Review - HROT
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- Опубликовано: 19 май 2023
- In this review, I take a look at the Czech retro-throwback FPS that recently got its full release, HROT.
You can grab this game DRM-free on GOG here: www.gog.com/en/game/hrot
Or get it on Steam here: store.steampowered.com/app/82...
You can join my official Steam group here: steamcommunity.com/groups/dwtg...
You can follow me on Twitter here: #!/DWTerminator
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Игры
This game is amazing, nice review DWT. Interesting you brought up Chasm: The Rift, as it just got a re-release for modern platforms. A lot of people seem to skip over the engine being period-accurate, which is a shame because not even GZDoom TC's have that degree of authenticity. I disagree about there not being a story in HROT, as all of the signs and interactive objects provide plenty of worldbuilding which, even if you aren't knowledgeable about Czech culture, at least points in the right direction. Apparently, gas mask training was a required exercise back then and a lot of the enemies are based on things that Czech children were scared by. I've been playing it on the Very Hard difficulty with Blank Slate enabled so each level is like pistol starting in DOOM, and it changes the experience *drastically* even when compared to Hard. It gets to the point where you have to memorize which enemies aggro first in a room. Also, can't confirm but apparently the game's color palette was explicitly designed to have as many shades of brown as possible.
You are right, we had military exercise twice a year as a commie school kids. We had to march few kilometers in gass masks, plastic raincoats and plastic bags on our hands and shoes, prettending we are in the radioactive environment. We were never issued the filters tho, I wonder if there even was anny in the stock LOL Also Prague was incredible bleak and dirty in the so called "normalization" in 80s Everythyng was brownish-gray, everything was prefabricated as one-off almost no diversity in anything. I recognize so many everyday objects fro my childhood in this game. But I get it could be very confusing for someone raised in the west, especially for todays millenials or even younger generation ;)
This is not even Brown and grey. This is literally just brown.
So like original quake
@@gogolplex74 og quake had a little bit of red in it.......
There is also red for blood, white for smoke, and orange for explosions.
@@gogolplex74 There was a fair bit of greenery in Quake actually. Vines and moss and stuff like that. But yeah 90% brown.
This game is a surrealist nightmare. Being Czech won't help you understand much. That would be like saying that being American helps you understands David Lynch's movie. Knowing Czech culture might explain why there is a horse in Vyšehrad or why Nazi Newts exist. But why is Klement Gottwald half-spider or why are you fighting a pommel horse? Why is there a weird mutated chicken and why is it called Pedro? No one knows. Every "weird" design choice is open to interpretation. And sometimes the answer is: "For the lulz." I think the developer consciously decided to put weird random stuff in, because it makes the game stand out and helps with word-of-mouth marketing through social media.
Mutated chicken in reality is old chewing gum called "Pedro". You know, that chewing gum you stuck under the table who would huess, in HROT it gets back alive wanting to kill you.
@@decimusdecius7858exa ctly, Pedro is mutated žvejkačka, ju knou
"Brown and Grey and (un)-REALISTIC"
They sure nailed that software rendering look.
Nice review. I agree with most of it, although your harshness is part of the reason that I'm subscribed to your channel and used to be a Patron. (Nothing personal, finances.) I'd argue that the gun sound effects add to the atmosphere and "Soviet-ness" of the game. Additionally, HROT has tons of environmental storytelling that I am genuinely surprised didn't register with you. Almost nothing is set in stone, but there's more than enough to piece certain things together. Czechoslovakia was hit pretty hard by Chernobyl, that's all I'll say.
The scarcity of ammo is actually a good feature to have, because it forces you to actually use weaker weapons and makes the gameplay more tactical. If you ran out of ammo it means you're simply not good enough and miss too often. And the minimalist sound design is clearly intentional for the same reason it has minimalist music. Beefy weapon sounds would just not fit the atmosphere. So your criticism is invalid and the game is 4.5/5.
Wow. That’s your take? Wow.
Hi iam czech and i think its really sad that you dont see Czechs as slavic nation, beacuse our language is of course slavic, and being slavic is really important for our identity . Mainly beacuse of history because our slavic identity help us during times when we were controlled by Austria to not forget who we are. Also our country hosted Slavic congresses in 19 century so i think saying we are not slavic is not acurate.
I said I don't see Czechs as a "Slavic nation" because from everything I've seen, Czechs *themselves* don't generally seem to think of Czechs as being Slavic. Some of that seems to come from trying to disassociate from the Soviet Union and all the negative stereotypes associated with the term "Slavic," and some of it comes from the fact that the highly Germanic region of Bohemia had such a massive influence on Czech culture as a whole.
@@DWTerminator Yeah I agree, there is almost nothing specifically "slavic" in everyday czech life, apart from our language, history and few traditions here and there. Genetically we are probably the most mixed people in whole Europe like 30% slavic 20% celtic 15% Germanic(Nordic) and few others
@@DachshundDogStarluck19 What has Catholic church to do with anything? You should be Pagan in the first place, if identify as a Slav is so important to you!
EDIT: But you are right with Soviet/Russian imperialism. Russian Orthodox church was pretty much KGB project, I wonder if it was just a backoup plan if commie bullshit goes down, it seems like it now...
@@DWTerminator I find this funny that Czech people don't identify themselves as a "Slavic nation" mainly "a Western Slavic country." The Czechs, Slovaks, and Polish should be identified as Western Slavic who have Western Roman-Germanic influences and are part of the Catholic Church, nothing remotely East or South Slavic by any stretch of their imagination. Of course, Czechia has largely become an atheist country over the past 75+ years due to Soviet influence/rule, which I don't blame them, but that still doesn't count the Czechs as a non-Slavic nation, which I find it incredibly hypocritical of them. It's better off for a Czech to be anti-Soviet than anti-Slavic if you catch my drift, although I suppose I'll honor the people living in Czechia as Czechs rather than Western Slav Czechs. By the way, for those of you who don't know, the Soviet Union is not a true Slavic state, and I don't see it that way. For most of the Soviet Union's history, it was largely run as a Federal Lenin-Marxist Communist one-party Socialist Republic under a totalitarian dictatorship and was never much of a present place, even for most Slavs living there. Also, unlike the Russian Empire or the Russian Federation of today, the Soviet Union's policies are as follows: Soviet Union's economy is primarily planned-based under centralized government control, it's very antinationalistic, promotes international communism, anticapitalistic, placing forced agricultural collectivization policies upon the people, embracing cultural autonomy (albeit for a brief or inconsistently short period of Soviet history), rapid industrialization, rampant literalization, and being a largely atheist state.
P.S: I know Russification happened during Soviet times, but this policy was basically a dictator's way of Russifying the Soviet Republics and some communist-run countries against their own will in an age that's more reminiscent of Russian Imperialism than actual Soviet Imperialism.
@@DachshundDogStarluck19 Although, i gave you a much-deserved thumb's up i would personally hesitate to call late Stalin's era policies a russification. If only because the goal of many of this policies was just punishment and discipline for new USSR subjects and vassal states that actually didn't particularly result in an improvement in terms of political status for Russians themselves or institutions related to both Russians on a level of their ethnic culture or history and culture of Russian empire state such as Russian Orthodox church. In fact Orthodox church was technically suppressed way until late 1960s not to mention that attempts by Russians to have a somewhat national - oriented part of Commies (so called Leningrad grouping) to give their nation a political representation in Soviet apparatus that for an example existed for Armenians, Georgians, even Ukrainians was brutally suppressed and many of its members were executed and imprisoned. The only actual reason Russification meme was ever used in regards to Stalin's era policies in former Baltic republics and Warsaw pact countries is because unlike Perestroika era you can't call out a specific group that frankly was connected to those policies the most notoriously in Poland but everywhere else as well without experiencing a certain judicial repercussions that exist in those countries as well as Russia and modern Europe/United States while blaming Russians and Russia is an accepted form of expressing a much deserved dissatisfaction with what happened in those countries during that particular era.
Good to see this game finally come out.
Looks very good, and yeah. I can definitely tell this wears its Chasm: The Rift influence on its sleeve, as I am playing that and loving it. The only things Hrot doesn't take from Chasm are the time-travel gimmicks and MAYBE the dismemberment system, but other than that, this is LITERALLY a Chasm successor that takes the DNA of its influence and applies it to a different setting with a darker colour palette.
I've been following this game since early access.
It's fun and I may be blasphemous, but I find the SP campagin better than Quake.
And I love Quake 1.
Thanks for the insightful review, DWT. This game is definitely a good retro throwback shooter and I'm glad it's well-done as a (West Slavic) Czech game, despite having a few flaws such as sound effects looking less satisfying, adding a few too enemies in each area (difficulty reasons?), a couple bizarre choices of enemies, for example, floating Lenin statues shooting stuff at you, a weirdly obscure story that's probably meant for Czech audiences who grew up in Communist/Soviet rule, and a slight ammunition problem. Spytihněv truly understood how to make a solid retro throwback shooter by following its ideas of a good retro fps to a successful degree in addition to designing its own unique style to it. Anyway, although the ammunition is a problem in HROT, at least it's better than those two crappy DOOM reboot games by a long shot. The Beef stroganoff (Бефстро́ганов) recipe part is kind of amusing though.
Hi DWT, thank you for your review, great as always. Very interesting game. Are you planning to review Atomic Heart ? I'm playing it right now and I'm a bit confuse about it. I would be happy to see what you think about this one.
I'll be taking a look at Atomic Heart eventually.
@@DWTerminator Thank you, looking forward.
Good review : )
absolute masterpiece
Oh look, a game that DWTerminator actually likes!
the best game has arrived
Can you please relist your Braid and Metro 2033 videos?
Metro 2033 is getting a redux eventually, probably whenever I decide to take another look at Last Light and finally take a look at Exodus as well.
I'd rather forget Braid exists.
@@DWTerminator they're my favorite videos. I couldn't stop laughing for 10 minutes straight when you said "I FUCKING HATE BRAID!!!!!"
Is this a Quake 1 mod?
Brand new standalone game that's specifically designed to *look* like Quake.
I would actually say with the intro of the wine bottles there's almost too much health for a lot of the game. Sorry to say but it really sounds like you just have to play better (this is on hard)
of course the Boss is tanky, its a communist XD
*BROWN*
BROWN
UND GRAU
BRICKS
Ammunition was always the problem with this game: it was true since the demo and it still is. Kinda ruins the game for me, to the point that now that the full thing is out I have little interest in going back to play the rest of it, because running out of ammo for your workhorse weapons (pun intended) was never fun in any FPS ever.
At least the ammunition issue in HROT is better than those two crappy DOOM Reboot games.
DoomE has unlimited ammo with a cooldown. Extended fights even spawn a fodder enemy infinitely so you always have someone to saw. Resource management is dead in that game.
@@SinaelDOverom Yeah that's even worse.
@@Ghost_Of_SAS I agree.
I've finished HROT twice so far ( hard and very hard ) but I've never had a problem with ammo except for the headless chicken part
The new Chex Quest
Americans like you should stop with all the disclaimers and apologizing. Almost no one in the world speaks Czech and those few that do will absolutely understand that you cannot pronounce it. It's normal. No one would ever be offended by this. The whole obligatory apologizing is just so tedious and annoying.
So did he pronounce the dev's name correctly? /s
That's actually a really interesting and, as the kids say, based take on the matter. I'm kinda out of the ordinary because I'm an American but I'm fairly familiar with the general sound and structure of the Czech language, though I don't actually speak it. The town I grew up in had incredibly strong and well-preserved Czech heritage, we even had a Sokol gym. I totally understand that most English speakers struggle with it, though, even if it is just a little funny watching them try.
@@ToastyCubes No, but he was very close
it gets especially annoying when someone in a video apologizes but he/she could have gone to wiki or a google translate that will say those common words the don't know how to pronounce
Slavic is really nothing more than a historical and lingual term these days, there is almost no shared slavic identity.
Absolutely awful. Refunded.
Fake review from a person that never played let alone get a refund for money he never spent.
Nice try@@Physics072
This game was disappointing and overall was not good
good game overall but some events are bad, because enemies spawn right next to me. And you cant hear a shit and getting gunned from behind. Enemy projectiles are too fast to.