Skyshine's BEDLAM - More Reviews

[HiddenX]

Alec Meer (Rock, Paper, Shotgun) on Skyshine's BEDLAM:

Wot I Think: Skyshine's Bedlam

Skyshine's Bedlam (that awkward prefix is because a first-person shooter named Bedlam is already on Steam) is a team-based roguelike in which you drive a giant APC across a post-apocalyptic desert, getting into regular turn-based fights and trying not to run out of food and fuel. It’s out today.

A list of games which have made me swear the most:

5) Syndicate (original)
4) Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
3) Mario Kart
2) Quake III: Arena
1) Bedlam

[...]

So you'll have to view my closing comments through the lens of that confession, but: I dig the way Bedlam looks and I enjoy the Chess-like restrictions of its combat, but I feel like it hasn't quite got the soul it needs. I don't feel like I’m visiting a place (or riding through it in a giant, iron-clad deathtank), but rather that I'm looking a collection of art and words created to meet a brief. Bedlam borrows so much from FTL, but doesn't manage to capture the lonely vulnerability. The character-led chattiness of The Banner Saga is absent too, with the story propelled instead by what I can only describe as flavour text.

I enjoyed Bedlam, without a doubt: it looks great, it motors along and the fights are thoughtful as well as punishing. I don't necessarily feel like I’m going to go back to it though. While it looks lovelier than FTL, it doesn’t have the drama and tension which keeps me committed to that game of endless space danger. It's the best alterna-FTL we’ve had so far, but I question whether simply being an alternative is enough. Perhaps I’ll be back to see what fresh secrets and OTT characters I can dig up from the desert once the bugs are fixed, however.

Angelo M. D'Argenio (The Escapist) has reviewed Bedlam, too:

Skyshine's Bedlam Review - Die Historic

[...] It's a good thing that battles are so incredibly fun. They run on the same engine The Banner Saga did, with a couple tweaks. Every turn you get two action points, which can be used to either move with a unit, or attack with a unit. Your units come in several varieties, including melee tanks called frontliners, short range shot gunners called trenchers, mid-range pistol wielding gunslingers, and long range snipers called deadeyes. The movement and range of these units varies wildly. Frontliners can move clear across the map, but do very little damage, while deadeyes can move one or two spaces at best and can only attack five spaces from their position, but do four times the damage of a frontliner. As I said before, it feels a lot like a tabletop miniatures game, where you do your best to position your enemy in such a way that you can spend double turns attacking with your most powerful units. It's simple at core, but individual interactions are varied and intricate.

Thanks Eye!






More information.

 

[domein]

They got confused what is hard vs what is unfair. Player agency in this game is somewhat below comfortable level.

 

[screeg]

Lots (and lots, and lots) of moaning about this one online, mostly that the combat is so unfair. Here's a warning for people thinking about buying:

If you cannot ever possibly conceive of a game where one of your 16 starting rookie units might get killed, despite your every attempt to save every single one of them!!, the game isn't for you. Honestly, you'd think the units in the dozer were actual family members.

There's even an Easy mode which is, in fact, easy! So easy I beat the game the first time I played on Easy, and I do not brag about my strategy abilities.

And they're talking about making Easy mode EVEN EASIER! What's next, Dragon Age Mode?

 

[Kordanor]

Yeah...don't get the whining about the difficulty either.
Easy mode however excludes all the boss fights. So it's basically like building up your stuff and then do nothing with it.
Or to compare it with FTL again...as if you can fly to the last sector but don't fight against the boss, which is the final test. As in ftl you can just rush through to the ending. It works fine, but you will die at that point when the final test is happening.
It's probably even easy to get to that point on hard difficulty.

I played on "normal" and found it rather easy as mentioned on the other thread. Made it to the very last boss fight on my first attempt.

But what I don't like about the difficulty setting itself is that they cripple you with the hard difficulty. More Enemies? Fine. Less resources? Fine.
But don't limit my friggin interface! I don't get why anyone would want that...it's like playing a shooter without crosshairs and iron sights.
So I am stuck with the normal difficulty.

 

[domein]

Very hard mode - your computer randomly reboots