I am a great believer in never looking back. In the gaming industry we get so obsessed with the games of yesteryear that when they get revamped, remade and re-released, the feeling is never the same as before. Of course, it won’t. That’s because what was important to you, capable of surprising at that moment, was of that time. Attempting to repeat that feeling is extremely hard to reproduce.Â
However, there are certain styles of games and mechanics that have gotten lost and need a bit of reimagining. Trepang2 is a game that would have sat neatly in the mid to late 2000s on Xbox 360. It feels like a mixture of FEAR and Max Payne and that isn’t a bad thing whatsoever.
There’s a story in Trepang2 that is neat, short, and cleverer than it seems. But the essence of this game is its sharp, fun, shooty gameplay; something that always excites.
You play the role of Subject 106, a super soldier or something who is rock solid. At the start of the game he (you) finds himself captured and in jail. You work for a secret organisation called Task Force 27 (they love numbers) hunting down members of Horizon Corp who are doing evil things and making terrible monster soldiers. It’s a mad B-movie kind of plot but it works well, the writing is fun and it doesn’t take itself too seriously. I could have done without the monster subplot, but Trepang2 has still been able to offer up a host of fun.
You play the game in the first person, starting in the prison where you learn your skills as you attempt an escape. You can run, jump, crouch, and slide which is useful to get through environmental hazards but also to take out shielded opponents. As you progress through the levels you get access to weapons and then the real fun starts.
Huge swathes of enemies attack you, through large areas as well as tight corridors. But in the big gun battles, you might well find yourself going up against twenty at once. These firefights are fun as hell, as the battle flips and flops, furiously fast and frantic. Diving around corners, shooting and jumping – and that’s before you go utilising the amazing focus ability like that from Max Payne back in the day. You see, you can slow down time for a brief moment in gameplay and this never gets old. In fact, I can’t believe other shooters haven’t used it for a while. It’s superb and allows you to see everything in detail at half a mile per hour.
As you move around the levels there are things to pick from, old school items like health and amour. There are also secrets like intel to pick up for more narrative and secrets. It does get easy to get lost in Trepang2 sometimes though, and I spent some time wandering before finding the way through. But get a grip on things and you’ll find the weapons excel; from the handgun to the shotgun, all feel nicely weighted and fun to use and swap around. You can customise these if you wish and add suppressors and the like at certain points in the game.
Visually, Trepang2 does a clever thing in which it almost looks like a game from the mid-2000s, but has all the gloss, lighting, and design of one from now. Most levels are corridor affairs, with open battlegrounds, but it does a good job with attention to detail. However, the monster elements weren’t exactly a favourite choice and it can all blend into one after a while. But I was still excited to go into battle and the soundtrack helped, with its frantic pace and thumping beats. All effects are fantastic and the game has very good voice-over from the lead performers to the extras.
Trepang2 may well surprise. Brilliant gameplay mechanics come to the fore, allowing the overall experience to be a lot of fun. The B-movie storyline is generic but it is still done with plenty of commitment and pace that you can forgive its melodrama. Away from that and the action is relentless, whilst slo-mo has never felt so good. Perhaps it does start to feel a bit samey after a while but still, Trepang2 is a brilliant blast from the past.
