HardDrive-By: The Killing Antidote
As you’ve already guessed from the title, this is a Chinese game. As such there isn’t a lot of info on its studio MetalStar (or at least that’s not in Mandarin) so I’ll just be concentrating on the game itself.
The Killing Antidote is a Resident Evil-like third-person shooter. Although it leans pretty heavily into Stellar Blade’s market. You play as “Jodi” an intrepid reporter who is trying to find the evil perpetrator Dr “Ryan” (I think). Anyway, she sneaks into EvilCo Consolidated which has failed to contain their zombie outbreak. That is the paper-thin plot and it’s the least important part of the game. You already knew that just by looking at the cover-art.
It’s in Early Release which normally means it’s a game that is barely in MPS (Minimum Playable State) but this one is quite a bit better than that. The first pleasant surprise was seeing the Unreal Engine logo. Which meant it was going to be more than somebody’s training wheels FPS game on the Unity engine with Unity stock assets. Instead it’s got Unreal prefab assets, but that’s not so bad. It’s not AAA but it is flirting with AA. It didn’t crash once and I didn’t have a single clipping issue.
The level design is what sets this game apart. It’s kind of minimalist but it does meet that minimum. Competent level design is not that hard to spot. Does the design draw your eye to where the game needs you to go? It does. Does it build tension atmospherically? Yep. The pacing is there. It teaches you what you need to know as you progress. It doesn’t break the experience… Except when it gives you rewards, (I mentioned this thing leans into Stellar Blade, right?).
The building you are searching has business offices, utility levels, and apparently labs but you don’t really get to see those in the early release. There are no real arenas, you are mostly restricted to office rooms and corridors. Think of it in terms of Dead Space, you never know what is waiting for you past the next door or the next 90-degree turn.
Actually, you do know what is waiting for you. It’s zombies. There are three kinds so far, the basic Shambler who is barely a problem unless there are a bunch of them. The Ceiling Crawlers who are fast and twitchy so it’s harder to line up the required headshot. The Spitters which can harm you from a distance and are hit-scanners. As soon as it sees you, you’re taking damage but not a lot, get too close and they vomit acid on you which is more of an issue. Then there are the Desperate Weepers.
Holy shit those things are tough! I most truly hate the Weepers. Don’t take them on unless you’ve got mines and a machine gun because they are tanky as hell and fast. You can hear them from a distance and you aren’t always required to take them on but you do get a bonus cutscene if you do. There is a boss monster toward the end that one shots you and that does suck, but this is an early release so they are probably working on it.
The weapons are a mixed bag. Knife and Axe are your melee weapons, they are alright for what they do. The Glock and the Magnum also behave as expected. The Glock doesn’t have serious stopping power but has a lot more ammo and it reloads quicker, the Magnum has serious stopping power but no magazine capacity and a slower reload. The AR-15 and the SMG are the same story but with more ammo. The shotgun is decent. The sound design on it is good but the stopping power is too low for the amount of time it takes to rack it or reload. The range is short (which is expected). The biggest problem with any of these guns is the animation lock you go into when you press R. You have to stop running. There is the now-required bow and arrow you need for the stealth mission. It will one-shot anything.
Towards the end of the game, you have vending machines that let you buy whatever ammo you need which means it is a straight Third-person shooter after that.
Let me be clear, the combat is good. I didn’t think it would be but the level design is making up for any deficiencies the AI has.
Darklings: You are leaving out something important. You mentioned Stellar Blade?
Yes. That. Like Deadspace you can’t just save wherever you like. You have to use a save station in the form of duty rooms. There you have a cot that you can’t sleep on (not yet anyway) a huge box that you can use for universal storage and a lootbox with a new outfit in it. That’s where Stellar Blade comes in.
Sometimes it’s something very revealing, sometimes it’s just a shirt or a jacket. RNG decides. The game does not allow any nudity or at least not any serious nudity (this game has to pass muster with Chinese censors). You decide in the settings what you are comfortable with, you have a choice between PG and 1980s PG-13. The most you ever see of the player character is a very brief and rather modest half-bottom shot as she starts to take a shower and that’s if you opt for the PG-13 mode. Otherwise, Jodi will be wearing a towel while she showers.
Bottomline it’s about as sexy as Stellar Blade although that is enough to set feminists into hyper-rage. They hate anything that attracts the male gaze. I only tried this in the first place because it annoyed them.
Truth be told I sighed in despair when the shower cutscene started because Jodi set down her pistol. I knew at that moment I was about to lose ALL of my weapons and start a prolonged stealth sequence. Twenty-five years ago that was a fucking thing all the games were doing, I hated it then and hate it more now.
So twenty minutes later the game starts up again, when I get my gear back. More of the alleged “plot” happens and then you have a boss fight. And it’s a pretty good boss fight. After that you restore power to the elevators and head down into the depths of the building and the next chapter, assuming it ever gets released.
There are also challenge modes where Jodi gets sent through various shoot houses and target ranges. Again, the prizes are all cosmetics. There are random cosmetics drops during the challenges so keep an eye open for them. You can also buy them from vending machines.
So far MetalStar is resisting the siren’s call of monetization. The base game is it. I don’t know if they will start charging for cosmetics but in my view, there is a little point in that because this game is ridiculously popular with the modding community.
So is it worth the price?
No.
Or at least not at full price which is $30. It’s not enough game for what you’re getting. However, I paid $10 during the Winter Steam Sale. That was more than enough value for what I got. The challenge is there, the game never crashed and it’s got plenty of replay value. So if you’re interested in zombies and jiggle physics wait for a sale.
Is it cheesy? You bet! But it’s the right amount of cheese for an indy horror game.
