Redout: Space Assault Review (PC)

With a screen filled with big magenta balls of enemy fire, I duck into a corner of my screen and rely on missiles to try and take out enemy drones. That’s when fighters drop into the picture, firing their own long-range guided rockets, which forces me into a series of barrel rolls, which successfully evade all but one. But my shields are now low and some big turret yellow fire takes out the rest and my ship is quickly destroyed. Should I just retry this engagement or is it a better idea to invest in some upgrades before launching into battle again?

Redout: Space Assault is, as the name implies, a space-based action game developed and published by 34BigThings. I played the title on the PC (via Steam), but it is also available on the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch. The entire experience was initially launched for mobile phones.

Gamers will inhabit the virtual skin of Leon, a hot-shot pilot who gets the best out of some futuristic hardware. He works for a corporation and needs to first battle enemies who threaten its massive base on Mars. Pirates seem like the biggest problem early on but as the missions progress, a few narrative twists reveal themselves. There’s nothing new here (in terms of space-based pilot stories that have one big revelation that changes things) but the writing is solid is not engaging and, after all, the game is focused on the mechanics to push players forward.

+4more

Redout: Space Assault is mostly an on-rails bullet hell shooter. What this means is that players have limited control over their strike craft, relying on barrel rolls and quick darting from one side of the screen to the other to avoid enemy fire. At the same time, a main weapon system and missiles are used to take out the attackers. At all times it’s more important to make sure that you are not getting hit rather than to destroy incoming targets. But kills are needed because they give players more resources.

These, together with those obtained from objectives, allow the player to the capabilities of his ship in four categories (cards can also boost certain abilities). I found that missiles and shields are the most important, especially as the number of enemies increases, as does the amount of fire they can direct towards the player.

Redout: Space Assault also has some missions where the rails are abandoned and ships get to roam around unimpeded. These are built around exploration, asking gamers to find something among asteroids and space structures. It’s good to have this kind of freedom but once a target appears the title again moves to the rails structure.

Play Video

To add some variety gamers also have to deal with pursuit missions, where one big enemy target needs to be tailed and destroyed or disabled. I found these to be the hardest to deal with and Redout is not shy when it comes to pushing players to return to previous engagements so that they can grind some more currency for upgrades so that they can perform better against a tough challenge.

Redout: Space Assault looks good but not good enough to justify its limited universe and repetitive gameplay. There are some truly beautiful space vistas that one can contemplate before being blown up because of not moving enough. The screen can gen very busy in combat and it mostly remains legible from a gameplay perspective. I would have appreciated some more interesting designs for the various spaceships featured but I like that the team did not revert to the default gray and made them brightly colored instead. The soundtrack does not add very much to the presentation while the voice actors too little with the limited material that the writers have given them.

+4more

The Good

The Bad

Conclusion