Caltrops - What Are You Playing Right Now?

Forum Overview :: What Are You Playing Right Now?

by Rafiki 12/29/2025, 8:22pm PST

Episode 1: Basically perfect. A love letter to Resident Evil 4 and Blood.

Interlude is also great.

Episode 2: Considerable dive in quality compared to episode 1. The first few levels are alright, and then they become gigantic (as in literal level design) slogs. In The Fairgrounds alone, you will save scum more than you've ever save scummed in your entire life just to avoid re-running from one completely empty ass-end of the universe to the other if you die.

Whereas episode 1 had outstanding level design that avoided all of the worst features of modern shooters, episode 2 seems to openly embrace them. The worst thing episode 2 becomes is predictable. Every goddamn time you're about to flip a switch or pick up a key item, you're going to wrestle with whether you should bother or just quit to desktop because it's guaranteed to spawn an exhausting horde of enemies. Go from the outside to the inside and suddenly the lights go dark and the spoooOoOOoky atmospheric sound and music starts up so you know that a horde of zombies and probably some chainsaw guys are about to mob you.

The enemy spawns are bullshit! Episode 1 had respawns, but they were handled so well that you didn't really think about it. You'd leave an area, go through huge chunks of level, then circle back and there would be new enemies waiting. Ok, sure, reinforcements were called in. I'm cool with that. In episode 2, the only rule about spawns is that they have to occur out of frame. Enemies will straight-up spawn in the same room you're in behind you, and the game doesn't even bother to have some kind of false wall they come out of. You just get shotgunned in the back and die before you can figure out what's going on.

You're going to get sick of how many times you have to find dynamite bundles to detonate an exit that's blocked, or flip 5 switches scattered around the level, or turn 4 valves to open a passage. Motherfucker, don't Find the Key me like I'm not going to notice.

PROTIP: There's a "dash" keybinding. You absolutely, positively cannot ignore it. It is mandatory for episode 2.

Episode 1 is $7.50 for 10 hours of top-tier first-person shootering. I can't remember if Interlude is included with Ep1 or comes with episode 2, but if it's 1 you have no excuse not to buy it. Episode 2 is your call. It's not buggy or broken and if you play on a difficulty lower than Very Hard maybe you'll have more fun with it, and it's not outright bad, but fair warning it's not nearly as good as episode 1.