Takedown: Red Sabre

My spreadsheet instincts kicked in before I even finished the tutorial: five playable maps, two training levels that reviewers charitably called identical, squad commands reduced to 'stay here' and 'come with me', and an enemy AI whose difficulty setting appears to be a dice roll. That is the full tactical toolbox Serellan shipped. For someone who color-codes Paradox patch notes, the numbers here are genuinely painful to read. The pitch had real bones. Serellan positioned the game as a spiritual successor to the original Rainbow Six and SWAT series, built around one-shot lethality, no regenerating health, pre-mission gear selection with loadouts covering weapons, armor, and breach charges, and nonlinear maps that randomize enemy placement every run. On paper those are the right levers. No respawn pressure, meaningful loadout choices, and randomized threat positions should create exactly the kind of slow, information-starved tension I want from a tactical sim. There are brief moments, especially in co-op, where creeping through a cargo ship or office block with three voice-commed teammates produces genuine friction. That much is true. The execution, however, failed that vision at almost every layer. Enemy AI alternates between unerring one-shot headshots from across the map and standing motionless with its back to your entire squad. Leaning around a corner to peek does not mean your barrel clears the wall, so shots fire into geometry. Sound design is similarly broken: weapon reports appear to come from every direction at once, removing the directional audio that any tactical shooter needs as a core feedback loop. The multiplayer server browser was reportedly non-functional at launch, and the online population today is effectively zero, which matters because singleplayer partner AI is, by consensus across every major review, essentially absent as a tactical asset. Squad mates in solo play function only as extra lives, not as units you can direct. The controller support advertised on the store page did not extend to breach charges or squad commands at launch, and menus communicated only in keyboard bindings. The UI gave no map, no planning phase, and no team differentiation in versus modes, making Team Deathmatch rounds a guessing game about which silhouette to shoot. Co-op does offer three modes (Mission, Tango Hunt, Bomb Disarm) and versus adds Attack/Defend and a Bomb Disarm variant, so the mode count is reasonable for the scope of the project. The problem is that a dead server population in 2024 makes all of it academic. I will always defend a small studio swinging at a genre that AAA abandoned. The creative director came from Ghost Recon, SOCOM, and SWAT pedigree, and the intent to revive deliberate, communication-first squad play is something I genuinely respect. But intent does not substitute for functional AI, a working server browser, or enough content to justify the asking price. With a Metacritic of 34 and Steam sitting at mostly negative across nearly two thousand reviews, the data is not ambiguous. Skip it and put that time toward Ready or Not or Insurgency: Sandstorm, which actually delivered the genre this game promised.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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