I’m a fan of the Chickering safe house.
I’m glad I unlocked it.
The fast travel is handy, but also it’s just a nice kind of place to hang out.
Throw in a bean bag and a copy of Rumours and I never want to leave.
Redfall review
But those fridges.
That large metal sink.
What did this place used to be?!
A doctor’s office?
Actually, the answer lay on a sideboard, below some voguish honeycomb shelving.
This was a cake store!
One look at the hand-drawn map on another wall all but confirmed it.
And also Yuck, obv.
Those honeycomb shelves suddenly made a lot more sense, I can tell you.
And the name - Fruit Fly - is perfect.
Oh, and ‘Fly’.
Redfall ties me in knots.
The reviews are low, the user reviews are much lower.
Phil at Xbox just apologised for the whole thing.
When that happens, I don’t mind at all.
I don’t roll my eyes or shudder.
I’m happy to return to this place, and that has to count for something.
The default controls are both sluggish and skittish, making aiming deeply unpleasant.
Games really live in their controls, and shooters doubly so.
Mantling sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t.
Sucks to be you, ladder boy!
Those baddies are a problem too.
Standard non-beastie grunts called cultists come in packs but are all hobbled by strange, often foolish AI.
Gunfights with standard enemies are something I blow through without trying to think too much.
They’re annoying to fight, but I have stopped noticing how they’re annoying.
Vampires need to be downed and then staked, or they revive.
Once they’ve died (is that the right term for vampires?
), they often leave little piles of ash for you to hunt through for special loot.
Like I said, none of this stuff makes the game unplayable.
(Classes will be a reason to return once the game is fixed, BTW.
Arkane made its name with immersive sims, and some of that DNA has been preserved.
There are loads of beautifully written notes and books and articles and all that jazz to read.
Levels will give you a wide range of ways to approach them.
(If you could get to work through a door or through a vent: welcome!
You’re in an immersive sim!)
That wouldn’t matter so much but I don’t think Redfall has fully worked this out either.
Let’s faux-banter through The Division for 10 idle minutes with everyone hitting their marks!
And so this is a co-op shooter I’ve had the most consistent fun with playing single-player.
How strange, though: my best moments in Redfall have all been soloing.
It’s a shame to have to get through all those issues.
Because deep down, I have enjoyed my time here and I want to try and understand why.
By most metrics, Redfall still needs a lot of work.
And yet I feel very fond of it.
A lot of this is down to the world.
There are multiple layers to this place too, the fruit and the fruit fly.
There’s a covered bridge!
There’s a beautifully preserved movie theatre!
The second hub area is a maritime museum!
All of these places are lovely to poke about in even before they’ve had missions strung through them.
But they also have a dual nature - the kind of thing Arkane is so good at.
See you on the beach later for a bowl of expensive white stuff with rosemary in it.
What to make of all this?
And Bradbury is doubly relevant here, actually.
His space ships and shambling horrors never really add up to much.
But as an act of seeing, an act of memory, I’ve found it really generous.
Here is a town, right down to its warp and weft.
Down to its clutter and details.
And as such, Arkane’s made something I value.
