There is something liberating about the unmatched speed of old-school FPS games. No iron sights, no kill-streaks, no grinding to unlock another near-identical-but-better weapon, just wibes shooting. Dread Templar demo hit just the spot.
In Dread Templar, you’re one of those hard-ass FPS protagonists who just have to go to Hell to fight evil. I guess that’s the only place where nobody will chide you for your lack of decorum in punching Nazis. But instead of punching Nazis, you’ll be using dual katanas – and a lot of guns – to kill demons.As Dread Templar is a game in the vein of Quake 2 and whatnot, you’ll spend most of your time zipping around, blasting the damned. Reloading weapons is probably the only modern thing about all of this. And you know what? It’s really liberating and powerful to not feel any of modern FPS constraints; just do violence and stay alive.Well, OK, there are upgrades in Dread Templar. But the upgrades I saw in the demo were like penny packeted bonuses rather than anything really special. A bit of a shame, since upgrade fodder are just the thing to put in all those secret locations these games love.On the other hand, even with anemic upgrades, you’ll still have plenty of tools in your hands. By “tools” I obviously mean guns. For example, your dual pistols (made famous in the Hitman series, where you were never supposed to use them if you wanted to hit Silent Assassin rank) share the ammo pool with a silenced Mac-10. Why do you need a Mac-10 with a suppressor in Hell? To be cool, that’s why.Unfortunately, the demonic hordes are not familiar with the weapons you use, at least in that I didn’t notice them having any particular dislike of headshots. Is this a boon or a curse? Hard to say, as games with OHK headshots kinda nudge you to never do body shots. Dread Templar doesn’t have time for that; you need SPEED.You also need save points, because you will eventually run out of luck (and HP). They’re not badly spaced out, so you won’t be losing too much progress if you bite the magical demon projectile.I have been saying for quite some time that smaller studios shouldn’t even attempt AAA graphics if they lack the resources. This was always the hardest for FPS games, as they’re traditionally reliant on the flashiest visuals. The recent trend of doing a modernized version of retro graphics warms my heart; it’s an elegant solution that lets the devs focus on what really matters (shooting). Here’s hoping that the full Dread Templar game will be blast.
