Trepang2 (2023)

if you know the game exists, then, by now, you know the hook: what if f.e.a.r., but creepypasta instead of j-horror? it's almost exactly the aesthetic and gameplay loop of f.e.a.r. (a provable fact that I know only academically; I am familiar with f.e.a.r. but haven't played it), with a modern sheen that is... oddly hi-def? like, I'm used to throwbacks being low-poly, so seeing something with higher-poly models and fancier shadows than what it's emulating makes it feel really advanced, despite being, you know, actually pretty bare bones compared to modern games. but, yes, this is a mid-00's shooter, with the two-weapon loadout and the military tacticool aesthetics and intelligent enemy ai and linear levels with narrative flow. but scoop out the ring with a melon baller and put in a bunch of scp foundation stuff.

that's the hook. more f.e.a.r., with updated supernaturalism.

maybe I would be less impressed if I had already played three f.e.a.r. games and wondered what "let's put a mothman in here" is really bringing to the table. but, being just me, with the life I've lived: damn, that's a really good core loop! I've seen footage of people playing f.e.a.r. and trepang2 looks more acrobatic; a bit more sliding, vaulting, grabbing and throwing people. a game where you can tokyo drift yourself sideways across the floor in slow-mo, ram into a guy hard enough that he ragdolls into the air, then grab him out of the air while still in slow-mo, then attach a grenade to his body and throw him at his allies? the answer is yep. the segment of mission 3 where you literally noclip into the backrooms? the backrooms are a lot less spoopy-creppy when dual-wielding incendiary shotguns.

you are a supersoldier employed by one secret org to take down another secret org, and the other secret org has ruined hospitals taken over by skinless zombies, cults that worship reanimated flesh, secret labs with sapient computers powered by biomass, buried crystal forms that conjure blind ghosts made of smoke. it's a kick! yes, there is a twist; yes, you will see it coming; yes, the setting has a lot more potential than is explored by its bare-bones, 5-mission plot. and that sucks, really and truly. but, also, when I want an scp-fix that actually explores its premise, I will reread there is no antimemetics division; I will play trepang2 when I wanna leap off a balcony firing a smart gun.

I do have grievances. it is short (though the levels are meaty enough to partially make up for this, and there are a bunch of side missions and combat simulations). it is often hard to tell what the hell is happening. each level has its own theming (it's not all f.e.a.r.'s shadowy office cubicals like the tutorial level) but they are all easy to get lost in. loadout-based gameplay necessitates dropping weapons when they're out of ammo and grabbing new ones, and there are often multiple weapons on the ground, and it is nigh-impossible to get the game to register the one you want if it's not the first one it selected; given you are often trying to grab weapons in the middle of a fucking firefight, this is goddamn annoying. in general, the f button is doing too much: f is how you pick up new weapons, interact with game objects like terminals and supply crates, and also how you take enemies hostage, and: yes, you will accidentally do one when you mean to do one of the others, and it will almost always mean "I grabbed a weapon I didn't want to grab." more than once did I try to execute a cool-guy maneuver by smacking a dude and then using him as a human shield, only for the game to decide what I actually wanted was to drop my homing sticky grenade launcher to pick up a fucking pistol with 8 bullets in it. also for some absolute fuckface reason the game's default display mode is neither windowed nor fullscreen, but "windowed fullscreen," which is visually indistinguishable from normal fullscreen except that your mouse will keep going one pixel out of the window so your next click will not register as a trigger pull. I knew this was some kind bug, and pretended in was a farcry 2-ish weapon jam every time it happened, but it got me killed multiple times and I only discovered the cause after completing the game. I was most wrathful.

and the bosses all suck. (ok, that's mean: only about two thirds suck, the rest are just forgettable.)

but, like... I don't care about any of this. the game is really fun. it's really, really fun. there is no doubt in my mind I'm gonna play it more. I'm gonna have a ball with it. it knows what it's about, and it does that part to perfection.

While Trepang2 is framed as the spiritual successor to F.E.A.R., it's effectively a high-speed blender for the best of 2000s-era gaming. It pulls from a deep cache of influences: Doom's kinetic shooting, Bioshock's conspiracy-laden mystery, and Crysis-style sci-fi abilities, all pitted against the zealots and hordes of Resident Evil and Wolfenstein. The creepypasta-inspired narrative - especially the final chapter - is simple and satisfying, providing just enough context to fuel the chaos without ever imposing on the flow. While no single element of Trepang² is revolutionary, the sum of its parts is a well-calibrated nostalgia trip. By refining the best tropes of the 2000s into a single, cohesive package, it delivers a relentless experience that keeps you invested and entertained until the very end.

Pros: story, homages and easter eggs, enemy and environment design, combat abilities Cons: player cosmetics that the player can't ever see, occasionally disappearing objective markers, a clunky "base" that requires the player to walk-sprint end-to-end and back to initiate the next mission

Trepang2 is a shooting range game where the main hero, 106, has two abilities: slowing time and invisibility. All the gameplay is based upon those two abilities and, I must say, it feels really cool to play this game.

As I mentioned before, the game is basically a shooting range with a small storyline, but because of the short period of the story, you won't get bored by the end of the game. But it's also a game downside: for me, there are not enough guns to annihilate enemies with, and the straightforward story, the ending of which I guessed from the middle of the game.

You can also customize weapons by finding weapon parts on missions. This makes you search every corner of the location, but for me, at one moment I just stopped searching and went right to the end.

I really like the game style: brutal bosses, tactical military all around you fighting for their lives, blood, dead bodies, and flying heads, mwahahahaha.

Locations in game are also interesting, for example, i did not expect any horror mechanic in this game, especially this room...

And that's it, simple, brutal, exciting. Finished it on hard difficulty, so i can also recommend you to play. Thanks for reading.