Strafe Millennium Edition is an FPS designed to look like it was made in the bygone era of late 90s shooters. From its visuals to its entire presentation leading up to the game’s release, it effortlessly pulled off that charm. With what the gamers received when Strafe released, many were disappointed that the theme of this title was only skin deep and the insides being considerably more akin to that of a modern shooter. Since then, this fact has been clearly written into the store page for any prospective buyers to take into consideration. The entire situation was quite fascinating and it also lead to many people ranting that this was a terrible game due to their expectations.
That said, Strafe is not devoid of old-school mechanics, but with the heavy mixture of modern design choices and a rogue-like system that randomly generates maps, it falls into its own realm. Fans of either style of FPS will not feel at home here due to its unique nature, and not one for the inpatient since you will have to restart the title from the beginning should you die. With that elephant in the room out of the way, let’s talk about the game proper. We start off on the cockpit seat of a space vessel, and from here are able to choose from all the usual menu affairs such as changing options or starting up a new game.
The tutorial will teach you some of the basics, though it isn’t all that in-depth about its unique features. Your main choice comes right from the get-go. You are given the option of either equipping a Shotgun, a MachineGun, or a Railgun. All are pretty self-explanatory and possess their own unique alt-fire. They are all viable options, yet this is where some of the rouge-lite aspects also come into play. The amount of damage, rate of fire, and their accuracy is all determined by collecting some canisters scattered around the levels. I’m not a huge fan of this as your shotgun could barely hit the side of a wall with its crazy spread and your railgun becomes unreliable past medium range when starting off.
Choose your weapon and step into the teleporter to be thrown right into the deep end of an overrun vessel known as the Icarus. There are all types of mutants lurking around its claustrophobic halls and not a single living human remains. You make any noise or get spotted and it is go time as they make a b-line straight towards you in an attempt to overwhelm you. Others will stay back to lay down supportive fire and some can even toss explosives your way. None of these attacks are hitscan so you do have a chance at avoiding all damage as well as moving significantly faster than most foes to safely stay out of melee range. And you will have to become proficient at moving around the battlefield since it is a rogue-like and you’ll never know when the RNG will grace you with a healing item.
In this title, you will find the healing items in the form of a food station. It has a random amount of cans inside of then, with each healing for 10 points. Even if you are completely healthy, eating them up will benefit you greatly. There are four pips at the bottom of your health meter and eating a can of food fills one up. Once you fill all four your health will permanently increase. On the other hand, you may want to leave them in case you get damaged and need to heal up later on. Another thing to take into consideration is that most destructible items such as crates or chests have something useful in them. It is typically something to improve the stats of your main gun, though annoyingly enough, there are no melee attacks, so you will have to waste precious ammo to open them.
There are a plethora of guns you may find throughout. They all possess very little ammo, but to offset that are quite powerful. Plasma guns, rocket launchers, and more will be available to you if you are lucky enough to find them. You have no limit to the amount you can carry, by the end you’ll likely possess a small nation’s worth of weaponry. Once you run out of ammo for them, they will have one final use unique to it. Some guns can be thrown and explode in the face of your enemies when it runs dry, while others serve as temporary melee weapons as you swing around your empty rifle. It is a neat feature and one you will make use of if you have anything other than the ammo efficient railgun as a starting weapon.
The railgun is basically an easy mode if you have a decent aim. With its high powered single shot, it is unlikely you will run out of ammo as a single bullet is usually more than enough to put down most enemies. It also allows you to abuse the AI as they are blind as a bat and react poorly when you take them out from a distance. Most enemies, even those that should be fighting at long ranges will always run up close to you, allowing even your starting medium-range projectiles to one shot them quite easily. They are mutants but it is silly to see a sniper wielding foe get into such a close range, effectively eliminating their threat. By far the most dangerous enemy are mere jellyfish. They are invisible and just float around until you get near, then kamikaze the unaware player.
It’s starting zone is really not a good fit for your character’s fast movement speed. There are a ton of foes that cling on ceilings to get the drop on you as you walk below them, the environments are very cramped, and worse still is that some enemies bleed an orange goo that will damage you if stepped on. That goo never disappears and in combination with the rest of the above issues, it all equates to punishing the player for not moving along at a snail’s pace. Thankfully, after making it past the Icarus, the environments open up significantly and you are able to make use of the character’s speed that until then has been more of a burden. Later on, you can easily avoid the damaging goo, whiz around enemies at full speed to herd them up, and don’t have to be constantly staring at dark ceilings.
By the second zone it becomes much more enjoyable and how they transition between them all throughout never fails to be awesome. A feature I rarely used up until then is the ability to pick up explosives barrels and lunge them right at your foes for a spectacular death. In the tight corridors of the Icarus if I were to try that I would be the one splattered across the walls more often than not. I just can not seize to wonder why they choose to make that area so unsuited for the gameplay. It is the first thing a player experiences and does not make a good first impression. Moving on from beating that dead horse, as you no doubt noticed by now is that the game has a ton of blood. This makes blasting apart enemies incredibly satisfying as they shoot out an absolute geyser of blood. Covering the orange goo in blood negates its effects so it does have an in-game function too.
Most of your time will be spent shooting and it never gets old due to the satisfying feedback. It’s randomly generated level design ranges from okay to tedious. Some areas stay the same like the entrance to a new zone, though the rooms are always different. It goes above just making different looking rooms and actually may add objectives to them. At times you may need to find a corpse and rip off its head to get through a retinal scan locked door, while your next run a simple colored key-card would suffice. My favorite has to be yanking out a volatile battery from a wrecked ship and tossing it at a designated destructible area before it blows up in your face. It can’t compete with handmade levels, though what’s on offer is good enough, if at times a bit off.
Monsters here do not simply spawn into existence. They exist in the world and you could scope them out before entering. Their reinforcements come via good old-fashioned monster closets, walls that slide down to reveal a horde of enemies suddenly pouring out. It is much more exciting to hear that dreadful noise, turn around and see another eager batch of monsters ready to rip your face off in comparison to them just spawning in. Unfortunately, it is this aspect that suffers most from the random generation. The majority of the time, you will trigger it, hear its noise, and wonder why nothing has happened. Make no mistake, they are making there way over to you, though for some reason the closet was halfway across the map and the trigger for it was nowhere near it. It feels very awkward to see a small group of enemies run across various rooms filled with still unaware monsters as only they somehow know your exact position.
The rogue-like aspect of Strafe does it little to no favors. Your starting weapons are unbalanced, ammo and health, as well as various other vital things that may decide your fate is left to RNG, and if you die it is back to the start. As insult to injury, there is a save feature, but once you reach zone 3 & 4 it starts you off right inside of a level. The first two zones kept you in the safe room in where you saved, which was why it was so surprising that it decides to change that later on. On my first playthrough, I saved the game and came back to it later, then found myself at a dead end hallway with a ton of melee enemies that were already aggro’d for some reason. I died due to that as I scrambled for the mouse and found myself cornered inside the little cryotube in where you save that was no longer in the safe room I saved in. It was back to the Icarus for me.
Another issue I take with it comes in the random robot stalls that modify your weapon. Nearly everything else’s function and what they do is clearly labeled other than these. They can change both your main weapons primary fire and alt fire. It is an awesome idea that offers up a ton unique playthrough as even if you and a friend start with the same gun, it can be completely different by the end. As an example, your machinegun can turn into a chaingun, or your railgun into a short burst weapon. With the stakes so high, it can be quite dangerous to toss your main weapon into that stall and hope for the best. I know that risk-reward is a staple of rogue-likes, but leaving just this one feature purposely obscure is odd. With getting items from a store, you always know what you will be receiving and those change things up just as much.
Items allow you to shift things up significantly with effects like double jumping, becoming immune to orange goo, and even one that turns your empty gun magazines into grenades. They are all very interesting and take up cash instead of your usual Scrap currency. Scrap allows you to create essential things like more armor or ammo, and can also be exchanged for cash in certain machines. Cash is much rarer to find, so you will have to take a gamble as to the amount of scrap you are willing to trade, in the hopes that the next merchant has something you want. The fact that death means you will have to start from the beginning of the game keeps things pretty intense. Filling up your armor meter with scrap is just as invaluable as being able to purchase a flying drone to take out your enemies.
Purchasing new teleporter parts will eventually allow you to start at a later zone. Once a teleporter is all set up and ready to go, you need to carry around a leaking canister filled with an acidic material. You can plug it up with your finger to stop it from draining, but you obviously can’t do that when blasting apart monsters. It becomes a cool struggle of trying to finish fights as quickly as possible to pick up the canister again in the hopes that you make it to the new zone in time and fix up your machine. You will be underpowered if you decide to start in later zones though it is doable. The last zone features rooms that will stay locked until you wipe out all enemies. That can get frustrating as you search up and down for the final enemy that can be hanging from a wall or somewhere out of the way. I once spent about half an hour, believe it or not, searching for the final one. It turned out to be a harmless frog that was in a pool of blood deep enough that it couldn’t be seen, until I randomly blasted the entire area full of explosives out of desperation.
One thing that no one can take away from this game is that it ends with one hell of a bang. That last and only boss fight was intense. When you die or beat the title, you are rewarded with mutators to spice up future playthroughs. You can turn Strafe into an RPG and get experience points to level up your stats. Activate a hardcore mode for more of a challenge, use a big head mode, and much more. It is designed to be replayed time and time again. On top of that, there are weekly challenges and a survival mode if all you want to do is fight nonstop. As flawed as it is, I enjoyed my time with Strafe. It is a very confused title that is unsure as to what it wants to be and alienates both new & old FPS fans as a result, though is a title that tries something new which I can appreciate. The potential for a sequel that irons out its flaws and better implement its rogue-like system is massive. Strafe is not a must play title, but if you are willing to give it a go, it does offer a decent chunk of content and a lot of replayability.
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