GTFO
10 Chambers Collective
Anybody whose read my reviews before knows that I’m quite a strategic thinker, as well as someone who relishes stealth-based games. Hell, I cut my teeth on stealth shooters such as the first Metal Gears and Splinter Cells. Don’t get me wrong, I also like the idea of getting into highly tactical firefights, but there’s something smugly satisfying about utilizing stealth in order to sneak by, or sneak up on the enemy.
Right when I first heard about 10 Chambers Collective’s new stealth-shooter, GTFO, I knew I had to try it out. The murky backstory details how you, as one of four prisoners, have been tasked (actually forced) by a mysterious entity known as the Warden, on some elaborate fetch quests.
These involve choosing from a decent assortment of weapons and high-tech gadgetry, getting strapped into a shoulder-harnessed (complete with feet dangling in the air) drop pod, and getting jettisoned down through a large, dark hole. Once the drop pod hits a certain position within a vast underground industrial labyrinth known as the Complex, the shoulder pads unclasp from your characters and you are dropped unceremoniously into the first room within the place.
Whoever designed the Complex really earned their pay—the place looks absolutely foreboding, with a creepy industrial aesthetic involving scarce light sources between wide swaths of darkness. The only sounds you’ll hear are mechanical in nature, such as the creaks and groans of some far-off machinery. Then you’ll hear the clicks.
Usually, before you even see GTFO’s most common monstrosities, called Sleepers, you’ll hear their eerie clicking noises. As they make these sounds, a yellowish glow with emanate from their abdomens. This is their way of detecting anything that is moving around them in the darkness. So, you’ll have to remain totally still during these moments. Oh, and shining your flashlights on them will also alert them to your presence.
If you are unfortunate enough to get detected by them, they’ll alert other Sleepers and you’ll get rushed by a waves of them. There are also large Sleepers that stand around a dozen feet tall that you don’t want to tangle with. Because ammunition and supplies are randomly spawned (as are the monsters), it’s best to sneak around as much as possible. Running out of ammo at critical junctures happens from time to time, which will make you dead real quickly.
As your team navigates throughout the Complex, looking for whatever the Warden wants you to fetch for each mission (here called Rundowns), you’ll also come across other creatures such as ones that can shoot projectiles at you, large gestating egg-like sacks that explode if you get too close to them, and a few other horrors.
Throughout each Rundown, you’ll have to undergo intermittent security scans that will alert large numbers of these monsters and cause them to rush your location. Luckily, you have a few items that can greatly help your survivability. For instance, there are turrets that you can set up strategically to intercept the creatures as they rush you, and mines that you can place that are handy for killing large groups of foes. There’s also a hardening foam that you can spray on doors in order to reinforce them, or you can spray it on parts of the floor which causes enemies to move slowly thought them.
The creatures themselves look absolutely horrifying and most of them look like they could have originally been human, and have now been transformed into grotesque mockeries of humanity. They are also very deadly, and if your team isn’t utilizing decent combat tactics, even a small group of them can take everybody out.
GTFO is a surprisingly well put together stealth shooter. It is very difficult to survive through even a single, one-hour Rundown, which gives it somewhat of a roguelike quality. I’m very much looking forward to seeing how this excellent (and terrifying) title progresses.
OVERALL SCORE: 86%
GTFO has some pretty good looking graphics that make its shooter gameplay truly shine. However, you want to have a pretty beefy gaming PC or gaming laptop in order to play it at a decent framerate. So, you may just want to invest in a decent gaming rig:
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