Apostle 3D Reviews

While the game looks interesting it is an absolute miracle how such an engine which in theory would be based on over 30 year old technology would lag on five year old hardware, let alone why such a game is over 1 Gigabyte in Download. Furthermore there is a noticeable input lag which seriously impacts gameplay in any way, the view clips through the walls and overall it is a buggy mess. Looking foward to play it when all the bugs are fixed, but for now I can't recommend it to anyone.

Honestly it IS a bit on the rough side BUT that being said its pretty good for what it sets out to be and the art style is fun, plus the music kicks ass! It plays like a mini version of DOOM if you will, only gripes I can say that make it rough in areas are that the enemies near the beginning seem to spawn very odd but can be figured out but it was rough until after the plant boss (witch in itself is a rough battle at times as sometimes you spawn with low ammo or ammo in weaker guns on this fight) but after that halfway mark I actually very much enjoyed the game! loved using the plasma gun and bazooka towards the end. I may be a little biased because a good friend of mine made this but he has a great passion for games and you can see it in this work so i definitely recommend this if you like games like the original DOOM/Wolf 3D and wanna check out a cheap/decent 5 hour shooter campaign

It looks decent enough, but the controlling interference is rough and patchy at best. The mouse movement is clunky and extremely slow to respond, which makes you ripe for enemy attack quite easy. I know no one is expecting perfection here, but if you can't get the bare basics of your controlling system in check, then you've pretty much lost out in my book. I like the look and feel of this game, just, not the mechanics as they currently are.

Don't expect a great old school fps here. It has a lot of flaws but I think it's still decent especially as it seems to be the first game of the dev. Getting it in a sale for less than a buck is worth it if you are a fan of the genre. -game length: about 2.5 hours -You can't save at all, there is only a save at the start of each level which isn't a huge thing as the game isn't that hard, mostly dying in boss fights. And all boss fights except one have their own level so if you die there you can immediatly retry it. -no different difficulties -it seems the game always runs in windowed mode not in fullscreen which is also annoying as the health and ammo counter are a bit cut off. You can still read it tho. -all the boss fights work the same way: first the boss is invulnerable and shoots at you, often in a bullethell way and after you dodged enough, he stops shooting at you and becomes vulnerable for some time, then repeat. Well, all bosses except the last one: he is always vulnerable which also it the easiest boss by far, also because this boss arena is way bigger and the game gives you a lot of ammo and health. Other bosses barely give you ressources to fight them. So you are better stocked up when you reach them. Two of the bosses also throw in enemies at you. -Speaking of balancing ressources: I'd say it's mostly all right but especially in the early game you basically have to find the secrets to have enough ammo but luckily they aren't well hidden -weapon balancing isn't great: the axe is all right and pretty good against the melee fodder enemies; the pistol is surprisingly not that bad and can also hold a lot of ammo; but the double barrel shotgun is underpowered. First of all the reloading takes too long, but also the range of it is pathetic. It can kill most of the enemies with a single shot but you have to be very very close. Also you can only hold ammo for 20 shots at once, so the shotgun is almost useless. (Also feel like it should pierce through enemies, but it doesn't.) Then you get a crossbow which does ok damage but has big range and pierces through enemies. And then later you get the chaingun/minigun which is pretty good, but the first time you get it, you are supposed to use it for a boss and then don't get more ammo for it for a long time but thankfully later on you get to use it more. Then the plasma gun which is basically op but it's also kinda needed later on as the game throws so many enemies at you near the end, ammo is also usually quite scarce for it. And then very late you get the rocket launcher which I barely used because I first thought it's bad, but it's ok. It does a lot of damage but barely has an explosion radius -this game is also basically a mix of the classic old school fps like wolf 3d but it also has arenas which lock you inside and then enemies keep spawning in and you have to kill them all to proceed similar to Doom (2016) or Doom Eternal

Honestly, I love shooters that give me a Wolf3D feel. They are simple, easy to play, and generally don't waste your time. Unfortunately, this one is rough... very rough. I chose not to refund this because I feel like there is heart and potential, but this is a poor showing. Art was consistent throughout which was a positive and the music was passable. The level design is very basic with random rooms where to leave you need to kill everything that spawns. Unfortunately, the levels themselves have no decoration, no environmental items placed throughout. Just hallways, walls, floors, sometimes you get a big room! The mini-map in the lower left hand corner is a neat concept, but when you get to areas such as small mazes it is little help. The only area that started to feel like they were using the limited variety of level design elements was hell, and even then that ended after E4M1. The start of E2M1 was the only "unique" level. The monster closet rooms were boring, since it was just stand in a corner and shoot left and right, then crossbow when they get stuck on a wall because pathing is basic. Monster design was interesting. The sprites were decent like most of the art in the game. The issue was monsters would hitch in walls often, marionettes would spawn oftentimes unable to move or be hit with projectile weapons, allowing you to just walk through them. If you stand in the square that is a door, projectile weapons can't hit you and very few monsters can pass through. The brains in the jar, the flying skulls, and the eyes are honestly the only 'dangerous' enemies in the game, and they are the easiest to kill. They are fast, have odd projectiles (for eye and skull), and are persistent and able to cross through doors (for the skull and brain on legs, the eyes do not move). The plant monsters were neat and had a cool attack, but only used in one Episode. Some mobs such as the walking guys with the plasma arm oftentimes are unable to even shoot their gun, as projectiles won't spawn. Monsters in boss fights would often spawn out of 'range', allowing you to ignore them (the last one is like this for ALL monsters, just stand in one of the massive side rooms full of ammo and they will just stand there and look at you while you Western Union their boss bullets from the comfort of the corner). Bosses had potential but bullet hell in a system where there is no run or extra movement mechanics is a poor idea. The last two bosses were the easiest, with the last boss being easy by standing in a weapon room and shooting him from there, as spawned monsters won't aggro back to you. The plant boss was the worst, but also the most involved. The spawning monsters in waves and the AoE bullet hell meant it took many tries to actually beat it. It was un-fun and almost caused me to quit. It was hard because you needed almost every shot of ammo to beat it. Thankfully if you die on this boss, your ammo stays the same, so you can die several times while picking ammo up and not fire a shot until you are back to full on what it gives you. The guns felt horrible and I think this is the worst shotgun I have used in an FPS in years. They have poor sound effects and feel very weak. There is no on screen sprite for the .45 caliber, but it is the most useful weapon next to the axe. The crossbow is a railgun, allowing you to shoot through multiple enemies. The heavy machine gun winds up, does a lot of damage. The plasma gun winds up, does a lot of damage. The plasma rockets do a small blast when fired, like the Great Value of rocket launchers. The shotgun is horrible and the worst to use. The projectile spread sucks, damage is super inconsistent even at point blank, and randomly your character will say something and wipe blood off of his visor even if you shot something 200 miles away. It's double barreled too, so you get poor results at twice the price. If you want to know what the workhorse it though, it's the axe. The axe will carry you through every non-monster closet or boss fight if you just keep moving and swinging. Monsters can't melee when moving, so you can just fly around and whack away. I hate cheese like this, but the game's lack of variety and difficulty save for an instance here or there means it's better to get it done than play it out. I stuck it out and beat it in one sitting, 3.4 hours roughly and honestly it could be done in half that time if I played it again. I think the team behind it has room to grow, room to improve. I can tell there was heart put into it, and a part of me feels like it was rushed out half finished to hit a deadline. I also think getting a new set of beta testers for future titles may be a good idea as there was so many bugs/glitches/oddities that it actually made the game easier as many monsters were unable to act, even when I'd play a level again just to -see- if it was a one time thing. It tells me beta testers dropped the ball and failed to play through levels (E4 is full of this).