Selaco: Indie Excellence? Or Just Another 'Boomer-Shooter?'

Critiquing Selaco and my thoughts on the Boomer-Shooter phenomenon

INTRODUCTION


Every once in a while we’re fortunate enough to experience a video game developer’s work that transforms the landscape of the entire industry by introducing new mechanics, design philosophy or even an entire new genre; ID Software has achieved that twice.

First in 1993, the original DOOM perfected the early First Person Shooter and again in 2016 with DOOM (I hate it when reboots do this.) Creating the blueprint for a new breed of shooter and inspiring a wave of projects that hearken back to DOOM, Quake and Blood more than they do Halo, Call of Duty or Medal of Honour.

Selaco is the latest of this new lineage.

Releasing last May into early access, Selaco, developed by Altered Orbit Studios quickly gained a reputation for slick sprites, fast and frenetic gameplay and supreme fun.

Armed with my mouse, keyboard and a desire for a framerate higher than 15FPS after playing so much Goldeneye this Winter, I was kindly gifted a copy for Christmas and dived in.

Official Selaco artwork

I’ll preface my review by telling you a bit about me and my gaming preferences, that way you can better understand the lens I’m viewing this game through.

I was born in 2000 after the heyday of shooters like Doom and Quake was already over and I grew up primarily with shooters like Timesplitters and the Halo series but I did experience DOOM in my formative years via the port to the original Xbox included in my brother’s copy of the DOOM 3 Collector’s Edition where I reached hell in the first game before getting a stern telling off for playing a game I was way too young for.

It was worth it.

As an adult, I frequently go back and play the first 2 Doom games along with other classic shooters like F.E.A.R which is a game Selaco also takes heavy inspiration from, so trust that I understand what a shooter of this type is supposed to be like.

With that said and done, I invite you to get comfortable and prepare for a good read ahead.


GRAPHICS AND PRESENTATION


When I first opened up Selaco I have to admit my first impressions weren’t stellar. A few logos flash on screen, the game’s music builds to a crescendo and then the placeholder-looking main menu appears as the generic, chiptune-esque ‘Selaco (Main Theme)’ had me clawing at the volume slider to make it quieter.

Selaco’s start screen and main menu need to change before the big 1.0 release

I know what you’re thinking. “It’s a menu. The options are clear, the art is interesting, what’s the problem?” The trouble with this menu is that it’s just so boring, it doesn’t inspire any excitement, neither does it immerse you into the world of Selaco, it’s just art that barely represents the tone and feel of the game.

There are ways to make a menu like this with flair and creativity. One of the best examples I can think of is the menu in Warhammer 40K Space Marine where the background displays a looping, in-engine cutscene and the options are placed inside a stylised window adorned with 40K heraldry; modern versions of DOOM will also show developer gameplay in the background of the main menu.

In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t exactly a fatal flaw in the game and it’s perfectly serviceable as-is but with the game still in development and having seen nobody else mention this, I think it’s something for Altered Orbit to consider.

A great game is a feast for the eyes and ears as well as fun to play and apart from this stumble out of the gate, Selaco is stylish, filled with catchy beats and bursting with colour.

Selaco runs on the GZDoom engine but looks leaps and bounds more technically impressive than any other game or port running on this engine. Floors have realistic looking reflections, lighting is stunning and I’m not exaggerating when I say that Selaco has the best 2D sprites I have ever seen; the game even has fully working mirrors, I haven’t seen proper mirrors in a game since the Xbox 360 days.

There’s a reason I frontloaded this section with a complaint about the game, that’s because visually it borders on flawless. The cyberpunk and vapourwave aesthetics are very much in-vouge at the moment and yet no game does them better justice than Selaco.

In an indie market completely oversaturated with games using a retro-inspired look it is so refreshing to see a team use modern technology to bring things like sprites to their absolute pinnacle and to inject new life into an old visual style instead of being the 1000th game to try and replicate the SNES’ graphics. I hope the torrent of praise Selaco has received for its visual presentation is a sign to other indie developers that many players are getting sick of every game looking like Fez or Fortnite.

Another creative choice I love with Selaco’s presentation was the decision to make everything permanent; every enemy killed, window broken or corridor scorched by grenades leaves lasting physical damage to the environment.

It’s a very gratifying part of Selaco’s power fantasy when you return to a previously visited area and saunter back down the path of carnage cleaved a few hours before to hunt for upgrades and security cards, perhaps stumbling upon a survivor along the way radioing in to HQ to announce himself the only man left before being dispatched and his purple blood adding to the painting of destruction; recently deceased enemy will even have smoke continue coming from their freshly discharged rifles for a few moments. I love games that make me feel as if my actions change the face of the game world.

Selaco is a game that pays the utmost respect to the community of First Person Shooter lovers and projects that inspired it too, posters featuring a certain Australian YouTuber who predominantly plays shooters can be found throughout the game, the very first level contains a pretty on the nose reference to F.E.A.R’s Point Man and one of Selaco’s brand mascots is the Spider Mastermind from Doom. I do feel a lot of this is a little bit too on the nose and harms the game’s immersion however, I can live with it and it is still a nice touch.

The only real complaint I have besides the main menu is that I think the game could use a few more visual palate cleansers. What I mean by this are a few areas that look drastically different to break up the stream of indoor environments and abandoned complexes the majority of the game takes place in.

A few good examples from other games are Brinstar from Super Metroid where the player leaves the grey-black caves of Crateria for lush green jungle or in Halo 3 where the latter half of the game takes the player to the Ark and its deserts.

I think Altered Orbit attempts this with the shift ‘outdoors’ to the Selaco Streets about halfway through the game as well as with the Plant Cloning Facility (coincidentally, my favourite part of the whole campaign) much later and while these areas drip with atmosphere and moody colour, they are largely still the same palate as the previous offerings and come too little and too late.

Some of the very few players online who didn’t enjoy the game point to its ‘samey’ environments and while I don’t really agree with this complaint, it’s hard to deny that the game clings close to its visual baseline.

You’ll notice I haven’t once mentioned the story so far and that’s because the game’s lore and background are entirely delivered through collectible data-pads and environmental storytelling. The game’s Steam page makes a big fuss about a hired storywriter but neither the game’s design nor its moment to moment experience do more than pay lip service to the very limited narrative on offer so I won’t either.


SOUND AND MUSIC


I complained early on in this review that Selaco’s main theme sounded generic and once again, I feel the game trips up at the first hurdle before breaking out into a record-breaking sprint because Selaco’s soundtrack and effects are sheer bliss.

This game was composed by Lawrence Steele who has worked on other games like the Lovely Planet series and Dinkum. I’ve not played those games so this was my first exposure to his work and now I’ll take that name to be a seal of quality on any game’s soundtrack. The game’s soundtrack is comprised of many John Wick-esque electronic beats that, rather than amp you up like the soundtracks of Mick Gordon instead put the player in a kind of murderous flow state. It’s music that could help you focus on anything you set it to and that helps the player to unwind a bit and enjoy listening as they hunt for secrets in the game’s quieter moments. If any member of Altered Orbit finds themselves reading this review or perhaps Mr Steele himself then please, record a new main theme, you can do better than that, I’ve heard it.

If I had to pick my favourite piece of music from the game it would be the track that plays in Chapter 5 while you fight through Exodus Plaza it strikes the perfect balance between energetic and sombre with an absolutely delicious bit of saxophone in there too.

Gunshots and explosions in Selaco sound vicious and deadly as they should and go a long way in making combat so satisfying.

While the guns do follow the modern trend of everything sounding realistic, as opposed to unique, interesting or identifiable in the visual landscape, I can forgive it because every tool in the player’s arsenal sounds powerful and the blasts from each firearm are given enough weight and volume so as to easily distinguish the high damage weapons from the lower damage options without anything sounding strange or toy-like.


GAMEPLAY, BALANCE AND LEVEL DESIGN


If you imagine a square diagram with Doom 64, Duke Nukem 3D, F.E.A.R and Half-Life at each corner then Selaco would fit neatly in the middle. From the first 2 it takes its key card hunting, use of lighting, naturalistic environments and interactability and from the latter 2 Selaco takes a lot of its basic premise, the prominence of physics objects and a lot of its gunplay.

Selaco’s gunplay and the feel of combat are easily the best parts of the game. You play as Dawn: a captain in ACE Security in the midst of an invasion of the titular Selaco Space Station by an unknown military force and there are 7 Levels in total, each about an hour and 15 minutes long but it can vary. This army lacks the variety and coordination of Halo’s Covenant or the zeal and aggression of Killzone’s Helghast but more than makes up for it in competence and strategy; like in F.E.A.R you will spend your time with Selaco fighting the same pool of enemies but with incrementally better equipment.

I will admit that I have my qualms with the game’s balance and enemy pool (more on that soon) but especially in the first 4 Levels, the cat and mouse feel of sliding from cover to cover to ambush squads of guards, blowing away a lowly rifleman who tries to flank Dawn and the inevitable swarm of guards when you pick up a new key card or unlock a new door is exhilarating and extremely enjoyable.

I think the only major bone to pick with the simple act of shooting and engaging with the combat I have is that Selaco’s weapons roster is just so damn bland. If you’ve played any shooter launched since the late 1990’s then you’ve used these weapons before; there is a shotgun an assault rifle, submachine guns, a pistol, and so on. They can be modified and I appreciate the alternate fire modes but the game is set in space, literally any firearm you could dream up is possible with the standard of technology achieved to make it this far and Altered Orbit chose to give players the same arsenal we’ve been using in this kind of shooter for over 20 years already.

Another positive to Selaco is that Dawn is an incredibly mobile protagonist able to jump relatively high, slide comically large distances (which lead to a long jump) and the player can crouch behind cover and manipulate the various physics props in the environment to their advantage; Dawn can also clamber up ledges and waist-high barriers. I do think the movement speed can use turning up a notch however.

Selaco’s lack of noticeable fall damage and the inclusion of clambering make vertical environments a whole toybox of strategic options

What I don’t see mentioned about Selaco is that there is a strong Resident Evil seasoning peppered throughout the game. This extends from the grenade launcher using several grenade types found in that series but also to the network of safe rooms with their own theme tune and the ability to revisit previous ones via a monorail.

I adore Resident Evil so seeing a whole level in the late game and these other features pay tribute to that franchise put a smile on my face. however, I will say that backtracking seems to become less useful as the game goes on with less and less areas containing doors that you cannot unlock on a first visit. The firing range upgrade to the safe rooms also doesn’t serve much of a purpose as far as I could tell.

Unfortunately, it’s at this point I have to address my two biggest complaints with the game which are its health system and the balance of the late-game levels, particularly the second half of Level 5 onwards.

Selaco uses a hybrid regenerating health/health and armour mixed system somewhat akin to Halo Reach where the player’s health will automatically regenerate to a certain level but upgrades, health packs and armour pickups are also available.

The trouble with Selaco’s rendition of this system is that health only regenerates once it reaches critical levels and to a maximum of 35 points, this in conjunction with health and armour packs gradually becoming more scarce and the predominant late-game enemy type dealing 15 damage per shot means that Selaco degrades from a highly mobile and strategic shooter into Arma 3 on the GZDoom engine, where the player dies in 2-3 shots and can’t afford to leave cover during combat. All you can do is quick save after every kill and encounter and hope that you see the enemy before they see you. The final 1/3 of Selaco is a frustrating and unfair chore to play.

It’s because of the above that unfortunately, I decided not to play the bonus mission: the Starlight Building; I like to play as close to 100% as possible when I review a game but truthfully, I was just fatigued by that point, not because of the game’s length (which is quite modest) but because of the brutal and unfair difficulty of Level 5 which burned me out on the rest of the experience even if Level 6 was a stunning return to form.


”So those are your final thoughts? Selaco is near perfect but needs a rebalance?”


Not exactly. Here is where, to conclude this post I will share my thoughts on this ‘boomer-shooter’ phenomenon and why I think a lot of excellent projects like Selaco will be relegated to the side margins of gaming history because of it.

My association of this game with 4 other, different games isn’t necessarily a compliment. Imagine for a moment that you had to describe Selaco to a friend, I imagine your description would go something like “It’s like DOOM but…” Or “Selaco is a lot like F.E.A.R except…” It associates itself with past titans, as if Altered Orbit don’t have the confidence to let the game stand on its on two feet and need to sway the starved fans of long-dormant franchises to get an audience.

This is my biggest issue with this entire fledgling genre and with faux-retro games as a whole. You’ll never be a better F.E.A.R than F.E.A.R. The boomer-shooter is an inherently derivative product.

You cannot describe Selaco on its own merits because, as well seasoned and prepared as its fundamental ingredients are, it is still copying the recipe of much older and more influential video games. Halo wasn’t an ode to Goldeneye, Quake wasn’t an ode to Doom and Doom didn’t concern itself with championing Wolfenstein’s legacy, they simply brought the future without pining for what was long gone. These are innovators, not imitators.

I wish Altered Orbit every success with this project because while Selaco is a fantastic love-letter to over 30 years of First Person Shooter history… I want to see new classics born.


So is Selaco ‘Indie Excellence?’


Selaco looks great, is well-made, enjoyable for the majority of gamers, polished and has a dedicated team behind it but I predict that in 10 years it will be seldom spoken about.

As a predominantly retro gamer with a hard-nosed dedication to playing on authentic hardware and CRT screens I feel I have become somewhat immune to the rose-tinted glasses many gamers wear and unfortunately, I feel the boomer-shooter (and Selaco by extension) is made for the kind of player who resents the modern genre and wishes to return back to the ‘good old days.’ But the truth is that the industry has moved on from this breed of shooter and after years of the indie scene shovelling this kind of experience down my throat and of DOOM making expedient use of its own nostalgia and old-school appeal… I’m ready for the future now.

Did YOU enjoy Selaco? Perhaps you have your own thoughts on the boomer-shooter genre? Comment below.