Elevated Condemnation- Damnation Reviewed

If there is an afterlife for games, Damnation doesn’t deserve the fate its moniker implies. Sure, the title’s imprudences are numerous- shooting feels woefully anemic, the graphical palette is extraordinarily drab, and vehicular levels are frustratingly superfluous. Yet, underneath those deficiencies there exists a wealth of good intentions that were never quite realized. A half-year of purgatorial polishing might have offered the redemption this slightly misguided game desperately needed.

Damnation is grounded in two affirmative attributes: gameplay exists in escalating environments that offer verticality matched by few titles. Players are given recurrent outlooks across sweeping vistas that display the player’s perpendicular travelings, as well as the lofty pathways that await. There’s a sense of accomplishment evident in Damnation that is absent from most horizontally-oriented action games; players often can see the landscape they traverse. Secondly, the game’s steampunk setting amidst an alternative post-Civil War, offers an interesting and fresh context.

After both Union and Confederate armies devastate the United States, Damnation imagines a division in history where the Reconstructionist era never occurred. A malevolent industrialist, begins building Prescott Standard Industries (PSI), a nefarious steam-powered military complex to capitalize on America’s weakened infrastructure. The game’s protagonist is Hamilton Roake, a war veteran who leads a squad of guerrilla fighters in an effort to neutralize the growing threat of the PSI.

Damnation’s control set is effective is moving through a precarious environment.  For a game that centers on negotiating elevated landscapes, the title thankfully employing a safety button that prevents inadvertent jumps. Sadly, the lack of any map or on-screen compass means players are likely to lose their bearing within a level; the problem is exacerbated by the reuse of similar textures and architectural layouts. While the Tomb Raider series shows that gunplay can complement environmental negation, here ballistic exchanges feel underpowered and insipid.

Small gameplay bugs do little to immersive gamers in Damnation’s lofty settings. Enemy AI will often take a pacifist approach, refusing to return fire from the player. While foes will often scuttle about the playfield predictably, occasionally they will stand motionless waiting to be dispatched. Dspite these flaws, clearing out sections with an optional cooperative online player was mindlessly enjoyable.

Graphically, the game’s strongest point is its expansive levels. The majority of the game takes place in hollowed out, sterile environments that are punctuated by moments of far reaching draw-distances. Traversing through most sections will take players 20-30 minutes; thankfully mid-level checkpoints mark the gamer’s progress. Unfortunately, Damnation’s visuals suffer from a color range that remains seeped in monotonous browns and grays. The reliance of sepia tones to denote historical settings should be removed from developer’s playbooks.