Amid Evil

Alright game, play fun.

...With one huge caveat though: your computer must be strong enough to run modern AAA at "high", since this game is also quite demanding on the hardware — don't look at its "boomer shooter" artistic style, it's a proper high-end Unreal Engine 4 title. On its low settings, the game becomes barely playable: even if the combination of low resolution with bad aliasing won't literally make your eyes bleed, then the very next minute you'll discover enemies attacking you from beyond their drawing distance. If you can't run Amid Evil on "high" — I'd rather recommend you put it off until you can. I don't think this game will disappear anytime within the next decade or two; even if somehow it gets delisted from Steam, you should still be able to find it in other places.

Once you have a machine beefy enough to run Crysis 2 — then for all means, give this game a try!

You go pew pew and then the thing dies, nice graphics and even cooler atmosphere

Only problem I have with this game is some of the weapons are better than others and there's no downside to only using that weapon I feel like you should be forced to use other weapons and be creative with what you have and not use the same weapon over and over. 8/10

A modern classic of a game that would have been an instant classic if it were released in the 90's/Early 2000's.
Excellent game with a ton of content.

This one… Well, this one I really, really like.
Tired of boring games? Gray and brown games with too similar to previous fps slop ideas you played before? Games with offices, military bases, mines, underground tunnels, destroyed cities copy-pasted over and over till you throw up? Of games with some pew-pew boring, to normal looking guns that shoot pellets and have zero good vibes attached to them? Well look no further, my friend, because I present you with this piece of creative work and passion, called AMID EVIL.
Amid Evil is yet another boomer-shooter throwback build of the renaissance of genre brought to us back from the dead by Doom 2016. This is an FPS game where being fast on feet, fast with decision making and having steady aim is more important than anything else; where you travel through levels filled to the brim with deliberately placed enemies designed to push the player over the edge. The genre that is to this day the cream of the crop of the entire family of FPS games. And this game is the best example of excellent design and ideas.
So, how can you describe this game in one sentence? Someone smarter than me once said: “Imagine Heretic but it's actually good”. Sounds legit, but the more you look, the more you scratch the surface, the bigger differences you can notice. Because yes, this game is more of an homage to old fantasy fps like Heretic or Hexen, where you fight with monsters like Ettins, Minotaurs or mages instead of demons and possessed marine like in Doom. But the core mechanics are here, you collect weapons, mana instead of ammo, armor and you fight in labyrinthine like levels for keys and levers that will enable path forwards. Some people to this day claim that those old games were flawed and inferior to their more grounded or sci-fi oriented counterparts. And frankly, I cannot approve or disprove these sentences, because I never played Heretic or Hexen before. However I played a lot of Amid Evil.
And Amid Evil is so fucking good.
Why? Well, I can pin point three major design principles that make this game awesome: levels design, weapons mechanics and enemies. And we are gonna talk about them to an extent.
When you boot the game for the first time, the first thing that you probably will notice will be colours. I think colours are what defines this game art direction. You don’t see a normal looking brown, greys or even green. Every space, every corner, every floor or wall is plastered with an intense color palette that is almost aggressive when looking. Pink, violet, magenta, red or orange — sometimes I feel overloaded, but never to the point when it was getting annoying or confused; everything was always visible and clear to me… well, aside for darker corners, which was more common in DLC. Like, seriously, there is a torch powerup in the game, why can't we use it more sometimes? But during combat — nah, the game clearly knows when the art style should step down in favor of gameplay elements. There was only one instance — again, in DLC — when I was forced to fight in darkness, and yes, it was a cheap shot, but I can forgive that.
Another important thing about levels is how they are designed. Forget about little levels from Dusk that you can finish in less than ten minutes; forget about cramped, dark and mood levels from Quake. Here we have big, open levels that include indoor and outdoor areas, castles, magical towers, forests, cathedrals or big caves. I love how they all are also vertical in design — features that developers should implement more often. You not only travel forward, but also down and up, climbing and descending, even flying sometimes, fighting around every corner. Thanks to that levels never become stale and boring, because they mix more open space arenas with tight corridors and smaller rooms.
I also want to point out how diverse levels can be. So yeah, you see, there is fantasy and “fantasy”. There are plenty more “grounded” fantasy games and other media — like worlds with grey, stoney castles, horses, knights, mages, dragons, all those tropes commonly known. But there is also fantasy looking more like 80 pulp cinema. So much different, with so much variety and weirdness, that they become more alien-like. Or like an acid trip. This game belongs to the latter category. We have a big-ass tower of sun with unrealistic design, non-euclidean geometry in the void, school of wizardry suspended mid air. I never felt bored when I was playing this game.
Ok, now time for weapons. Aside from two instances, they all shine. If you look at them. you can clearly see they resemble in some way their modern day counterparts. We have Axe for you melee weapon (replaced by gloves of MUDAMUDAMUDA platinum star power in dlc), staff of magic missile working like pistol, saber working like shotgun (with big horizontal projectile instead of pellets), trident is machine gun, Celestial claw — it shoot planets and stars — is a rocket launcher, Ice mace is you super shotgun, and pink ribbon (don’t ask) is you BFG, replaced in dlc by scythe with can tear fabric of reality. But all of them have specific quirks that make them useful in every combat scenario, no matter early or later game. Staff have homing missiles, sabers can hit multiple enemies, trident can overload enemies and shock the closest one, mace can pin them to the wall. On the top of that they all have an alternative mode — which you can enable by collecting enemies' souls. Basically it works like a tome of power in Heretic and Hexen.
One thing I need to mention — a crucial thing. They all have excellent feedback. It's not like in modern military shooters, when you grab some SMG and start spraying, and enemies don’t flinch. No, here we have clearly, through visuals and sound cues, feedback when you hit enemies. They stagger, yell in agony, “bullets” hit them in a satisfying way, there is a good sound response — like with trident or mace — when they get shot. It’s all brilliant — and a necessity, because, aside from trident, all weapons are projectile based. You need little calculation in your head to hit them when you are running and jumping. Thank God, all monsters also have projectile based attacks, so with little focus and training you can dodge them, albeit the learning curve will take some time.
There are two weapons I think devs should improve. Celestial claw — the rocket launcher — should have bigger splash damage. Enemies must be really clumped together to kill more of two with a single shot from these weapons; The “ribbon gun” should be entirely reworked — it has weak feedback and projectiles should be more visible.
Before I start rambling more about enemies, we need to establish one important thing: this game has seven (!) different episodes. Each episode has only three actual levels + one boss fight, but they are not short — each can take from 20 minutes to even half an hour to accomplish. And they are full of enemies; on hard difficulty in some level there is usually between 100 to 200 (!) monsters, not packed in big arenas, but spreaded from start to finish. What is more important — they are tied to episodes. Enemies from first do not ever appear in second or third. This makes them unique and more manageable: you don’t like some type of enemies (like me with shield enemies from sun episode) — do not worry, they will only show up in three levels.
<rest of the review in comment section>

Edit: (I have now completed the base game and am now going to buy the dlc immediately. Totally slackjawed at the final act. WOW.)
I finally upgraded and was able to experience this game with RT on full blast.
Most incredible retro styled fps I have ever played. The 3rd chapter is incredible, maybe the most beautiful lighting and color palette I have ever seen.
The enemy variety is very good, challenging as well.
Lengthy, especially if you like to explore for secrets.
I have been completely captivated by this game.
11/10. Whispers Edge is your friend.

Utterly amazing.
its got graphics
its got weapons
its got violence
its got movement