{"id":97837,"date":"2019-08-04T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-08-04T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/nintendo-switch\/redeemer_enhanced_edition"},"modified":"2019-08-04T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-08-04T13:00:00","slug":"review-redeemer-enhanced-edition-bloody-and-brutal-action-thats-been-poorly-ported-to-switch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2019\/08\/04\/review-redeemer-enhanced-edition-bloody-and-brutal-action-thats-been-poorly-ported-to-switch\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Redeemer: Enhanced Edition &#8211; Bloody And Brutal Action That&#8217;s Been Poorly Ported To Switch"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"media_block\"><a href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/nintendo-switch\/redeemer_enhanced_edition\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/nintendo-switch\/redeemer_enhanced_edition\/small.jpg\" class=\"media_thumbnail\"><\/a><\/div>\n<div id>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Redeemer: Enhanced Edition Review - Screenshot 1 of 4\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/98124\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/98124\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Redeemer: Enhanced Edition Review - Screenshot 1 of 4\"><\/a><\/aside>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/switch-eshop\/redeemer_enhanced_edition\"><strong>Redeemer: Enhanced Edition<\/strong><\/a> is the <a class=\"external\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ronseal.com\/\">Ronseal<\/a> of top-down beat-\u2019em-ups. With no frills, bells or whistles, it does <em>exactly<\/em> what it says on the tin\/box\/eShop description. You\u2019re a former soldier living in a remote monastery. And when some bad dudes attack your temple and kill your fellow monks, it\u2019s up to you to embrace your old ways and react in kind. <em>And that\u2019s it.<\/em> No airs or graces, just an angry bald man, his bare hands and whichever degradable weapons he can lay said appendages on. It\u2019s not particularly memorable or creative, but it scratches the kind of itch only a top-down virtual murder fest can truly scratch.<\/p>\n<p>Right from the off you can tell the kind of games Russian developer Sobaka Studio has been influenced by. There\u2019s the top-down perspective and all-out bloody violence of the <strong>Loaded<\/strong> games, while the almost slapstick ways you can execute an enemy smacks of <strong>Sleeping Dogs<\/strong> with a pinch of <a href=\"\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/nintendo-switch\/mortal_kombat_11\"><strong>Mortal Kombat<\/strong><\/a>. The \u2018stealth\u2019 aspect even hopes to invoke a little <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/3ds\/metal_gear_solid_snake_eater_3d\">Metal Gear Solid<\/a><\/strong> action. And with open-ended levels full of items to collect and shortcuts to find, you can sense a real wannabe <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/nintendo-switch\/diablo_iii_eternal_collection\"><strong>Diablo<\/strong><\/a> vibe, too. While you can see all the various points of inspiration, the problem is Redeemer simply doesn\u2019t capture the magic that\u2019s made any of these games so popular \u2013 and it\u2019s left feeling identity-agnostic as a result.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Redeemer: Enhanced Edition Review - Screenshot 2 of 4\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/98123\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/98123\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Redeemer: Enhanced Edition Review - Screenshot 2 of 4\"><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>Take its approach to stealth. As you make your way through the monastery, you\u2019ll encounter increasingly large numbers of increasingly tougher enemies. You start out with no weapons bar your ability to punch and perform a roundhouse kick (ideal for clearing multiple enemies in close proximity), and with guns and melee items only last so long before you need to discard them, Redeemer makes it clear you\u2019re meant to be at a disadvantage. You can\u2019t sneak as such, only move at walking pace by slowly pushing the analog stick in a given direction. Get close enough to an enemy and you can press \u2018A\u2019 to quietly dispatch them.<\/p>\n<p>The issue is there are so many enemies walking crisscrossing paths that most of the time someone will see you, so running in and smashing someone\u2019s head against a wall is often far less stressful from the get-go than trying to employ a stealthier approach. And you can see Sobaka Studio really wanted to create something as fast and frenetic as <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pushsquare.com\/games\/ps4\/hotline_miami\">Hotline Miami<\/a><\/strong>, but Vasily moves a little too sluggish to really match Dennaton Games\u2019 seminal brawler. Even with his dash, you\u2019re simply not moving fast enough to really feel that agile when dealing with multiple enemies. There\u2019s been an attempt to emulate the FreeFlow system of the <strong>Batman: Arkham<\/strong> games, but your movements between enemies is never fluid enough to feel <em>truly<\/em> creative.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Redeemer: Enhanced Edition Review - Screenshot 3 of 4\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/98125\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/98125\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Redeemer: Enhanced Edition Review - Screenshot 3 of 4\"><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>Still, while it drags its feet in places, when you do get your hands on enemies, Redeemer revels in the creative death you can unleash. Every map is littered with interactive environment assets, which enable you to finish off or highly damage enemies (including more than one at once), including dashing a foe\u2019s brains in on stone block or burning them alive in an oven. And when Vasily <em>isn\u2019t<\/em> using the world to kill people, he\u2019s grabbing anything remotely weapon-shaped. He\u2019s like a steroid-filled John Wick or Sammo Hung. Knives, hammers, swords, poles and more turn enemy soldiers to mincemeat. Even grabbing a flaming torch on a wall yields predictably gruesome results. The Enhanced Edition introduces a new approach to levelling-up Vasily, but it\u2019s a very unintuitive system that over-complicates your progress by relying too heavily on the need to find multiple collectable types.<\/p>\n<p>Both guns and melee weapons degrade through use, and you can equip one of each at any one time. They tend to break pretty easily, but the world is so full of them you rarely go long just having to rely on your bare hands and feet. Ranged weapons are the weakest, requiring you to aim with the right analog stick, twin-stick shooter-style, but they\u2019re frustratingly inaccurate to use, making anything other than a shotgun up close a chore to use.<\/p>\n<p>You can play through the story mode solo or via local co-op. The latter is easily the best way to play Redeemer, invoking a real arcade vibe as you team up to snap spines, stomp skulls and riddle bodies with bullet holes. There\u2019s also an arcade mode for clearing waves of enemies, which can be a great place to get a feel for switching between melee attacks and ranged weapons.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Redeemer: Enhanced Edition Review - Screenshot 4 of 4\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/98126\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/98126\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Redeemer: Enhanced Edition Review - Screenshot 4 of 4\"><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>The problem Redeemer really struggles with is performance. Even in solo mode, the framerate never holds a consistent figure. Sometimes it runs relatively smoothly, but other times it can really struggle to avoid frustrating levels of slowdown. Latter levels that up the number of on-screen enemies make this issue even worse, to the point where playing at 30fps feels like a distant memory. Having a second player running about in these instances can sometimes make things even more sluggish, irrespective of whether you\u2019re playing in handheld mode or docked. The brutality of Redeemer\u2019s kill system is easily its best feature, but it\u2019s battered half to death by sloppy optimisation on Switch.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"conclusion\">\n<h2 class=\"heading\">Conclusion<\/h2>\n<p>Redeemer: Enhanced Edition is something of a misnomer. Yes, it\u2019s the same two-year-old top-down brawler\/twin-stick shooter, but there\u2019s very little that\u2019s been enhanced here. Local co-op is technically a new feature for the game but considering its woeful performance on Switch that\u2019s not much of an addition. There\u2019s an attempt to divide skills between two different paths, but with such a barebones approach to stealth, you\u2019ll often just run in, pull limbs off and start dealing death loudly. If these issues can be addressed then those looking for <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/nintendo-switch\/mortal_kombat_11\">Mortal Kombat<\/a><\/strong>-levels of gore will slake their thirst for blood, but until then, its performance remains as battered as your unfortunate enemies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Redeemer: Enhanced Edition is the Ronseal of top-down beat-\u2019em-ups. With no frills, bells or whistles, it does exactly what it says on the tin\/box\/eShop description. You\u2019re a former soldier living in a remote monastery. And when some bad dudes attack your temple and kill your fellow monks, it\u2019s up to you to embrace your old [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nintendo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97837\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}