Bedlan is a first-person shooter in which you play as Heather Quinn or known as “Athena” as you are stuck in the video game world and you are trying to get out from the video game world. If anything the game is aimed at making fun of game from the 90’s as you are stuck in one.
AS THE GAME IS MATURE RATED WE DID NOT PLAY TESTED THE GAME WITH ANY OF OUR YOUNGER GAMERS FOR THIS REVIEW.
General Gameplay
As Game Visuals goes, it is meant to poke fun at games from the 90’s from the graphic style to character design and even the game environment. There is a lot of pixels to go around and if you think of how games looked in the 90’s then you will have a better idea on what the game looks like. In our play testing, we saw lots of death animation as well as lots of pixelated character deaths (in a way that you would see in a older Doom game from that era) For gamers in your gaming family the colors are muted and because of such it makes it harder to see both red and green in the game, so if you are playing the game you will need to adjust your gaming monitor or SMART TV to see the colors better. Audio dialog in the game is a spoken one and with such there is a lot of curse words used in the game. The main character is Scottish, so it is hard to understand her when she is speaking unless you have subtitles on, also as the game other voice acting is horrible so bad that it is forgettable when playing the game. As the game is making fun of 90’s era games it is the same with the sound. Things that you would hear in 90’s era games are in this game but other than the language we did not hear anything offensive. The game is in 5.1 surround sound but because of the nature of the game you will not hear it much. Also, you can use a gaming headset but honestly most of our gamers that were testing the game found it very annoying to use one for a game like this. The Controls were very easy to get used to. The controls are design for anyone to pick up and play the game as there were again designed in the 90’s era style. In our play testing we did not notice any issues with the default control style and all our gaming family members were able to play the game without any trouble. For PC gamers we would recommend using a mouse and keyboard as it will give you a slightly more accurate aim in the game. For console gamers you should be ok using the standard controller.
“One of the funny and charming things about the game is the humor and how it makes fun of 90’s games, but that charm runs dry very quickly”
Family Friendly
This is a tale of two different games. In one hand the game is funny as the dialog in the game is written to poke fun at gaming and gamers in the 90’s, however in the other as the game is designed to be a dated shooter, it comes off with the same glitches, bugs and other technical things that would break the fun in the game. Bedlam gets boring really fast; the game weapons are designed to be more around what you would see in 90’s era games but they lack versatilely in choices. Levels can be a good trip down memory lane but get boring fast and as there are different levels there is nothing different to do in each one other than get to point A Then B, rinse, wash, and repeat. I can really appreciate where the developers were going with the game but in a already over saturated market of first person shooters, it is best to either wait for a clearance sale or even rent this game. Our gaming family got bored of the game quick and lost all but their attention of the game. Our older game got a chuckle from some of the humor where our late teen gamers did not get it at all. Being as a M rated game, we tested the game with our older special needs gamers and they also got bored of the game very quickly, it was not because of the content, but because simply that they did not understand the retro look and feel of the game. Also in our play through we did notice a lot of hit detection in the game was way off. Sniper shots that were headshots were not registering and this cause frustration for a lot of our gamers, again not sure if this was meant to be in the game on purpose or just a coding error.
Closing
In the end Bedlam is a trip down memory lane, not a great trip but a trip. Sharp and funny dialog cannot save this game, best to either wait for a sale or rent this game.
