Wrath: Aeon of Ruin

I went into Wrath: Aeon of Ruin expecting the best Quake game never made by id Software. The pedigree is legitimately impressive: built on the DarkPlaces source port of the original Quake engine, developed with direct involvement from veteran Quake mappers and modders, scored by Andrew Hulshult (who also did Quake Champions and Dusk), and capped, cheekily, at 666 fps. On paper, that is a dream team for a retro shooter. In practice, what you get is a game that absolutely nails its moment-to-moment shooting and then squanders the goodwill with level design decisions that feel like they were pulled from the more exhausting corners of 1990s expansion packs rather than the genre's greatest hits. The arsenal is the clear highlight. Nine weapons, each with alternate fire modes, and a clever ammo system where guns like the Fangspitter and the Retcher are literally fed by pulling teeth and cysts from the corpses of enemies you've just killed. The implication is that those weapons are less effective against the enemy type providing the ammo, which nudges you into reading the room and swapping loadouts mid-fight rather than just camping one favorite. The Ruination Blade, your starting melee weapon, doubles as a mobility tool via a charged thrust that lets you close distance or reach elevated secrets. The Slag Cannon, the Coach Gun, the Crystallizer - there is real variety here, and the combat feels punchy and responsive in the way that old-school shooters demand. Light role-playing elements layer on top: collectible artifacts offer offensive and defensive boosts, including the nasty Cruel Aegis that grants brief invincibility at the cost of nearly zeroing your health. That risk-reward texture is one of the better ideas in the game. Where things fall apart is the structure. Three hub worlds each feed into five levels you can tackle in any order, which sounds like it should create momentum and player agency. Instead, the levels themselves tend toward relentless, punishing gauntlets with narrow corridors feeding into wide arenas, then back to corridors, then back to arenas, with enemy placement that can feel less like design and more like spite. The save system uses consumable Soul Tethers as manual checkpoints: a genuinely tense mechanic in concept, but it becomes maddening when a level stretches past the hour mark and a bad surprise wipes progress back to a point you've already seen three times. Difficulty spikes hit without warning, and enemy pathing issues - monsters getting jammed in doorframes or spawning in awkward spots - undercut the otherwise solid combat flow. The atmosphere, all gothic stone, howling forests, and ancient crypts, looks the part but never quite builds to anything memorable. Music and enemy design both sit in the middle of the genre pack. The mixed Steam score (72% positive from nearly 3,000 reviews) reflects the split personality accurately. Genre obsessives who can quote every Quake expansion by name will find enough here to keep them busy and, in places, genuinely challenged. Players exploring the boomer-shooter revival for the first time have faster and better-designed entries to pick from - DUSK, Amid Evil, and Ultrakill all deliver tighter packages. Wrath is a game that does one specific thing, shooting, with real competence, while the scaffolding around that core is rougher than five years of Early Access should have produced.

Alex · Scout Team

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