Project Warlock 2 Demo

[Jello]

I haven't seen anything about this, and I did a search and nothing came up. And I missed it myself, but apparently the demo for Project Warlock 2 came out last month on Steam, had an update on the 25th, and I just tried it out Tuesday night. I'm wondering if anyone else has, and what you thought of it.

 

I realize the original was kind of a niche title, flat level design, enemies that only faced one way, it was more Wolfenstein evolved than anything. And I'll admit it took me a little bit to get into it. But now it's one of my favorite of the new wave of retro shooters. It is just so immensely satisfying to destroy things in that game, and the beautiful, lovingly crafted pixel art on the enemies makes it all the better. It's still a basic game, but with the number of weapons, varied environments, and a pretty generous bestiary, I enjoyed it. Actually just finished it on hard for the first time tonight, only died once... due to a goddamn lava pit. Anyway.

 

I'm really impressed with the demo, the addition of verticality to the levels excites me, the combat is fast and furious and filled with blood, and the demo level is absolutely vast compared to the levels in the original. Supposedly the levels in 2 are supposed to be about the size of 3-5 of the longer levels in the original game; with multiple paths through each level. It took me about 30-40 minutes to get through it the first time. And there's supposed to be three different characters with three unique campaigns, weapon and spell sets, and monster rosters. 

 

And one thing that I was really happy about: no more wall humping to find secrets. The secrets are now found via environmental clues, such as a brick sticking out of the wall that you have to press, a switch in an out of the way area you have to shoot. It reminds me more of finding secrets in Quake, as opposed to Wolfenstein. 

 

The only thing I'm not quite sold on is how the enemies are designed. They have eight sides to them now, so they're not facing you all the time, but they're 3D models turned into sprites instead of handcrafted sprite art. So they do look rather muddy compared to the original enemies, and I hope they get cleaned up before release. But again, this is a demo, the early access isn't even available yet, so things can change. And it's kind of hard to really care when you're just blasting them into piles of bloody chunks.

 

The demo is kind of limited, it's one level, albeit a long one, you get three weapons, an automatic rifle, double barrel shotgun, and a claymore, and one "skill", which is the akimbo. Which is kind of neat, you use it with a weapon equipped, either the rifle or the shotgun, and you get two of them. It lasts for 30 seconds, you can shut it off whenever you want, and then it has a cooldown time based on how long you used it. So you can turn it on whenever you want; thought it was kind of neat that it sticks with you like that.

 

All in all, I'm really excited about it, it took what Project Warlock did, and made it better. It feels much faster paced, movement is more fluid, hell, you can even jump now. And yes, people are complaining about the reload on the rifle, and the recoil, and the fact that there is locational damage on enemies now. 200% damage for headshots, 70% for leg shots. There's one enemy in the demo, Boney, a skeleton with a double barrel that has armor on his legs, so it really reduces damage. Three shots to the head with the rifle kills him though. So yes, you do have to aim now. Which I'm fine with.

 

Anyway, just curious if anyone else has tried it out. I'm actually excited for this game, and I haven't been really excited for a game in a long time. I've played through it four times now; although there's still one damn secret I can't find. It seems like they're doing everything right though, even in a beta, pre-early access demo. Oh, and Steam says the download is 4GB, the download is 1.9GB, but yeah... it does extract to 4GB, for the space conscious among you.

[hybridial]

The demo itself I tried but was a bit too rough and doesn't have the controller support I would need to really play it, but I liked very much what I saw. I thought the first one was neat but dragged down by the randomly generated flat levels. It proved the creator was no slouch though. 

 

The fact they're going for handcrafted levels for 2 clearly makes it look MUCH better and it's one of the upcoming FPSes I'm really looking forward too. 

[Jello]

Glad you're looking forward to it as well, it is a bit rough right now, but that's to be expected at this stage.

 

But the levels in the first one weren't randomly generated.

Edited September 9, 2021 by Jello

[hybridial]

39 minutes ago, Jello said:

But the levels in the first one weren't randomly generated.

 

They weren't? Okay I must have got the wrong end of the stick there somehow.

 

Still overall not the biggest fan of the strict Wolfenstein 3D approach. 

[Jello]

14 minutes ago, hybridial said:

 

They weren't? Okay I must have got the wrong end of the stick there somehow.

 

Still overall not the biggest fan of the strict Wolfenstein 3D approach. 

Yeah I'm not sure where the idea that they were procedurally generated started, but they were all made by hand. You're not alone in that assumption. Maybe because it had a lives system, and on the hardest difficulty you only get one life and you have to restart upon death, so it was called a rogue-like. Not sure if that's where it came from.

 

But yeah, I get that. I wasn't a huge fan of it at first, but the level design does get better after the first episode. The fun weapons and enemies helped, but I can see how the flat levels can be a turn off.

 

And that's one of the big reasons I'm excited for PW 2, the verticality is being hyped, and it makes a world of difference even just from the demo. I just had fun playing it, which there aren't a whole lot of games that I can say that about anymore.

Edited September 9, 2021 by Jello

[hybridial]

I will say that finding out the levels aren't randomly generated makes me fine with the idea of going back again and playing it to finish it. I got pretty far, second last episode, and the Antarctica episode was really great especially with the music. I should probably finish it at least once, but... I'm guessing once Warlock 2 is out I'll quickly forget it exists. 

[Jello]

I'd say it's worth a playthrough. I've played far worse games. Just make sure you get the supersonic rocket upgrade for the rocket launcher and the ghost perk before the boss of the industrial episode.

Edited September 9, 2021 by Jello

[Beginner]

I've tried the demo and it actually got me interested to see what they would pull off for the final release. Verticality is actually used for playable area instead of just decorations and marking instant death pits. Not sure if powerups on demand (when off cooldown) won't be "trivialize everything" tier, but we'll see that how that'll go when the game releases. Also, I wonder whether the weapon up/sidegrade system from the first game is axed completely or just not included in the demo.

Spoiler

It's kinda funny that they've introduced headshot bonuses to a game with pin-point accurate full auto firearms.

Spoiler

Also, for some goddamn reason shooting double barrelled shotgun once, switching it to something else and back is faster than just waiting for it to get ready for the next shot normally and considerably faster than waiting for it to reload, which you will never see anyway... if you commit to switcharoo shotting.

 

[Wavy]

I haven't played Warlock 1 nor the Warlock 2 demo but it seems promising. The use of verticality is a huge plus in my book.

[Liberation]

I enjoyed the first game, nicely distilled and pretty fun. Didn't realise the demo was out for PW2, will go check that out.

[Bridgeburner56]

I'm surprised you couldn't find anything about this. Progress updates have been bouncing around on twitter for a while and it was shown at Realms Deep this year.

To me it looks like PW1 was a proof of concept/exploration of an idea and PW2 is the game they always wanted to make. I'm pretty excited for this so will definitely be checking out the demo

[Jello]

Well, ya know I don't use Twitter or really pay attention to conventions, so it was a bit of a surprise to me :) I just didn't see any posts on Doomworld about it, that's why I made the thread. I knew they were working on it, I was just kind of worried that it would end up being Project Warlock 1.5. I'm pleasantly surprised that they're going all out with it.

 

8 hours ago, Beginner said:

I've tried the demo and it actually got me interested to see what they would pull off for the final release. Verticality is actually used for playable area instead of just decorations and marking instant death pits. Not sure if powerups on demand (when off cooldown) won't be "trivialize everything" tier, but we'll see that how that'll go when the game releases. Also, I wonder whether the weapon up/sidegrade system from the first game is axed completely or just not included in the demo.

  Reveal hidden contents

It's kinda funny that they've introduced headshot bonuses to a game with pin-point accurate full auto firearms.

  Reveal hidden contents

Also, for some goddamn reason shooting double barrelled shotgun once, switching it to something else and back is faster than just waiting for it to get ready for the next shot normally and considerably faster than waiting for it to reload, which you will never see anyway... if you commit to switcharoo shotting.

 

As for the upgrades, they're still in the game, they just didn't put them in the demo. Either it's not fully fleshed out yet, or they didn't want to ruin any surprises. I'm pretty sure I read that, including upgrades, they're planning on having 70 weapons. So they're still in, as well as spells.

 

As far as pinpoint automatic weapons, the rifle does have recoil and spread with sustained fire, although it is pretty damn accurate if you're only firing 2 or 3 rounds at a time. And yeah, there's really no reason you should ever see the reload animation unless you really want to. I think it's fun emptying a mag, switching to the shotgun, firing off two rounds, switching to claymore and cutting some guys in half, switching back to rifle. It just feels very fluid when you get the hang of it.

Edited September 9, 2021 by Jello

[Beginner]

20 hours ago, Jello said:

And yeah, there's really no reason you should ever see the reload animation unless you really want to. I think it's fun emptying a mag, switching to the shotgun, firing off two rounds, switching to claymore and cutting some guys in half, switching back to rifle. It just feels very fluid when you get the hang of it.

In my post I referred specifically to shooting like this. If my memory isn't fucking with me, this shit is also present in original game.