Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9 out of 10
Bedlam is a first-person shooter game available for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS4. Bedlam is a first of its kind as it was written as a book which was intended to receive a videogame adaptation as it was being written by Christopher Brookmyre as Nick Witcher who, having read all of his novels, sent an e-mail expressing interest in Red Bedlam handling the development duties of a videogame adaptation with Nick Witcher going on to be the executive producer of the game. Christopher Brookmyre started having his novels published in 1997 with the publication of Quite Ugly One Morning which had already won the Critics’ First Blood Award for Best First Crime Novel of the Year in 1996 which is one of many accolades such as the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction with All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses An Eye as well as becoming the only writer to have won two Sherlock Awards for Best Comic Detective Novel for Boiling a Frog in 2000 and Be My Enemy in 2004 which provides an excellent pedigree for the story arc and writing of Bedlam.
A young woman named Heather Quinn who works as a programmer at medical scanning developer Neurosphere is accidentally transported into the videogame world of a first-person shooter from the 1990s called Starfire in which she is known as Athena and must play through each evolving era of not just first-person shooters, but gaming in general in order to attempt her escape back into the real world, while something sinister attempts to destroy each gaming world and their characters.
As Bedlam is presented from a first-person perspective there is not anything the player really sees of Heather or Athena, although she is evidently rather humorous and sarcastic in the way in which she approaches her ongoing situation, while the enemy design consists of cyborgs styled upon enemies from Quake II on PS1, drones, World War II era Nazis from early Call of Duty, Medal of Honour and Wolfenstein, Nazi Zombies from the Call of Duty series, Pac-Man style enemies in which Athena must eat a chilli in order to have a temporary window to destroy the enemies who are looking for Athena throughout the maze, spaceships invading and firing from above, sword-wielding skeletons.
The environment design is just as inspired by games from previous generations as the character design and weapons are with environments that look straight out of games such as Quake II, the anti-gravity arena from Quake III: Arena, early Call of Duty, Medal of Honour and Wolfenstein, a mix of survival horror in sewers combined with Nazi Zombies from the Call of Duty series, a Pac-Man maze in which Athena must eat all of the pills around the maze in order to escape, a Space Invaders scenario in which spaceships are invading from above and even a comedic play on glitching outside of the normal set boundaries of the surrounding environments by venturing outside of the world of the game
There is a wide range of weaponry which takes inspiration from other first-person shooters such as a blaster pistol, double barrel shotgun, chaingun, crossbow, rocket launcher, World War Two era pistol, shotgun, machine gun, sniper rifle and grenades with the unique ability of taking a weapon loadout from a sci-fi shooter into a style of game which is completely different and has never had sci-fi weaponry due to their time period or being a total change in genre such as sci-fi or World War Two weaponry in Pac-Man and Space Invaders.
There is plenty of humorous dialogue reminiscent of sci-fi comedy series Red Dwarf which is a necessary influence as some of the games which inspires Bedlam don’t necessarily have voice-overs during gameplay for many of the characters, while the lead character parodies some of the greatest one-liners in videogame history such as changing Duke Nukem’s signature phrase to “I’m here to kick ass and chew bubblegum…But I’m not sure if I have any teeth anymore”. Another major source of comedy is when Athena randomly warps into a Deathmatch mode in which she is verbally abused by an angry teenager every time she gets a frag on his character with a number of excuses being made such as a frag being conceded due to lag and telling her that because she is female player she needs to go back to playing a more female appropriate game such as The Sims.
The performance during remote play is on par with the graphics, audio and general performance of the PS4 version, although the control scheme has not been optimised resulting in a control scheme which is mostly comfortable but not entirely as primary firing of weaponry has moved to the right of the rear touch pad and secondary fire has moved to the left of the rear touch pad which is the default mapping for R2 and L2 meaning that no optimisation has taken place for the remote play experience to be the equivalent of a Vita native game which is somewhat disappointing given that all it would have required is moving primary fire and secondary fire to R and L respectively with the quick melee attack of R moving to the right of the rear touch pad; however if players can become accustomed to using the right and left of the rear touch pad for such important elements of the control scheme then it is as playable on Vita via remote play as it is on PS4 with the DualShock 4 controller.
There are a variety of control schemes which are well mapped to the DualShock 4 controller with the default control scheme consisting of pressing R2 to fire weaponry, pressing L2 to fire secondary output of weaponry, pressing R1 to perform a quick melee attack, holding square to reload or interact, pressing X to jump, pressing O to crouch, pressing triangle to switch to last used weapon, pressing up or down on the d-pad to cycle to the next or previous weapon group respectively, pressing left or right on the d-pad to cycle to the previous or next weapon within the weapon group respectively, changing the direction of the left analogue stick to strafe or move, changing the direction of the right analogue stick to look around, pressing the share button takes players to the share feature menu and pressing the options button to display the pause menu. The multiple alternative control schemes make subtle changes such as moving reload from square to R1 and quick melee from R1 to L1 which provides a control scheme that will suit the preferences of every player.
There is no touch pad implementation which could have been utilised by swiping across the touch pad from left to right or right to left to cycle to the next or previous weapon and swiping upwards or downwards to cycle to the next or previous weapon group, while there is no light bar implementation which could have produced colours appropriate to Athena’s health such as green for 76% to 100% health, yellow for 51% to 75% health, orange for 26% to 50% health, red for 11% to 25% health and flashing red for 1% to 10% health, alongside a lack of vibration which could have produced vibration when Athena has been shot by an enemy or has received a heavy landing after a jump or fall from height.
Graphically, Bedlam features a positively surprising amount of depth to the influences it draws from with a variety of art styles spread throughout the eras of gaming ranging from more pixelated games towards the start of gaming such as Pac-Man and Space Invaders to Quake II and the combat arenas of Quake III: Arena to earlier entries in the Call of Duty and Medal of Honour series to more modern graphical design which collectively provides an immense amount of variety in the look and design throughout the game.
The presentation of the game is solid with a great user interface across various menus such as the main menu, chapter select, options and various gameplay menus with support for navigation via the left and right analogue sticks, directional pad and face buttons, although it does not include support for navigation via the touch pad. The background of the menus reinforces the premise of retro meets the more modern design of late 20th and early 21st Century games as they consist of a character that is not made of retro graphics which changes colour in accordance with the sky with a brightly lit eye that periodically spins in opposite directions, while the sky is retro stylised and displaying a floppy disk for a save icon is a subtle yet fun vintage throwback.
The talented voice-over cast bring life to their respective characters including Kirsty Strain as Heather Quinn and Athena along with Robert Florence as Ross Baker and Bedlam who are both known for their comedic character work on the Scottish television sketch show Burnistoun, while Travis Lee Tolliver voices Sarge and Jennifer Towns voices Buzzkill with the entire cast bringing their talents to the forefronts of their characters which really elevates the quality of the audio. Sound effects include firing powerful weaponry at enemies, enemies firing their weapons back, explosions from explosive barrels, running, collecting weaponry, ammo, health and armour and ambient sound effects such as firing of weaponry in the far distance to give the battle within a level more depth, standing on rubble during World War Two levels and wolves howling in the distance when in a village setting, while the music consists of multiple styles from climactic melodies to industrial sci-fi and music during gameplay which is appropriate for a specific era or genre of gaming, although there is no DualShock 4 speaker implementation which could have produced voice-overs, sound effects or music.
The trophy list includes 13 trophies with 10 bronze, 2 silver and 1 gold trophy. The trophy list mostly involves successfully achieving primary objectives such as the We’re Not Jammin’ bronze trophy for destroying the Gaian Comms Jammer and the Is That Wheelie The Boss You Can Do bronze trophy for defeating Lanzok and freeing the captive marines or achieving secondary objectives with some that have their own separate requirements such as the Winners Never (Rage) Quit bronze trophy for completing Rage-Quit Reactor without the reactor exploding. It is estimated that depending upon skill and a good trophy guide to provide some helpful tips that it would take between 10 to 15 hours to 100% the trophy list.
There are three difficulty levels including easy, medium and hard with the major differences between each difficulty level being the increased urgency of enemies who fire more shots with greater accuracy and flank more effectively with scenarios in which multiple enemies will be firing from ahead and behind the playable character, while enemies will receive less damage when shot and inflict more damage when returning fire.
Bedlam unfortunately lacks any form of multiplayer which is surprising as the game riffs on the first-person shooter genre through the eras of gaming including some of the best story driven and combat arena based first-person shooter games in history and in an early area of the game; an objective in which three points must be controlled simultaneously is reminiscent of the Domination game mode from the classic first-person shooter Unreal Tournament.
Bedlam would have certainly been in its element with a set of split-screen local competitive multiplayer game modes for two to four players with optional A.I. controlled characters to customise the amount of competitors in modes such as deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag, domination, king of the hill and assault objectives, alongside any further staples of first-person shooter arena game modes, while co-operative variants of each game mode would have provided even more diversity and an online multiplayer equivalent of all local competitive and co-operative game modes would have made it even better. A further form of multiplayer could have come from the actual story itself through a competitive mode in which a player would play as the lead character Heather Quinn and the other player would have played as the enemy team, while a second player could have joined Heather for co-operative multiplayer or even a part-competitive, part-co-operative mode in which it would be two vs. two throughout the story, although the two players on the bad side would naturally have an advantage with more villains to play as; whereas there is only one Heather Quinn and a co-operative partner.
There are no online leaderboards which is also surprising as they could have provided leaderboards for every level in regards to how quickly each player was able to complete the levels and how quickly each player was able to complete the entire game as well as other such leaderboards as shot accuracy, the lowest amount of times each player was killed by the opposition and how quickly each primary and secondary objective was completed.
Replayability stems from the nostalgic trip through gaming eras which immediately provides the sense of wanting to play beyond the first complete playthrough of every level, while the comedic elements of the dialogue and one-liners always keep the gameplay feeling fresh, alongside three difficulty levels providing varying degrees of challenge for players to test themselves against.
Overall, fans of retro gaming will be absolutely delighted with Bedlam as it delivers on the premise of a game which is specifically designed to appropriately represent eras and genres of gaming through the decades and gamers can be excited as there are plans for Bedlam to have its excellently written story told through a trilogy of games and books to further build upon the outstanding first game, therefore if you are a fan of retro gaming, first-person shooters, action and adventure; Bedlam will immediately appeal and is a highly recommended gem which must be appreciated for the historic journey it plots through gaming.
Jason Bonnar
Analysis
- Title: Bedlam
- Developer: Red Bedlam
- Publisher: Vision Games Publishing
- System: PS4
- Format: PSN Download
- Cross-Buy: No
- Cross-Play: No
- Players: 1
- Hard Drive Space Required: 4.9GB