Tense and fiddly FPS roguelike Receiver 2 shoots out next week
Hurray, more fiddly shootouts
If you haven't played 2013's Receiver, you've missed out on some of the best shoots in videogames. It's an FPS roguelike where you roam about on rooftops, fending off turrets and drones with a gun that needs more attention than a two-year old. There are separate buttons to slide in individual bullets, fiddle with safeties, and do that primey thing where you slide the top back. I've got no interest in real-life firearms, but panicking about this stuff in the middle of a shootout is great.
Developers Wolfire games have just revealed Receiver 2 is coming out on April 14th, and will let me do all of this again with fiddlier and prettier weapons. I'm going to have so much gun.
Let's just gloss over Wolfire's whole 'hahaha, we said the game was coming later than it actually is' thing.
I never came close to finding them all, but the goal in Receiver was to collect tapes about a mysterious, possibly psychic robo-pocalypse. They're tucked away in random apartments, guarded by turrets with weakspots. You might shoot out a sensor and blind one, or blast a hole in its firing mechanism. There were terrifying, flying Half-Life style manhacks to worry about, too.
Wolfire say this will have "the same basic gameplay structure as the first, but more of everything. There are many more sidearms available in Receiver 2, and while Receiver 1 simulated several moving parts for each gun, Receiver 2 simulates *all* of the moving parts." They're apparently "doubling down on the aspects that made the original stand out: the detailed firearm controls and the tense, surreal atmosphere."
I do hope they haven't gone overboard. The real thrill of Receiver came when your mind managed to automate all the fiddliness, and you found yourself subconsciously hammering through the convoluted process of reloading while ducking around a drone's whirring sawblades. It would be a shame if they've made that goal too frustrating to reach.
If you can't wait till the 14th, Receiver 1 is well worth a play. Graham once praised it to high heaven for the way it let him express himself.
It also got an update last year, and is currently 80% off on Steam. That is a very good way to spend £1/$1/€1.