Devilated is a game with mountains of violence and hordes of demons hell-bent on preventing your escape.
Developed by Trunka and published by Neon Doctrine, Devilated is a gory, first-person, action indie RPG that will have you slowing time and blasting monsters and demons while the ultraviolence will have you swimming in buckets of blood and gore.
However, before you can massacre your way out of the mysterious Labyrinth, you’ll have to survive the tutorial, where you’ll get a fairly decent introduction to the game’s mechanics. Tutorials aren’t always fun, but you’ll need to pay attention to get the hang of Devilated, or at least if you want to be able to hack and slash your way to freedom.
Starting in Devilated, you’re greeted with a comic-style cinematic that explains your character’s story about being trapped, tortured, and nearly beaten to death. It also explains your only goal in the game: find a way out of what seems to be an ancient labyrinth.
Once the Devilated’s cinematic is over, you start your journey in a cell surrounded by corpses. Some of them are chained to the walls and ceilings, while others are sprawled out on the ground. You’ll start off with no weapons, and you only have your bare fists at first. Your first thought will be to jump out, but your jump isn’t quite as high as you’d like it to be, so your next best bet is the watery hole in the ground to get to the next part of your escape.
Now that you’re underwater, you’ll be introduced to your first mechanics involving a wall indicated with yellow, showing that you can kick through it as a destroyable obstacle. Right after that, you’ll need to make a point of searching every room you’re in because you never know what you might find. In this case, you’ll find your first weapon, a sword called Gladio. This does remove the ability to kick down walls, and you’ll instead get to use your new weapon to destroy everything in your path. This also opens up a more fast-paced hack-and-slash gameplay and gives you a lot more firepower, too.
With your sword in hand, you’ll eventually find grenades and a handgun, giving you the option of going for ranged fire as well. Once again, after a quick guide on how to use them, you’ll be ready to raise hell using either melee or ranged attacks. However, you’ll nothing lasts forever, and you’ll need ammo. Luckily, you can use nearby corpses as shields, and those same corpses will also restock your ammo for the various other guns you’ll pick up as you go.
With that out of the way, it’ll be time for your introduction to Jakob, the merchant. He doesn’t really have a story or much to say, but he’ll be one of your more frequent stops to buy new weapons, health and durability upgrades, along with repairs and blessings from Satan that come in the form of objects. Jakob’s shop does refresh after a set time, so there’s almost always something new to buy, such as different weapons and items. Luckily, buying new weapons doesn’t have to be a guessing game; hovering over them will show you more details about them along with a comparison of your current loadout.
Last but not least, you’ll come across devil statues every now and then. These statues serve as save points, but they shatter upon use. Once you have made your first save, the next step will be to face some evil fish and learn about your first ability, slowing down time. Not all obstacles can be destroyed, and you’ll need to slow time to slip past the more dead things, such as spinning blades. This is probably your most useful ability because all it takes is just one touch on those blades, and your run is instantly over, forcing you to restart at the last statue you saved.
After having completed the tutorial in Devilated, the real battle to escape begins with you going up against hordes of enemies with their own unique fighting styles and skills. You’ll need to scour the Labyrinth for keys to unlock new paths and find doors that will take you to new lands and different parts of the Labyrinth. There are 30 levels and 30 bosses standing in your way to the following sections on your journey to escape this hellscape; though, how desperate or filled with rage are you, and is it enough to win the game’s challenges?
The enemies in Devilated have unique designs, abilities, and even fighting styles. Some enemies will charge right at you, while others will shoot from a distance. When noticed by enemies or heard by them, if they are far away, they will jump and run too close the distance, so make it best to make sure to shoot them before they get too close, or you will find yourself surrounded and maybe even severely outmatched.
As for the gameplay, moving around and dashing, along with shooting and slashing, is smooth. Devilated also features a mechanic that became really popular during the peak of the Devil May Cry series, otherwise known as the style ratings. Triggering this will require you to switch between your different weapons to keep raising your rating while you fight.
The more variation you add your attacks and weapons, the higher your rating will be, though that’s not all there is to this. Triggering this mechanic will also initiate background music to try and keep you interested in raising your rating. You’ll have to maintain your rating if you want to keep the music going. However, this is easier said than done, as with some levels in the game, there aren’t always enough enemies to keep the rank going; this will, in turn, cut the music short.
Changing weapons on the fly can get a bit disorientating as you will have to mix slashing and shooting while using skills all at the same time. This means that starting the ranking mechanic can become risky when it comes to dealing with the various fighting styles you’ll need to deal with. Though at the same time, that risk is rewarded with epic music and, of course, the satisfaction of slaughtering anything in your way.
The music, although heavy metal and pretty good when active, can get a bit frustrating if cut short due to not being able to keep your kill streak going. The levels and environmental designs are good, and it looks like they took a lot of inspiration from the Serious Sam games. They’ll also change themes as you progress, which keeps things interesting for the most part.
While Devilated is somewhat voiced, the voice acting is a mixture of appropriately put commentary when killing monsters and a little cringe or cliche at times when movie quotes such as “Here’s Johnny” get drizzled in between. The voice acting is brilliantly done with it accommodating for gameplay and enemy encounters along with takedowns, and the cliche tropes aren’t as welcome.
Overall, Devilated is a fun first-person shooter with tons of violence and gore that will keep you busy for hours as you massacre hordes of unique monsters and demons in your attempt to escape a hellish labyrinth with unique levels, weapons, and bosses. The game is worth giving a shot but is not for the faint of heart or the easily annoyed.
