Developer: Trepang Studios
Publisher: Team 17
Platform: PS5, PC, Xbox Series X/S
Tested on: PC
Trepang2 – Review
Over the last few decades, games evolved and most of them became more realistic. While for many genres this is a good thing, one can only long for the old days when shooters were fast-paced and all about shooting and blowing stuff up. Luckily Trepang Studios teamed up with Team17 to bring a large slice of nostalgia in a fresh game that will give all the adrenaline junkies a wide smile from start to finish. Trepang2 is all about the old-school cool without all the online mess mixed into it. In this game, it’s just you and your virtual buddies kicking ass.
Story
The game starts rather cryptic with a Special Forces operative sneaking into a hidden facility. You see him taking out some security guards and freeing a prisoner. It turns out that you are the person who is held underground and now you must escape this facility as it is now slowly getting swarmed by armed soldiers investigating the break-in. During your escape, you are able to find some intel about the base and your background. This reveals that you are an ex-soldier with serious memory loss and are named subject 106.
Once you make it outside, you are greeted by a helicopter that is just dropping off new Special Forces to secure the building. When you get on, you get debriefed by the pilot and are welcomed back to the organization. This is the start of your new career as a Special Operative that is tasked to uncover the secrets of a large-scale company. This organization named Horizon is accused of some very malicious practices. Not only does Horizon have plenty of mercenaries on their payroll to keep intruders out, but they are also based all around the world thanks to their various experiments. The story is quite long and includes various side missions so you are sure to have quite a lengthy campaign.
Graphics
Visually the game is a true masterpiece. The game was designed with old-school shooters in mind, so you can blow soldiers and monsters to many pieces and really leave a mark on the map. Shooting someone gives them a nice bloody bullet hole and the design team took close attention to details that every spent casing, magazine, and shell can be found on the ground after a gunfight. Another big bonus point is that the game runs fantastic on a wide range of systems. Even on higher graphical settings, the frame rate stays very stable and there were only rare moments of frame drops in areas with intense action.
Sound
Just like the graphics, the sound department received equal loving treatment. It all begins with the nice voice acting and the different intonations set by the various characters. Your team sounds cheerful in the base and motivated during missions but you can truly hear the fear in their voice when they are cornered or outnumbered. Then you have the bosses that all come across as quite intimidating, especially the later higher-ranked specialists.
During action-packed sequences, there will be a strong rock soundtrack playing that motivates you to find and destroy all who oppose you. Honestly, a shooter wouldn’t sound right with bland gun sounds. In Trepang2 these are truly carefully crafted to make all the weapons sound like their real-life counterparts, from the muzzle sounds when bullets are fired to all the small mechanical sounds when manipulating your gun.
Gameplay
Trepang2 is a First Person Shooter that takes close inspiration from the high-octane shooters of the 90s, with some new-school elements. Many months ago an initial demo was released to showcase the engine of Trepang2, hyping up quite a lot of players. The gameplay felt smooth and refreshing while also giving mind-blowing action. Upon starting a new game you get to select a difficulty which you can later always adjust if wanted. In easy mode, enemies take longer to spot you and deal less damage while on higher difficulties they are quite relentless and you cannot take too many hits before perishing. Completing levels on a higher difficulty will reward the player with new clothing items and cheats that will affect the gameplay.
During your first mission, you get a short tutorial on how to utilize stealth mechanics as well as your first real combat experience. You have a few special abilities in the form of Focus and Cloak. Focus slows down time making it much easier to dodge incoming fire and grenades and it also allows you to get those headshots in. Cloak is great on higher difficulties where stealth is key and you need to get out of a pinch when regular stealth just isn’t cutting it. When sneaking fails, you can always just slide into your enemy to stun them and grab them as a human shield. Bonus points if that person is holding a riot shield because This will provide some extra needed protection.
A shooter is all about the weapons and gunplay and this all feels perfectly balanced in Trepang2. In the beginning, you only have a pistol and an SMG but later you’ll find weapons like assault rifles, DMRs, grenade launchers, shotguns, and many more. Each weapon also allows for various customization options that make it stealthier or deadlier but you’ll have to find the weapon parts in the world or steal an already modified gun from an enemy. If one gun isn’t enough for you, then you can look forward to getting a firepower upgrade in a later mission where you get the ability to dual-wield weapons. Literally every weapon can be dual-wielded, and let’s be honest, nothing beats holding two shotguns and laying down an infinite spray of incendiary buckshot to clear hordes of monsters, soldiers, and cultists.
The campaign takes you through the story of the fight against Horizon and putting a halt to them before they ruin the world with their crazy experiments. At first, it might seem as if there aren’t a lot of missions but you unlock more as time progresses, including various side missions that give some extra details to the story. Each mission follows a similar template, you go to a location to clear an objective, fight a high-value target that acts as a mini-boss, and end the level with a strong end boss fight before extracting via helicopter. The boss fights are well balanced with mini-bosses having the same health as regular units but having a cunning AI while the end bosses have increased health and damage but always come with a certain weakness.
Conclusion
Trepang2 is probably the best shooter that we have played this year. The overall quality of this title exceeds our expectations because it feels amazing in every aspect. Visually it is highly pleasing to blow your enemies into little pieces and see the bullets, casings, and body parts fly around with a stream of blood accompanying them to their final resting spot. The high quality of the sound effects from the action, mixed with the great voice acting and inspiring music makes it a true action-packed experience. Overall, it was difficult to find anything wrong with this game and therefore we decided to give it the score it deserves.
Related Items
1 Comment
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
[…] had quite some good things to say about Trepang2 back in August, even giving it a perfect score of 10/10. For people who didn’t get a chance to […]