Let me step back a bit. Cultic is a retro style shooter made by one person, plus a few helpers around the edges, and sold for a budget price on Steam. It has a very distinctive art style, a purposefully grainy look with a mix of digitised photos, pre-rendered sprites, and voxels. This is used to depict a sort of 1960's cosmic horror type affair, out in Nowhere, USA, fighting cultists and worse. The levels are large and intricate, aiming for believable locations with secrets to find. The obvious comparison to draw here is 1997’s Blood, with has many of the same themes, but there's lots of survival horror in there too, like Resident Evil 4 or so. The atmosphere is consistently dark and oppressive; the game doesn't really do jokes like those two, your character starting in a mass grave and things not really improving. While purposefully ugly, Cultic"s art style is clearly achieving what it set out to do, and most importantly, it's always intelligible. You will know what's shooting at you, you will know when something is dead, and with a recently added map function, you won't get lost either. Cultic, beneath the grime, is very refined. This refinement is most obvious in the combat and the weapons you use in it. Your weapons are powerful, but in a 1960's way, and the cultists have them too. Enemies aren't that bright, but they can certainly kill you quickly. The game wants you to headshot things. Several guns are great at it, and the game often triggers bullet time if you do. It's awesome. Do it right, and you can wipe out a mob before you need to reload, taking out problem targets with badass precision. Get it wrong, and they will shred you while you reload. I love the lever action rifle more than I do the shotguns in this game; its so good. Then come the more dangerous enemies that are smarter and/or headshot resistant, and it's hit & run time. But the levels may not let you though, and the guy whom made this knows how create a combat encounter. How do you put the odds in your favour? Usually fucking dynamite. That's where most of the Blood comparisons come from, that plus some recent dlc, and you can do things with the stuff you may not of thought of. Also, lanterns make for improvised napalm grenades, it's amazing. Mechanically, this is as good as anything I’ve played like it. For a lot of the time however, the game feels punishing.
To go back to that first paragraph, I'd say a lot of Cultic's challenges for me come down to control inputs. Like I said, I'm not very good. I hit a wall with the Chapel level, a significant challenge with respawning foes, a tank that can one-shot you, and quick saving suddenly turned off. I simply could not maintain that pace, and while the previous level had been building up to this, it was a still a major difficulty spike. So, I restarted the campaign, with the controls tweaked, upgraded my weapons differently, came into the situation with more ammo, and hit exactly the same wall. Yes, there's a checkpoint, but it doesn't help. Defeated, I dropped down to "Casual" difficulty and prayed for forgiveness from Gork & Mork. I haven't had to do something like that since Metal Gear Rising: Revengence. Anyway, this obviously made for a much more relaxed time, so much so I was reminded of the earliest Doom levels or the hand-holding Half Life likes to do. I had played through the same six levels multiple times by that point, I had the basics down pat, but I was swimming in medkits. Maybe there is a discussion to be had about how important difficulty is to the gameplay experience, but for now, let's just say that Cultic is a game for people whom do this sort of thing a lot. Even then, the reminder of the first episode on casual wasn't without it's deaths. The scale of the game expands significantly, bringing in new foes, with level design being a constant joy. By itself, chapter one is as an extremely worthwhile shooter that I wish I was better at playing. I had however also brought chapter two, and I was committed now. Coming several years after the first installment, with a bonus level in-between, this is not merely more of the same. Its, well, even bigger. It's almost an expand-alone sequel. I'm tempted to describe it as a Doom 2 situation, an already great game has received additional weapons and enemies, but that undersells it. Level design is even more impressive, resulting in frankly huge locations and endless variety of combat encounters. Survival horror elements feel if anything stronger this time around, with ammunition seemingly less common, deeply disturbing atmosphere, and levels simply lasting that much longer. There’s a few things I want to highlight here, like the shopping mall, the slaughterhouse, and the fairground. And its great, its just keeps on surprising you with its ambition and sheer proficiency. My issues with the controls still remain however; I actually sprained my left arm taking on that helicopter mutant! I tried the gamepad again after that one, which helped for that one boss, but the first cultist ambush immediately thereafter killed me in seconds. Back to keyboard & mouse then. Holy shit, Cultic, stop breaking my balls.
Conclusion
When you hit your grove, Cultic is an intoxicating experience. Those moments when the level design and combat mechanics come together to create an intense experience. It's also something of a creative marvel, taking what is an outdated style of game and perfecting it. The game is simply so very good at what it's choosing to do. And I enjoy it despite the fact the mouse & keyboard setup annoys me more than a manual gearbox, and I had to turn down the difficulty because I suck at it. Try the demo, see how it feels, if good, buy both chapters without fear. Then maybe die a lot, but I think you'll enjoy it.
