Bedlam

Bedlam is a first-person shooter with an identity crisis, and that identity crisis is kind of the whole point. Based on Christopher Brookmyre's novel of the same name, it stars Heather Quinn (gamertag: Athena), a Scottish researcher who wakes up inside Starfire, a Quake-inspired corridor shooter from her teens. From there she punches through "glitches" in the fabric of each game world, hopping across over twenty levels that pastiche everything from Halo and Call of Duty to first-person spins on Pac-Man, Space Invaders, and even an RTS. The premise is legitimately clever, and Brookmyre's script backs it up with a caustic, self-aware wit that manages to be genuinely funny more often than it has any right to be. The core loop is old-school run-and-gun: no regenerating health, floating medpacks, armor pickups, and the constant-movement-or-die philosophy of 90s arena shooters. Weapons carry between worlds, so you might be blasting through a WWII-themed level with laser guns or a space-age world with an MP40 - a gimmick that actually raises a smile. Each world ends with a boss fight, though they all amount to the same routine: big thing appears, shoot it a lot, move on. Rocket jumping exists, but the physics feel accidental rather than designed. First-person platforming sections connect the worlds and are about as fun as you remember first-person platforming being before Portal fixed it. Here is the honest problem: the gameplay barely changes across any of these worlds. Whether you are inside the Quake knock-off Starfire, a Halo-flavored sci-fi arena called Planetfire, or a Left 4 Dead riff, your feet feel the same, your guns feel the same, and the maze-like levels start to blur into one another. Movement is blisteringly fast yet turning feels sluggish by comparison, creating a disconnect that critics flagged across multiple reviews. The shooting itself lacks punch - guns rarely feel like they connect with anything. On top of that, the PC version shipped with a reliable rotation of bugs: weapons vanishing from your inventory, dialogue cutting out mid-scene, inconsistent framerates, and the occasional physics-assisted catapult into the void. Where Bedlam genuinely earns credit is in the writing and the performance. Heather is a strong lead, voiced with real personality, and the script finds sharp things to say about online toxicity, gaming nostalgia, and the gap between how we remember old games and how they actually played. A multiplayer deathmatch level populated with abusive twelve-year-olds is a small, mean, funny setpiece. There are scattered moments throughout the five-to-six hour runtime that show exactly what this game could have been with more polish and budget behind it. The bones of something special are visible. Bedlam is a game for players who grew up with 90s and early-2000s PC shooters and want a wry, literate story set inside that era. If the shooting itself were even half as sharp as the script, this would be easy to recommend without caveats. As it stands, go in knowing the gameplay is the weakest part of the package and calibrate expectations accordingly. If Brookmyre's name means anything to you, or if the premise genuinely grabs you, there is enough here to get through. Everyone else should let the concept do its job and read the book instead.

Alex · Scout Team

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