Blood Effects in Better Than Dead (Early Access)

Had the chance to play Better Than Dead recently. While I'm not a fan of the whole bodycam style and I hope it doesn't become more common (it probably will though...) I do very much enjoy action shooters in a realistic setting so I am down for checking something like this out.

I didn't have huge expectations going in. Even though there is a degree of publisher support, it is largely a one man project and not a big production. With that being said I'm not that hard to please. Give me solid gunplay, interesting locations, decent AI, replay value, interesting response mechanics on the receiving end and I'm happy.

But, as you've probably seen in the demonstration, even with all of that in mind, I still found myself disappointed. The game needs a lot more cooking and the response side is quite underwhelming.

It is in early access though, it should be getting improvements and in this review we'll talk about what can, and perhaps should be done for the response side of it.

Body damage

In the parts of the game that I've played you only have a pistol, you don't have red barrels placed all over the place and so there isn't any dismemberment.

But you will have wounds for that pistol.

As for the good - they happen at the point of impact. And for a game that's using simple decals we don't have that notorious UE 4\5 issue of wounds floating around on the body.

We do however have areas on the body where wounds won't activate\glitch out. Not a minor bug, you will not see response for a notable chunk of the hits.

Wounds will disappear in about 15 seconds.

And the looks are just not good. I get that with the glitched out areas you can't have the nicer option of a small hole with the blood around it going pretty far (would make that issue a lot more glaring), but something in the vein of the wounds in Soldier of Fortune 2, or CoD 2019 could take about the same amount of space on the character but still look better.

Environment

When it comes to blood spilling there are 3 features - response stains on impacts, chunks coming out of the characters, and a blood trail for the player character when she is wounded.

As for the good - the features will be consistent. You'll have several stains shoot out of enemies for each impact, they may get stretched on some parts of the surfaces, that will happen a bit too often, but overall the features will work.

However, there are issues.

The response stains are going to have a fine splatter pattern, BUT - below some of those there will be some effect. I'm not sure what's the purpose of it, but the end result makes it look chunky. Like something out of Unreal Tournament. That actually could look good if it spawned on headshots, below the head after the character lands. But here that effect seems to be applied randomly to stains.

Now speaking of spawning - all you'll have is that response on the impacts. Blood will shoot out forward (not from the exit wound back, not both, only forward), several stains at at a time, but that's it. No blood trails for the enemies, no blood pools or anything else.

When that's what you have the aftermaths won't really be impactful. It will look like a bunch of random stains, and for the most part uninjured looking bodies laying on a clean surface (no wounds either due to the glitch or because they vanished).

And when that's the case I can't say that I have strong feelings about the stains disappearing. They'll take longer to vanish, but in levels where you're doing a bit of back and forth you will notice that at some point they're despawned.

Didn't fit into the flow of the text, but I will mention here that the chunks will despawn in 5 seconds. So they're there only for the initial feedback.

Animations

The hit responses are not bad. They have weight, and on some I've seen a brief stumble.

Some impacts may put a character into an active ragdoll disabled state, from which he may get up and get back to shooting you. It would have been nice to see characters try to shoot you from a downed state. We've seen it in games in the past but there were some recent ones that didn't have it, though it would be really appropriate.

There is a brief surrender animation but the enemies are "bluffing" every time and they just get back to fighting at the end of it. Would have been interesting seeing it perhaps expanded into actual behaviors with several options.

And lastly, the response in the case of a fatal shot (if the character wasn't in a disabled state) is to launch him backwards. I'm not sure if that's on purpose or a glitch (we have seen a similar one in Ground Branch, also a UE game) but that may result in some WTF moments or characters clipping through the environment.

Conclusion

Overall, the game feels VERY early access. It's far from the roughest release I played, but I think that even given the scope of what we have here, it may need more than 6-12 months (as mentioned in the Steam page) to deliver a more or less of a complete experience.

And frankly I do hope that it gets the time in the oven because the potential absolutely is there. I very much like the core concept of a grounded, gritty, no BS game. I gotta emphasize the latter - in the time that I've played it there was no weird stuff shoved in to "spice things up".

I absolutely love the UI being almost nonexistant and I really hope we'll be seeing that more often. And the Hong Kong setting is very cool, at least in the type of games I play I don't see it much.

So hopefully they will take the time to give the game the attention it needs and deserves. And I think it is doable. I've seen devs that bit off way more than they could chew, I don't think that's the case here. The scope of the project is perfectly reasonable, it just needs more time.

And as for the blood and gore side of it - I would highly recommend getting onboard a tech artist who's well familiar with UE, a skilled individual can do wonders in this engine. I happen to know a few.

A few more points

In the beginning I mentioned replay value, and this could be enhanced here. As far as I saw - all enemy spawns will be the same every time. They will run around in the open areas, but in close quarters you'll have pretty much the same experience every time. So I think randomized enemy spawns and enemy counts would make a massive difference.

And, there is an interesting factor. The player character is not a trained killer, so the aiming will be quite shaky. I kind of love and hate it at the same time. It's definitely refreshing not to play as an ex spec-ops who can shrug off dozens of bullets, but I think that what we have here would actually be best in an RPG type of an experience.

Right now in the vast majority of RPG games you have a nonsensical game of stats and that's a major part of your progression. How much damage can your gun cause and how many headshots will it take to finish off a level 20 enemy.

What I would absolutely love to see is an RPG game where you start off with a character who is only familiar with basic handling of a firearm but is in no way skilled in it. And slowly over time would become a true badass, if combat is what you would choose to focus on.

The only game that comes to mind to do that is Jagged Alliance 2. Some characters that can be in your team start off being really bad shots that could miss an enemy from almost point blank. But over time you very gradually start seeing them land more and more hits until they are about as reliable as your best shots. It's a lengthy process and it's really cool to see.

The whole point is - I'd love to see more of that.

You can get Better Than Dead here.

A key was provided to me by the publisher free of charge.

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