Supplice Early Access Playthrough (2024 / v0.3.0.5), Episode 1
0Next on the early-access FPS list is Supplice, which I last touched over 3 years ago when its demo first released (which is still available, seemingly unchanged). It stood out for its brilliant graphics, and amazing soundtrack featuring the one-two punch of Jimmy and Esselfortium.
I remember the art style making me think this is the closest thing to a Blake Stone GZDoom game I'll ever see. The game's plot may be more in line with something like Marathon, though - and there's a ton of it, with several terminals full of excellently-written lore in every level.
While I am certainly enjoying the aspects I've already mentioned, there are definitely some things that seem off to me, which I'll inevitably explain in way more detail than the parts I like...
The maps in Supplice quickly become quite substantial, and unfortunately some of them can become a bit disorienting in spots, reminding me of a few particular community maps for Quake that I've played in previous years. It can be easy to take streamlined and well-landmarked map design for granted until you stumble into a map that grinds progression to a halt and leaves you running in circles wondering what you missed.
Supplice can definitely be brutal at times. My playthrough on normal difficulty has experienced some uneven difficulty spikes, often due to specific types of enemies that can completely drain the player's health in seconds if you don't quickly identify them and react accordingly. I can be cruising along at over 100 health for a half hour or more, then suddenly I end up swarmed, cornered, or simply out in the wrong enemy's line of sight and then I'm dead or close to it. It feels like some encounters are designed to be failed (or at least heavily mishandled) the first time when you have no idea what's coming. Interestingly, the final battle of the entire episode wasn't one of them.
My biggest gripe with the game, though, is that this game's devs have somehow not learned the lesson that many other recent gzdoom-based commercial releases seemingly have learned, which is to independently light enemy sprites so that they're visible even when the environment is dark.
I didn't find E1's secret exit on my first try, but returned with a reminder of something I had discovered in the demo and hadn't checked in the full episode, which led to a very amusing secret level...
Episode 1 didn't have too many surprises in terms of scenery and bestiary over the demo; we'll have to see what subsequent episodes add in that regard.
00:00 - Intro
21:00 - E1 start
7:52:43 - end-of-E1 thoughts
7:57:15 - E1 secret exit + secret map, and comparing E1M3 to the 2021 demo
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