Ashes is a Post-apocalypse themed total conversion for the GZDoom engine. It combines old school build style level design and Doom style action with a twist of Stalker and Fallout.
Ashes, made by Vostyok, ReformedJoe, TDG, Retromuffin and of course Primeval, is a doom-based indie game that draws inspiration from all sorts of post-apocaliptic classics, from Escape from New York and Mad Max, to Fallout, Metro and Stalker, but it *does not* simply wear its inspirations on its sleeve while remaining largely derivative, it draws the best from them while thriving in its own ways.
It surprised me how much the story and setting of Ashes drew me in, I came in for the (quite enjoyable) scavenging experience, and got involved in a mysterious, suspenseful and well crafted tale, that has left me combing the internet for discussion and speculation, and also wanting to play the game again immediately after I beat it. If that isn't a sign of an addictive game, I do not know what is haha.
Gameplay is quite solid, it's a modern "doom clone" or "boomershooter" experience, with modern mechanics such as reloading, inventory management and weapon upgrades, although no ability to aim down sights, except for a select few mid-game sniper weapons, there were some situations were I wished I could zoom in a bit more, so I crafted a keybind to swap between an FOV of 120 and 70, so that I could aim a bit better at enemies that were at extreme ranges. If I could make a request to the dev team for their upcoming projects, this would be it, a built-in zoom key for when you're aiming at punks and gasbags across the large cityscapes.
The art style of Ashes is iconic, its world feels quite lived in, or rather, it feels like it was lived in decades ago, before everyone's lives were interrupted by the apocalypse, and now all that remains is an urban corpse, carefully cannibalized by its new inhabitants.
I want to make special mention of the astonishing sound design and Primeval's work with the soundtrack, these factors, combined with the lighting work and the clever and considered pacing, made this a very special experience, it is wild to me how the soundtrack and ambience can make you feel like you are the most dangerous thing in the wasteland in one moment, and then in the next one, smoothly transition into making you feel like you are stuck in a dimly lit bunker, with the *actual* most dangerous thing in the wasteland.
Ashes makes you the hunter, and it makes you the prey, and it's immensely compelling in both of these moments. This sense of empowerment diluted in the dread you are immersed in, gives the game a sense of exciting "realism", relative to your character's capabilities, you're carying a one man army's arsenal, but will it be enough for what you'll find down that corridor with the flickering lights?
Bit of a tip for anyone having problems with the game's motorcycle (yes, there is a motorcycle!), I used a keybind to alter the game's speed with the command i_timescale and a value like 0.6 or 0.7, to improve my ability to respond to the changes in the road, and that made the driving a much more enjoyable experience, things happen too fast while you're blazing down the roads (and the... non-roads) but if you got a bit more time to think and drift around corners (preferably running over enemies in the process), the bike is actually pretty fun.
If you weren't already downloading Ashes while reading this, then you should do it now, playing this game is something I guarantee you will not regret!
It was best mod I played for DOOM.
I am big fan of original Fallout (1,2,new vegas), not that bethesda crap) and this is like playing fallout 1 again.
Big thanks to authors and I would be very happy to contribute or donate somehow...
I liked 2063 quite a bit, then experienced the absolutely insane jump in quality of Afterglow.
Best singleplayer FPS i played in a while. Revisited my ancient account just to leave this review out of obligation.
Many many times i said to myself "i would've bought this is if it shipped like this until now" and was greeted by many more hours of solid levels and worldbuilding after that.
If you like Metro or more specifically 80's madmax and escape from new york knockoff b-movies. No other game I've played captures that vibe like this one.
A stellar game, recommended.
Really damn good, more or less
Incredible game, the lore is amazing and quite deep, a literal AAA game in the making.
not a full 10 because of some bugs with dialogue and elevators in the game, but otherwise PERFECT.
Very good mod
I've played a lot of first person shooter games, a lot of Doom mods, this is among the most detailed that I've played.
Episode 1 alone is excellent, the pacing is beuatiful, the gunplay is very tense and with some extra mods such as the "bolognese mod" it can get really brutal which I personally really like.
Throughout the level design was excellent in the first episode pretty much in every level, there were some annoyances here and there, particularly one that had to do with a very strange jumping puzzle of sorts that took me a couple of tries and seemed to be completely arbitrary.
There were also some segments that were fairly story driven, mainly two hub areas that serve to provide you with some context, world building, and some cool supplies, upgrades and such, I appreciate these segments a bit, but sometimes I felt as if they wore out their welcome and hurt the pacing a bit.
There was also a level in which you mostly ride your bike through some really open spaces, this level in particular was quite fun but it also left me with a bit of a bitersweet feel to the whole thing, where I just appreciated the more focused "boots to the ground" type of experience.
9/10
The expansion "Dead man walking" has a really cool concept, the levels are sequential like in episode 1, it isn't a continuation to the story of the first episode, but it has a really cool premise, however, the game is a lot more difficult and feels much more poorly balanced difficulty wise than the first episode did, there just aren't as many ammo or health pickups, plus the level design pails in comparison as well.
The level design in the expansion had a very big issue when it remind me a lot to Jedi Outcast, in the sense that the level design hid a lot of the paths to progress in similarly doors right next to similar looking windows that you can't interact with for example.
I just felt as if the challenge in progressing through the levels here, had more to do with missing levers and small pathways, rather than with actually paying attention to the intuitive level design, just letting the complexity of the level guide you so to speak.
Similarly, the gunplay felt more frustrating than tense because of the lack of balancing in the resources and the fact that enemies kept getting spawned above me or behind me, something that was really annoying.
Even then though, most of these issues could be ironed out thanks to the settings present in Zdoom, and the support that Ashes has for other more "universal" mods.
8/10
Episode 2 is where I'm really torn. It falls -i feel-, in the same trap that a lot of sequels for a lot of art really do, and that is in the ambition.
Episode 2 is not a sequential progression, so to speak, instead it resorts to create a massive map divided in subsects, each with its own colored card and keys. The game is designed as such so that you, the player, has to backtrack to a lot of different locations in order to progress.
The issue with this is two things for me; first, the game looses the fantastic pacing from the first episode, doom and shooters in general are designed to progress, unless you're playing something like Metroid Prime (which isn't really a shooter) therefore here I felt as if I wasn't really progressing most of the times, worst of all, unless you're to enable the respawning monsters option in Zdoom, you'll have to walk around some pretty large areas with nothing to do other than to find the crevice or lever you missed. Which brings me to my second issue...
The level design is more akin to "Dead Man Walking" which means most of the challenge in traversing the levels has to do with hidden levers, hidden pathways, hidden ventilation shafts, etc. This can become really annoying when you miss just a tiny crevice just because you decided to mantain the pacing of a game/engine like the from Doom.
It's a shame though, because this episode adds some prety cool things, there's not that much monster variety, as a matter of fact; you're fighting most enemies from the last episode, but at least the dev added a wonderful feature in the form of a weapon upgrade bench system.
Ashes is clearly a game that borrows a lot from The Last of Us, it might not be clear to some, mainly because that's such a story driven and fairly different experience to any shooter, but the references are there. They're in the secrets of the game, they're in the tension of the combat, they're in heavy emphasis in dialog, work benches that upgrade your weapons, fungi that you can find scattered everywhere, etc.
This is a title that borrows a lot from post-apocalyptic films and games, which is pretty cool, however, because of the more ambitious and open nature of the second episode I feel as if the focus even in these aspects gets lost for the most part.
The levels are beautiful and breeming with detail but the design suffers quite a bit in comparison to the first episode and even to "Dead Man Walking", it's just not as intutitive nor as
incredible total conversion in everyway and works perfectly with the bolognese gore mod!
Tight, stylish, visceral, sometimes scary high-octane campaign with lots of fun references and jokes. Do I need to say more?
[PROS]:
- exceptional soundtrack
- exceptional level design
- exceptional atmosphere
- exceptional artwork (environment/weapon/npc/mutants)
- exceptional story so far (if you can call it that, since it's only 1st episode)
- exceptional gameplay/combat/exploration
[CONS]:
- the "information" button does absolutely nothing (using information on an item just mentions its name and quantity - which already apears when i'm selecting it in my toolbelt)
- ladders are pure cancer (1.There is no way to go down 2.You can easily slide off them and 3. Worst part is that the moment you take your finger off the climb button, you fall off)
- nasty drag/friction between PC and walls, making action packed scenes a real frustration when i get caught in the sticky walls
- the sun lamp is already ultra nerfed since you can only wield 1 handed weapons with it. Its been really frustrating for me to manage my battery - i found it harder managing the battery than the ammo LOL
- i think the difficulty needs some rework (for my first playthrough i chose survival and i never used any of the super stims like purge,brute or regen except for just testing them to see what they do. I also finished the game with 1000+ money and almost full 9mm ammo and shells)