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Welcome to Herald Of Havoc! It's another retro/throwback FPS that boasts an amazing arsenal of weapons, challenging enemies, and a fairly lengthy campaign made up of 21 crushingly difficult maps.

I haven't had this much fun with an FPS game since I started playing Turbo Overkill, and seeing as right now Murder Machine difficulty is now super grindy to the point where I'm not enjoying playing it atm, this couldn't have come at a better time.

Gameplay wise, it strikes me as a combination between Serious Sam and DUSK. You'll be bunnyhopping around maps at breakneck speeds while simultaneously mowing down hordes of monsters and finding secrets.

What sets this game apart from the rest is that every level is a clean start, meaning you won't be able to keep weapons or ammo in between levels. While this may seem like a downside at first, you'll come to realize just how well balanced combat is around what the levels give you, and it definitely incentivizes replaying the levels to find secrets and further optimize your routes during exploration and combat.

E1M1 - Infiltration: Very nice introductory level that gets you used to the game's workhorse weapons as well as a good number of the fodder enemies which become commonplace.

E1M2 - Military Complex: Combat is still relatively straight forward, though the level layout is a bit more complex and you'll start to encounter some of the more lethal enemies on offer.

E1M3 - Secret Weapon: A fairly short & compact level that ends in a super fun arena fight. It also introduces my personal favorite weapon in the game, which I'll talk about in a second.

Weapon Breakdown:

The Runeblade is your starting melee weapon which remains insanely useful throughout the entire game. The primary is a basic swing and the secondary is a quick two-slash attack, and you can even hold down both to make the Runeblade seamlessly alternate between them to help turn enemies into red mist. It also has a special attack that automatically sets your health to 20 in exchange for amped sword damage & brief slow motion, though falling below 20 naturally will also give you the damage buff so I generally don't recommend it.

The Blaster's your basic starting pistol which has a fairly useful secondary capable of lighting enemies on fire. It's also one of the few weapons that has a special attack which requires electric ammo in order to work. Activating it will increase your fire rate as well as give you both the Havoc & Akimbo Powerups for a limited time, effectively turning them into SMGs. Incredibly effective against some of the game's larger opponents so don't forget about it!

The Shotgun is super straightforward but surprisingly accurate, and can zoom in with the secondary. The model is heavily inspired by the OG Quake single shotgun, which I approve of.

The Volcanic Shotgun is the SSG, but has a secondary that can ignite multiple enemies in a cone at the cost of a small wind up and explosive ammo.

The Chainshotgun is... exactly what it sounds like. It's super effective against large hordes of fodder enemies or for hard focusing beefier opponents, and even has a 3 shot hyperburst for a secondary!

The Machinegun is your basic 100% accurate hitscan weapon useful for dealing with fodder and providing chip damage to larger enemies before blasting them in the face with an SSG. The secondary is an insanely useful GL that does good damage and has the added bonus of lighting most enemies on fire. All around good crowd control option.

The final weapon featured in this playthrough is The Shockrifle, which just so happens to be my favorite weapon in the game! Functionally it's a railgun, but in practice it's so much more than that. Overkilling an enemy will cause it to chain lightning to other enemies and even through corpses until there's either nothing left to kill or it ends up hitting an enemy that doesn't die from it. In addition, shooting puddles of water will cause anything in it to be instakilled and/or take heavy amounts of damage... This is just the primary fire btw! The secondary is essentially this game's BFG; using it will cause a huge bolt of lightning to impact the area you shot it at, vaporizing or heavily damaging anything inside the blast radius, and the only downside is that it's on a 15 second cooldown... but you can still use the primary in the meantime.

So yeah, if you couldn't tell I'm in love with this game. Awesome enemies, fun levels, and incredibly fun weapons to use!

Thanks again for watching and as always, stay Serious!

Herald Of Havoc on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1963510/Herald_of_Havoc/