REVIEW: Infernal Radiation

REVIEW: Infernal Radiation

Perhaps being simplistic can make a game look even better!

Upcoming: Steam
Type: Singleplayer, Co-op
Genre: Bullet-Hell, Action,
Casual, Comedy
Dark, Halloween,
Souls-like
Developer: Asmodev
Publisher: Art Games Studio
Release date: 28th Dec 2020.

Intro

Infernal Radiation is a hardcore bullet hell game with a rather bizarre story in a 2.5D environment. The game as mentioned is a hardcore game that will really play around with your skillset and will make you find the perfect rhythm with each fight. Coop is another solid addition to this game.

Simplistic yet effective…

Small-Talk

When I first started playing this game I thought that the gameplay mechanics would honestly bore me after a couple of fights but oh well, oh well, the game was actually becoming more entertaining by the hours. Truly a challenging yet fun experience!

Gameplay

Talking quickly about the mechanics is quite simple. You attack with the LMB and defend with the RMB and on occasion, you use Space for an “ultimate attack” aka Holy Water. Sounds pretty simple but the rhythm is what gets most players.

During fights:
Before each fight, you will have a small and mostly weird dialogue with the opponent. Obviously, both of you will start fighting after a cheesy line gets thrown into the discussion which I personally did quite enjoy. Infernal Radiation being a rhythm game will make you suffer due to the ability cooldown. What is that you may ask? Well, each time you defend or attack a cooldown will follow to assure that the game is actually a challenge. Each opponent has a plethora of attacks that range from poisonous to freezing or regular attacks as well. That isn’t all of it, all of the attacks have a different speed that will really demand good coordinating of your available abilities. The more opponents you defeat the more Holy Water you can carry which will be extremely useful when coming into a tight spot while fighting, so be sure to always collect as much Holy Water as possible as there are multiple versions of Holy Water. Lastly, every opponent usually has 3 lives until he is actually defeated. Many people tend to believe that they have defeated the same enemy 3 times but I will have to disagree as in each life the opponent’s attack scheme changes. In summary, the fighting mechanics of the game are great.

Roaming around Halloween Island:
Walking around Halloween Island is actually one of the drawbacks in my opinion. The game offers such a big and pretty map for what it is yet it’s not being used to its full potential. Running around to find a couple of coins and some extra speech bubbles can feel really tiring after some time. A suggestion would be to add side quests as this would actually be worth roaming and exploring Halloween Island in my opinion as this is such a nicely crafted map and it pains me to see it be nothing more than just a go from A to B type of map.

Other aspects:

  • You can upgrade your abilities each time you’re leveling up. Upgrading Health Points, Attack Damage, and Cooldown are the wisest decisions in my opinion.
  • There are Shops as well throughout Halloween Island and you can buy some pretty useful upgrades with coins that you can randomly find throughout the map.
  • The Speechbubbles really do add a comic book vibe which I did enjoy a lot.
  • Safehouse or basically the starting point of the Infernal Radiation game.

Story:

Be aware, spoilers ahead!

As mentioned above, this storyline reminds me a lot about Killer7’s weird and bizarre story scheme. Every discussion you have with a character is weird and usually doesn’t provide much input when it comes to logic. For example, you are on a mission to help out Halloween Island after a big explosion happened due to a factory overheat. The overheat was due to their current goals of obtaining energy through the heat of the center of Hell. That was the main reason why people got possessed by demons. Now, this isn’t the weird part, the weirdness starts when you meet the scientists that are actually vampires. That is not all of it luckily. Another exorcist was there already before you, but knowing that this is a bizarre story you should know that this exorcist is actually an Alien. Nonetheless, this is actually a nice little story with a few good laughs and some interesting characters and reasonings behind each of their action.

Graphics / Audio:

The game was developed by Unity which is a well-known engine for Indie games.

Graphics:
Halloween Island truly looks like a mysterious place.

The church in Halloween Island.
Traditional fighting scene in the game.

Audio / Soundtrack:
There actually isn’t much voice acting outside of some grunts and screams. Although I am almost sure that the main character speaks the Polish language but, I could be wrong. The Voice acting isn’t something good but it does its job to the fullest. What really makes this game a treat is a solid soundtrack that perfectly matches the looks and vibes of this game, story, and setting!

Performance:

It feels weird to me that this game works flawlessly in 4K on my main PC but barely maintains 30fps on 720p with a Ryzen 5 laptop.

In-Game:

  • AMD Ryzen 7 3700 X, 32GB Ram, Nvidia RTX 2070 Super:

    The game was running with Max Settings in 1080p resolution while constantly hitting 200fps.

  • AMD Ryzen 5 3500U, 16GB Ram,Vega 8:

    The game was running with Low Settings in 720p resolution while constantly hitting 30fps.

Benchmark:

  • AMD Ryzen 7 3700 X, 32GB Ram, Nvidia RTX 2070 Super:
    Infernal Radiation benchmark completed, 15023 frames rendered in 76.672 s
    Average framerate : 195.9 FPS
    Minimum framerate : 187.4 FPS
    Maximum framerate : 199.2 FPS
    1% low framerate : 134.7 FPS
    0.1% low framerate : 119.2 FPS

Bugs / Glitches / Crashes:
In 4 hours of helping innocent people and remove their demons and sins, I experienced only 1 weird bug. If you’re using Wallpaper Engine be sure to close the app as this will cause problems to your game. The problem mentioned will usually flicker the game to windowed or fullscreen which is really annoying. Outside of that, I had no other issues.

Verdict

Infernal Radiation is a perfect match for people that liked killer7 and the weirdness it offers. On the other hand, it offers a very good gameplay experience despite being so simplistic. Small drawbacks like the uninteresting roaming of the Island and the weird performance for APUs/Laptops will bring be hardpoints to accept for some of us. Luckily this is a very good game in my opinion which gave me a really positive experience.

Thanks for taking the time and reading that review!

Bonus

If you’re interested in playing Infernal Radiation you may be in luck! Ask JimDeadlock on our Discord server and he may have a free key for you, if you’re quick!

Written by
Sermike
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