‘Strafe’: So Nineties, So Gory, So Essential

 Now, as the well-informed gamertastic among us will know, the FPS genre hasn’t been faring too well of late. Not that individual titles have gone to hell; Destiny’s enjoying its second wind and Overwatch is a damn big deal just now. I mean generally.  

The issue seems to be that we’re getting burnt out on the whole sci-fi shooter concept. When the Doom reboot hit, it was given the finger by a lot of gamers who called it ‘too Halo.’ I know how many times I’ve already mentioned the fact that, when the Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare reveal trailer hit, it got as many YouTube dislikes as Bieber’s Baby video, but I’m bringing it up again because I think it’s freaking hilarious.

It’s a bad time all round, you might say. The solution, for retro-heads like me, is to cruise on back to the past and revisit the good old days. The glory days of Quake, Unreal Tournament and such; before super-l33t tryhards and K/Ds sucked every ounce of fun out of shooters.

Strafe channels that batshit nineties gory shooter spirit like none other. This one hit its Kickstarter goal some time back, winning our hearts with its completely effing ridiculous and nostalgic trailers. The game was doing its thing at PAX West, as GameInformer’s own Javy Gwaltny reports:

‘During the PAX West demo, I saw several features that were new. My favorite is easily that certain doors containing goodies that can only be unlocked via retina scanner. How do you unlock the retina scanner? Well, there are decapitated heads littered around each level, with each head opening the door that has the corresponding retina scanner.It's goofy and dumb and absolutely hilarious, which pretty much sums up Strafe as a whole so far.

I was also able so spy a new zone that took place in a cave-looking area filled with enemies that had heads filled with acid. If you shoot one of them, acid sprays all over you, damaging you. This forces most players who are used to the rules of FPS to buck one of the main pillars of the genre: always go for the headshot.’

Try and tell me this doesn’t sound like something you want a piece of. Come on. Try and tell me that with a straight face, I dare you.