too slow, in every aspect, the game almost expects you to take damage from melee, so gives you plenty of healing. Since not everyone wants to melee only, the game also gives you a lot of ammo, enough even to shoot through every enemy in the game.

You can end up with a lot of healing and a lot of ammo if you avoid damage with melee, but also converse as much ammo as possible. The tension sort of drops when you can simply eat any hit and keep shooting at them and top off your health in the inventory with a few clicks.

I don't want to come off as overly aggravated over the slow speed since it didn't cause me any unfair deaths, this is a simply nitpick that I have only thought about after completing the game, I am still satisfied and happy with this game!

**TLDR at the bottom** (No Spoiler review)

I was a very big fan of the original receiver and have basically mastered it in the 40 hours I played it, where the playthrough would usually last 40 minutes at most and my fastest time being around 15-20 minutes. The time I have at review is the amount of time I took to finish this game, with all my 10(ish) deaths and my 1 quit accounted for.

Although at first glance, this game felt too large of a far cry from the original, but I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of depth and atmosphere the brutal mechanics add to this game. This is the closest you will ever come to shooting a crappy jam-prone gun in your life. It is too good for what this game began as in Receiver 1. Only VR games like H3VR beat this game in the handling of a weapon (all other realism mechanics, like jamming, R2 has everybody else beat).

The main criticism I have found from other player so far is the brutal death and ranking mechanics. Yes, I admit, they are tough and quitting is especially hard if you need to leave the computer after a few unlucky deaths just to get kicked while you're down, but you have to remember that this is all part of the atmosphere, I feel this is a thematic decision instead of actually wanting to punish the player. You're small fry in a big world that wants you dead. You're not meant to have the upper hand, ever. All odds are against you as you fight against the threat. This is especially shown through the Echo Threat Tapes, which deceive you. You're not meant to have it easy in this game. If you can't accept that, you won't be able to finish this game.

Personally, my only gripe is the voice acting, I much preferred the narrator from the last game, his smooth voice calms you in all the hectic action that you go through to get the tapes. Although the dislike might stem from the fact that the contents of the tapes are a bit unusual at times. You could fight tooth and nail for one single tape, just to have the narrator talk with weird highs and lows in his voice about the HiPoint Yeet Cannon 9...? Maybe it's missing the serious and monotone voice the last game has..? I really don't know, but the voice acting has it's highs and lows. The very very last tapes (the final three, you'll see when you get there) are a definite high point and resemble what was in the older game.

TLDR: Game has pleasantly surprised an old time fan and I recommends this to anyone seeking a super realistic and brutal gun shooting experience. Game is hard for lore reasons, not to punish the player so there is no option to decrease difficulty, so if you don't like hard games that challenge you, don't buy.