Developer Arkane Studios has become a renowned developer over the years, having made critically acclaimed hits like Deathloop and the Dishonored series. But if you only looked at the reception of Redfall, the studio’s latest game, you probably would not have intuited this. Having come out recently, Redfall has been raked over the coals by both players and professional critics alike. Currently, the PC version sits at a middling 59 Metascore on Metacritic, and Steam users have given it a “mostly negative” rating on the service. So this begs the question, what went wrong with Redfall to warrant all of these bad reviews?
What happened with Redfall?
A general blandness and uninspiredness in much of Redfall’s design encompass much of the game’s negative response. Many have expressed that the open world feels empty and uninteresting to explore and that the mission design stays repetitive throughout. Additionally, players have criticized the game’s simplistic gunplay and enemy encounters as well as the unimpactful skill tree system. The narrative also generally did not manage to impress many players.
According to many critics, Redfall also suffers greatly from its myriad performance issues, particularly on PC. Players have cited frequent framerate dips in addition to a whole host of bugs that harm the overall immersion. The game’s AI has received some especially heavy criticism, as it frequently becomes stuck or exhibits other odd or exploitable behaviors. Not only does this negatively impact immersion once again, but it also makes enemy encounters much less challenging, even when playing on the higher difficulty settings.
All in all, these bad reviews show that Redfall has a long way to go if future updates are to bring it to an acceptable state. And considering that last week’s release of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor has also received criticism for its performance issues on PC, it appears that we have entered a bit of a rough patch in terms of major PC game releases. Hopefully, this trend won’t last too much longer.
Image via Bethesda Softworks
