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“Do you have a ping of 1000 or something,” my opponent asked, during my inaugural bout of Straftat. Ah yes, this is it, that sense of unpleasantly intimate sheepishness. That‘s the withering late-90s chatbox scorn I’ve been missing, in this age of glossy live service multiplayer. I hid under a stairwell in order to meditate upon my response, then laboriously typed: “No, I just suck.” Right on cue, the other player tumbled into view and shredded me with an AK.
The player I met in my second match was more forgiving. “I honestly think the characters need more HP,” they said, generously. My wrists need more HP, actually. My eyes and reflexes need urgent patching.
Straftat is the work of them what did Babbdi, a melancholy Brutalist playground which Alice0 (RPS in peace) called “a bit Bernband, a bit Off-Peak, a bit freeform explore-o-platformer”. That game had terrific, haunted architecture – ponderous, gap-toothed swathes of concrete that begged to be clambered up and “broken” using such unlikely parkour tools as leaf blowers and trumpets. And so does Straftat, though it casts a wider net and seems more happy-go-lucky in its referencing.
It’s a 1v1-only shooter with no progression systems, just weapons collected from maps that are dealt out at random, from round to round. You get 25 maps in the demo, with 100 in the full release on 24th October. So far, they are all surprisingly non-throwaway. The offerings include: parsley-painted Backroom-style labyrinths (look out for the flamberge spawn, nestled in the crawlspace); vertiginous square walks with sniper rifles at either end, and miniguns perched temptingly in the middle; jumbles of unhelpfully porous gantries and teleporters. Some maps feel like chunks of city, with glowering signage and abandoned cars; others are memes fleshed out into sets, surfing the entropy at the end of history. Everything looks sordid and rundown and unliveable, and I love it all to bits.
The weapons, meanwhile, range from glocks and claymores to plasma guns whose projectiles light up the scenery, and instakill electro-cannons that slow you to a waddle. Some can be dual-wielded, others allow aiming down the sights.
The pace of combat feels quite Quakey, with close-quarter duels often consisting of frenzied sliding and jumping, but the more you prance about, the more audible you are. There’s no music, and no minimap, so bagging your prey is often a question of listening for footsteps and other, telltale noises – the beep of a mine being deployed, or the death-rattle of a weapon being collected. Is that the sawed-off shotgun you just pinched? You bastard, that’s the only gun I can actually hit anything with. Oh lawks, you’re behind me, aren’t you. Dare I stop moving and sight on a random corner, hoping against hope that you’ll blunder into view?
The feeling of pulling from a big hat of FPS levels is delicious, as is the overall aesthetic and presentation. As in Babbdi, characters all look like mouldy potato people, with a selection of dodgy beanies, police caps and pot-bellied suits that feels like quiet mockery of Team Fortress 2. The interface looks like it’s been cribbed from a 90s magazine cover demo compilation, then left in the washing machine for about 25 years.
I think this has serious legs as an FPS, providing they can muster enough players: there are no singleplayer options save a firing range, accessible while in matchmaking. Go on, try the Steam demo. I’m sure your ping is better than mine. Everybody’s ping is better than mine.