With the new oldschool FPS wave on the rise, it’s nice to see as many good attempts at the genre as there are. My biggest trouble with looking at these games, however, is due to how quickly the revival peaked with the astonishing DUSK in late 2018. And given that AMID EVIL is published by the same team at New Blood Interactive and also features the soundtrack by Andrew Hulshult, avoiding comparisons is pretty much impossible. It’s good then that this title has its own unique set of strengths to distinguish itself.
While DUSK is in many ways a mix of Quake and Blood, AMID EVIL can be described as a mix of Heretic/Hexen and Painkiller. It features a dark fantasy theme for the setting with magic used instead of typical ammo, with lots of nods towards what you had in the Heretic/Hexen titles. But at the same time, the game has two elements that made Painkiller memorable as well. For one, there’s a magic mace that shoots ice, which satisfyingly impales enemies to walls upon kill (even if there’re no ragdoll physics here). And in addition, enemies drop souls upon death and collecting those fills up a special soul power meter. When the meter is full you can activate a special mode in which all weapons become ridiculously overpowered and you can keep extending the mode by collecting more souls during the run of the mode. Interestingly, other than this, there are no alternative fire modes for weapons.
Oh, but we need to talk about weapons themselves. A staff that shoots planets and stars, a trident that explodes enemies if you keep shocking them after they died, a magic sword that shoots energy, some weird ancient device that disintegrates enemies and, when in soul mode, shoots tiny black holes. Not every weapon is as creative and their usefulness isn’t as well thought out as you’d hope, but what’s there is genuinely inventive and fun.
And this inventive variety covers the level selection as well. While each world in the game only features a few levels, including a boss level, every single one of these worlds is different. All of them feature their own visual design, their own gimmicks and a completely unique set of enemies. That’s right – every single world looks, sounds, feels and plays at least differently, even if the basics are the same. That’s where the usefulness of weapons comes into questions – in some worlds one particular weapon might be way too good to switch to anything else, yet in others this same weapon might not be useful at all.
With all of this variety and creative designs it’s almost weird to acknowledge that the game still manages to get really tiring by the end. Since you can play most of the worlds in any order, your pace through most of the game might differ. And differ it will, since some of the worlds feel rather frustrating and tedious to get through, while some feel really fun and exciting. What’s unfortunate, is that the very last world that you must go through in every playthrough is so utterly boring to play. Visually it’s amazing, with bizarre otherworldly geometry and impossible shapes, yet at the same time it has some of the worst selection of enemies and encounter designs. It doesn’t ruin the whole experience, but it certainly leaves a bad taste.
Despite that, the game is still worth checking out. It’s varied, at times inventive, with really beautiful levels (and the game will add ray tracing support at a later date), with a great soundtrack and overall fun weapons and enemies to use them on. I can’t call it an instant classic like DUSK, and I did get annoyed with it by the end. But I still enjoyed my time with AMID EVIL and you might as well.