As an old fool, I sometimes kick it old school.
And not just by making dated references. I listen to music on CDs, watch TV shows on a TV, and eat food that wasn’t grown in a lab and sold under a name that would make Charlton Heston fans nervous.
It’s also why I was curious about Sprawl (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC), a cyberpunk sci-fi first-person shooter very much in the vein of Doom, Quake, and other old school shooters.
Though as old and foolish as I may be, I was happy to find that Sprawl wasn’t completely vintage.
In Sprawl,
you play as Seven, a spec ops soldier who was double crossed by your government, and is now trying to take said government.
Oh, and she’s trying to survive; that’s important, too.
At its core, Sprawl is a first-person shooter clearly influenced by Quake, Unreal, Doom, et al. The visuals, for instance, are not as detailed or as clean as, say, Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6, Starfield, or any other modern shooter.
Though some graphical aspects are less old school than others. While the button prompts and visual effects look like relics, the guns have a more modern look about them.
In fact, this not only doesn’t look like, say, the original Quake from 1996, it also doesn’t look like the faithful HD remake Quake (2021 Enhanced Re-Release Version) from 2021.
The same can also be said…
for Sprawl‘s gameplay. In the old school column, we have the movement, which makes you feel like you’re sliding around on ice, not running along like you do in most modern first-person games.
Sprawl is also old school is that you can’t use iron sights for increased accuracy, don’t have to reload your weapon, and sometimes find ammo and armor power-ups just lying around. They even look like ones in those aforementioned old games.
That said, those old games are not the only ones that’ve had an influence on Sprawl, as this has some modern conceits as well.
The biggest of these…
is how you can run along walls, and even jump and keep running. And all while shooting up a storm. It’s all very Titanfall 2.
Then there’s how Sprawl takes a page from the reboot of Doom and its sequel Doom Eternal by having enemies drop ammo and armor when they die, but having them drop more if you shoot them into submission and then smack them upside the head.
Sprawl also adds the ability to use adrenaline to slows down time, and thus take out some enemies before they have time to react. Which is helpful since you never have an abundance of ammo, even if you do the finish move on every enemy.
In fact, there were times when I took a page from Resident Evil 4, Dead Space, and other survival horror games by just running past people. Especially when said people were the robot-looking combat drones I’ll be complaining about later.
As helpful…
as having the ability to slow time may be, it would’ve been better had the default button for it not been the left trigger. Especially as someone who plays a lot of first-person shooters, and thus reflexively uses that button for iron sights.
And that goes double when you’re dual wielding pistols and expect the left trigger to shoot the left gun.
This, however, is just a notation, not a complaint since Sprawl has an option that renders this issue moot: the ability to remap the buttons as you see fit.
And not just to avoid the iron sights confusion. The game also, for no discernable reason, has you using the left bump to jump and wall run, not the usual “X” button [PS5] or “A” [Xbox], which are otherwise unused.
Similarly, while some might complain that being able to slow time makes Sprawl too easy, this is also mitigated by the difficultly options, which allow you to crank up (or down) how quickly your adrenaline drains, and how much damage you and your enemies take.
Or, y’know, you could just not use adrenaline.
But while these options do render some of Sprawl‘s issues moot, they unfortunately don’t fix all of them.
For starters,
there are the aforementioned robot dogs, which are disproportionately tougher than other enemies you face at the same time. If I didn’t know better (and I don’t), I’d think this was an oversight, not a design choice.
Then there’s how platforming is always tricky in a first-person game. Like in Doom Eternal, it can sometimes be difficult to judge distances in Sprawl. And the relatively lower visual fidelity doesn’t help.
Sprawl also has an issue that, fittingly, is very old school of it: it’s short. Like real short. Like one good afternoon, and that’s with breaks for lunch and to check your email.
Though, ultimately,
as with the aforementioned problems mitigated by the options, this last issue is also rendered somewhat moot given by the rest of Sprawl. The game is so engaging and challenge enough that while you’ll tear right through it, you’ll want to play it again. And again. And maybe one more time. Which is something else we old fools like to do as well.
SCORE: 7.5/10
