This is Kvark, and I'm flashing the name on screen because I'm probably mispronouncing it. Developed by LatestPast and Perun Creative, with Perun also publishing, Kvark is a retro-inspired first-person shooter, taking place in a late 80s post-Soviet Czech Republic. You play as the newest employee of a highly successful nuclear energy company called Kvark, hired to mine uranium. A demanding and definitely dangerous job you are overjoyed to have. Well that was until you were thrown into a prison cell. Upon breaking out of confinement, you find your fellow hazmat suited employees are trying to kill you, along with horrific mutants that throw literal gut bombs and mutated rats that look like they're trying to warn you of the coming of Crota. What in the heck is going on? Why were you imprisoned, and why is everyone trying to kill you? It's up to you to solve that mystery and survive this mess, with a full clip of ammo and a pocket full of shells. Kvark was recently released into Steam Early Access, a build consisting of its first chapter, which lasts around 3 hours. The developers were kind enough to send me the build, a big thank you to them, and today I'm gonna lend my thoughts on it and whether or not it should be on your hard drive. So with that, let's grab our wrenches and start hitting stuff. Kvark is being built in the shiny new Unreal Engine 5, and oh man, is there nothing better than seeing state-of-the-art tech used to make something look like it was made 25 years ago. Indeed, the halls of this Doom facility are looking convincingly retro. Made up of simplistic polygons and pixels, slathered in that Unreal Engine sheen of reflections and motion blur. Pixelated particle effects bouncing around to make the scene feel all the more dynamic. The depiction of the Kvark facility has few surprises, being what you would expect from a nuclear facility in an FPS game. But it is rendered convincingly, with cracked concrete walls, rusty doors and pipes, industrial machinery, and gallons of Ninja Turtle ooze, with patches of wall moss and dark puddles being nice extra touches. It all adds up to a suitably creepy atmosphere, helped in no small part by the engine's signature lighting. Performance left little to complain about, not so much as a hitch during gameplay. Although I did encounter a doozy of a bug, where after picking up the rifle, my double barrel shotgun disappeared, and my rifle ammo would disappear whenever I unequipped it. This happened towards the end of the build, so it wasn't a huge deal, but definitely something to note for the devs. Audio is strong so far too, with crisp sound effects and weapon sounds that are good but might be mixed a hair too low, and an appropriately moody, intense soundtrack to score the action. There's a few things I do think could use some work between now and the final version. I'm not crazy about how the mutants look. To me, they look like cheap walking mannequins, which for some is probably nightmare inducing, but doesn't really do all that much for me, other than make me wish that they're a rough first pass. And it would be good to have hand models for the weapons. As you can see, the weapons are currently floating in the air, and I'm gonna take a wild guess here and say our playable character is not invisible. This doesn't necessarily bother me all that much, but I do know some players find this to be an irritating choice in other shooters. And yeah, unless there's a motivated creative reason behind this, if you can render the hands, then you should render the hands. The press release I received for Kvark says the game is an homage to Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, and Wolfenstein 3D. And yeah, those influences can definitely be felt, but after playing through the beta, I'd say the game is way closer to something like Half-Life. Kvark's combat is not about speedily rampaging through arenas and circle-strafing enemies to oblivion. No, Kvark emphasizes cramped, focused gunplay. And since gun-wielding enemies are accurate and deadly, it's typically wise to fall back, take cover, and pick off enemies as they come. In fact, any time I found myself surrounded, it was a guarantee a checkpoint reload was soon to come. Also like Half-Life, Kvark is not a level-to-level affair, but rather a continuous journey where your progression revolves around navigational puzzles, like navigating a railcar through an underground tunnel system. A big thing to note is that the game does use a fixed save system. Not my favorite thing in the world, but so far it's used to break up smaller sections, smaller loops, where if you die, you don't have to repeat too much progress. Where it is annoying, though, is let's say you trigger the save, collect a bunch of ammo, and upgrade your character, then die. Well, after you reload, you're gonna have to recollect that ammo and re-upgrade your character. No, you cannot trigger the save point more than once. Oh yeah, you can upgrade your character! While exploring and scavenging, I came across glowing syringes that can be used to increase your health, strengthen your durability, or make your weapons more powerful. Right now I feel like I have to play further into the game and see more of these upgrades to have more of a firm opinion, but I do appreciate having this system. So how is the combat? It's getting there. The mechanics of combat are fun, the way weapons fire is enjoyable, and I did like the lean into more defensive cover-based fighting. Gun-wielding enemies and drones especially can make short work of you, and popping out of cover, dodging their bullets, and getting a flurry of shots off brought some fun intensity. Some of the best moments in the build was fending off enemies while trying to solve a navigational puzzle, like hunting down switches for a locked door with each one bringing a fresh ambush. My one big issue though is that throughout the build I kept encountering the same formation of enemies over and over and over. A single file line of around 2-4 charger types with a single gun wielder in the back. The idea, I think, is that the chargers block you from killing the considerably more dangerous gunner. The first time I ran into this I was caught off guard. I scrambled to dodge the gunner's bullets while trying to stay away from the others. However, the 12th time I ran into this it was, oh, okay, let's just run back through the doorway and drop them one by one. Bing bang boom. As I said in the beginning, this early access build lasts around 3 hours, and I'd say 80% of its combat involved this formation, and the more I had to take it on, the less exciting it became. In fact, it got downright repetitive. Enemies are also pretty spongy, soaking up quite a bit of damage before going down, and headshots don't seem to do extra damage. Unload all the bullets and shells into their domes as you want. It's not going to speed up the process. So by the end of my three hours with Kvark, not only did taking on this formation of enemies feel boring, it also felt like a chore. I'm also a little surprised there isn't more of a focus on exploiting enemy weak points, because enemies seem to be naturally designed for it. As I showed before, it takes a lot of headshots to bring down the hazmat suits, which feels silly to me and unsatisfying. But then the mutants have these glowing stomachs that they pull their projectiles from, and every time I saw them I instinctually shot at it thinking it would trigger an explosion or something. But no. You do see something like this for the drones. Shooting them spins them around, revealing a weak point that will destroy them instantly. I feel like having an aspect like that for most or all of the enemies would give some fun dimension to the combat. Now in all fairness, this is early access and a beta build. Everything you see here is a work in progress. But my hope is that the final version addresses this with more variety in enemies, their formations, and a little more dimension to make the combat feel less repetitive. There are certainly things Kvark needs to work on, but this early access build does show potential and the work put into it is certainly talented. Do I think it's worth jumping into now? No. I need to see how the combat and enemy roster will evolve before I'm comfortable recommending it. Because right now, while the mechanics are enjoyable and level design engaging, the repetition of killing a line of enemy sponges over and over makes this current build run out of steam fast, and it would be a bummer if Chapter 2 was more of the same. Kvark does not have a release date yet, but the game is slated for release on PC and all the consoles. PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Series X and S, and Nintendo Switch. What are your thoughts on Kvark? Be sure to let me know down in the comments. If you dug the video, please be sure to subscribe, like, share, and smack that bell. If you want to come say hi, my Discord is linked below, along with my affiliate links. I'm Kirk, and thank you for watching this video. Stay safe out there.