Scathe Hands-On Preview: DOOM-ing the Forces of Hell

ign.com:

Hey, have you heard of a game where you play a super soldier that goes to Hell to kill everything that moves? One that involves swapping exotic weapons to deal with the ever-changing challenges that a persistent horde of twisted fleshy mutant hellions provide? Well, Scathe isn’t Doom exactly. It tries its best, but very much lacks the hand-crafted gun puzzle arenas and air-tight weapon balancing that turned first-person demon-slaying on its head for at least the past seven-ish years. But what it lacks in polish, momentum, and wit it replaces with some interesting but obtuse dungeon crawling and maybe its biggest standout feature - co-op.

It may not be completely fair to compare Scathe so directly to Doom. From a distance, the similarities are obvious, but a couple of minutes with Scathe and it was clear that I was playing a game with an entirely different approach to the more famous first-person Hell shooter. Whereas id’s signature game is designed around you being an unstoppable force in perpetual forward motion, Damage State’s take requires a more staid hand, as it’s the enemies that were running me down. They spawn aggressively, with ranged attackers filling the zone with projectiles akin to a bullet hell shooter like Ikaruga or Cuphead, and melee troops charging directly at me or ambushing me from behind or around corners.

Freezing to line up shots was a death sentence, but instead of charging through the enemies like a Doomguy possessed, Scathe requires a much higher regard for personal safety. Health can only be reliably gained back by picking up shiny orange health juice sprinkled across any given room and can be in limited supply. Many of my engagements with the enemy involved strafing oncoming fire, strategically