The hype surrounding Trepang2 may be a little difficult to understand if you weren’t there. There’s an equal mix of nostalgia and reverence for the era of FPS games that littered the early to mid-2000s: the genre had firmly established itself beyond being a series of “Doom clones” by this point, and coinciding with exponential computing power every passing year, large and small studios alike loaded their guns and fired out creative IPs at a breakneck pace. F.E.A.R., The Darkness, Halo, Half-Life 2, Far Cry, and the technical powerhouse Crysis remain beloved classics from this era, not just for their technological innovations but for the genuine fun they brought to the table. Following the ongoing “boomer shooter revival” that saw both old and new shooters ripped from the 1990s brought to the modern day, it was only a matter of time before someone would do the same for the slightly less defined era of experimentation.
Thus, Trepang2. With a review code generously provided, we found it necessary to share why this glitzy, horror-tinged shooter has struck a chord with a contemporary audience. Published by Team17, who you may recognize from either the Worms franchise or their separate independent titles, and developed by Trepang Studios, Trepang2 is easily one of the most explosive FPS games of 2023 thus far. But why did it earn this reputation so quickly?
Why don’t we start with the premise? In a decidedly modern way, Trepang2 cuts to the chase: you are a nameless soldier, only ever referred to as Subject 106. Following 106’s capture and subsequent rescue from the Horizon Corporation, a mysterious band of mercenaries called the Syndicate is already waiting at the exit with a helicopter in tow. After an express trip to Syndicate’s base of operations, 106 finds himself with little to do other than getting revenge, going on a globetrotting murder spree as the Syndicate attempts to disrupt Horizon’s operations. But things aren’t all they seem, and Horizon, in particular, seems to be toying with forces beyond human understanding.
That’s about the broad strokes, minus one key detail: you’re a super-soldier, blessed with the ability to slow down time, the strength to kick heads off, and the capability to turn invisible in a fraction of a second.
Trepang2 has been compared to a multitude of games, but time and time again, the same name always pops up: F.E.A.R. But, the comparisons between Trepang2 and F.E.A.R. are absolutely warranted. Trepang2 sees 106 stomping through underground facilities, medical bays, research bases, dilapidated mines, and more while firing off a variety of guns into an equally colorful cast of shouting, expletive-laden mercenaries. Just about everyone, with only a handful of exceptions, are completely faceless, either hidden behind balaclava masks or tactical headgear akin to the replica soldiers found in F.E.A.R. Your arsenal, comprised of FPS staples like pistols, sub-machine guns, assault rifles, and a few options for heavier weapons and throwables, even match up with the munitions found in F.E.A.R. as well. A certain gun, appropriately named the Penetrator, even has the same functionality as F.E.A.R’s counterpart, the 10mm HV Penetrator.
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But while F.E.A.R. emphasized more of a tactical, cautious approach by the player, bolstered by the presence of a lean function to safely attack from cover, Trepang2 feels more in line with the aggressive, close-quarters focus of Crysis instead. In F.E.A.R., every combat encounter would feel like a game of chess boxing: you’d enter a room, either aware of the enemy’s presence or vice versa and against groups of anywhere between 3 to 5 soldiers, you’d find the best way to systematically take them down one after another. In Trepang2, things are a bit different as you’re essentially a demigod.
106 has a variety of ways to dispatch his enemies. A lot of ways, actually. Starting off with 106 himself, his two biggest tools you’ll be using are his powers: slowing down time and cloaking. Leaning isn’t an option in Trepang2, and the areas you fight in are often open enough for enemies to quickly surround your position. Thus, cloaking is your go-to option for safely maneuvering around the battlefield. 106 turns completely invisible for a short amount of time, only turning visible once you attack an enemy, manually turn invisibility off, or your accompanying meter runs out. This meter continually recharges when not in use, and should you manually deactivate your cloak, you’ll have to wait for a full recharge. On the offensive side, you have your ability to slow time: recharged through killing enemies, it allows you to manually walk out of the path of bullets, blow up grenades in mid-air, manually target weak points with ease, and otherwise make your life easier. You’re free to turn this ability on and off as you please, as long as there’s enough charge left in the meter.
Outside of these powers, melee combat has a surprising prominence in just about every encounter. Aside from simple strikes, you’re encouraged to knock down enemies with kicks, which can be initiated by either sprinting or jumping before attacking. A dedicated slide button also fulfills this purpose. Aside from the hilarious image of a super-soldier drop-kicking a hapless mercenary in the chest like they were in a wrestling match, it also presents a few opportunities to deal with the enemy in their stunned state. You can pummel them further, fire a quick shot into their head, or even grab them.
This time, borrowing a mechanic from Crysis, you can grab stunned or unaware enemies to utilize as human shields. Your mobility will take a dive, but you’ll be given a better ability to stay out in the open until your shield perishes. If you’d like, you can do one of three things with your human shield: you can simply throw them into anything and everything, which is fun enough on its own; you can instantly finish them with an execution attack; or you can pull a grenade pin on their person and turn them into an improvised explosive. The latter is essential for making space in some of the more challenging encounters, as you’ll either kill whatever is riddling you with bullets outright or send them running for a few moments.
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Guns! Everyone loves guns, and though you’re limited to carrying two at a time, you’ll eventually unlock the ability to dual-wield two guns of one type a little more than halfway through the game. Despite feeling initially limited, you’ll find that each firearm complements a certain play style: the limited ammo reserve of the assault rifle and the modest accuracy of the pistol encourages conservative and accurate shooting. Meanwhile, the ability to rain brass down with a sub-machine gun or instantly incapacitate most enemies with a shotgun encourages you to be constantly on the run, grabbing ammo from the dead during your approach. But you won’t be able to rely on either strategy for an extended period, forcing you to make changes on-the-fly. This is especially true for the game’s more open areas.
The levels themselves vary significantly in size, which is appreciated. A complaint still lobbed towards F.E.A.R. is that the constant office complexes and practical backdrops were a little dull visually and confusing to navigate at certain points. Trepang2 often shakes things up with wide arenas set on oil rigs and open fields, separated by tight corridors and claustrophobic, winding paths. If you spend enough time looking around, you may even find an extensive series of lore entries, which give some much-needed context to the game’s story.
Trepang2‘s story is presented less as a linear narrative in lieu of a mission-based structure. The main campaign is split into less than half-a-dozen missions with a few side tasks to provide some additional story details. Each mission will typically see you taking down some kind of supernatural entity that Horizon is attempting to wrangle control of, and you’ll get to make a mess of Horizon’s operations along the way. We won’t spoil any twists and turns for you here, but it’s not exactly groundbreaking. Let’s just say that if you have any reservations about suddenly working for a (literally and figuratively) faceless organization that just so happens to have a nuclear bomb stashed in its main building, you may just be onto something. Thankfully, the ability to replay missions means you can freely re-live any of them with your newly acquired equipment or conquer them on a higher difficulty. Many unlockable items are tied directly to this, with new customization options, weapons, and even cheat codes being some of the prizes you can unlock.
That’s right! Cheat codes, a foreign concept nowadays, are abundant. While they come with a few restrictions, you’ll find just about everything accounted for — goofy rag-dolls, excessive gore, disabling certain abilities, and even a special sandbox mode with a few extra surprises are more fantastic additions to the Trepang2 experience. One cheat code even enables the ability to utilize each gun’s built-in sights.
A common critique of Trepang2 is a notable lack of “ADS” or “aim-down sights.” A modern convention that’s used to trade better accuracy at longer distances for more trouble up close, the existence of ADS actually feels a bit counter-intuitive to what the game is trying to accomplish. Engaging targets at long distances is treated less as a regular thing and more of a unique challenge to overcome: it’s one of the few times you’re forced into a situation wherein you’re at a clear disadvantage, meaning you’ll have to use all your available tools to the best of your ability. While ADS is available through unlockable weapon attachments, it’s considered more of a side-grade than a direct upgrade.
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Speaking of which: attachments. Customization is king in Trepang2 and in addition to picking the color of your gloves, sleeves, pant legs, and boots — which is wholly unnecessary but a thoughtful addition nonetheless — attachments can be placed on just about every gun in your arsenal at dedicated stations. The attachments often introduce a benefit for your gun in exchange for performing worse elsewhere. For example, folding the stock up on your shotgun will increase the weapon’s recoil after firing but slightly lessen its lengthy reload time. The reverse is true for unfolding the stock. Similarly, laser sights will increase weapon accuracy but give your position away more easily; silencers will make stealth a more viable approach but will lessen your damage and accuracy overall. Some attachments even introduce unique properties, such as exchanging raw damage for the ability to set enemies on fire.
You’ll often be swapping weapons in and out at the hub area, the Syndicate’s base of operations, between missions. While it’s admittedly a little annoying having to pull a switch every time to enter the building, the contents inside are a sight to behold. You’ll be greeted by the Quartermaster before and after every mission, with the Director occasionally chiming over the intercom to approve of your progress. From there, there are a few main attractions to seek out: the map room, which holds a mission select menu and a poster board of rare enemies; your locker, which houses your outfit customization; and the combat simulator, a surprisingly robust mini-game wherein you’re tossed into a map to survive against escalating waves of enemies, utilizing money gained from surviving to spend on weapons and tools. There’s also a shooting range wherein all your unlocked weapons are freely accessible to bring into your next mission. Along with ammo to restock your supply, you’re free to experiment as you please with the various practice dummies strewn throughout the range.
The game’s difficulty may take a bit to get used to. There’s ample room for mistakes to be made, don’t get us wrong: you have a pool of both health and armor available, with the latter dropping from defeated enemies and both being available at set points on the map. While secrets are few and far between, you’ll typically be rewarded for keeping a keen eye on your surroundings with additional ammunition and other pickups. But even with these crutches, you’re in for a bit of a ride on “Hard” and above. This is undoubtedly amplified by the game’s focus on close to medium-range combat. As easy as it would be to hide in one spot and pick mercenaries off from a distance, you’ll rarely find an opportunity to do so. You’ll need some quick reflexes, map awareness, and twitchy fingers to survive.
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After all, you don’t have a choice: you’re up against some pretty stiff competition. While the AI in Trepang2 isn’t a miraculous happy accident like the AI in F.E.A.R., they’re still a cut above your typical FPS fodder. Attempting to hide and sneak around will be met with incredibly bright flares. You’ll be frequently flushed from cover via grenades, and squads of enemies will waste no time in training their bullets directly onto you at close range. Those carrying shotguns and assault rifles instead of smaller munitions are especially dangerous as their armor tends to block a notable amount of damage. Heavier enemies, recognizable for their large armor and explosive oxygen tanks, also tend to ignore your gunfire in its entirety in favor of plowing through and peppering you with buckshot. You’ll even be fighting a handful of supernatural, horror-themed enemies throughout, ranging from vomiting zombies, deranged cultists, and sound-dampening ghosts.
Like F.E.A.R., the horror elements aren’t really as strong. Barring a few exceptions, they’re here to add a bit more flair to each individual mission: you’ll remember them less by name and more by connecting them to whatever ghoul or ghost was prominent throughout. “That one mission with the zombies,” “That one mission with the ghosts,” “That one mission with the jump-scares,” and so on. It’s admittedly not as cohesive as some of the other games that Trepang2 draws inspiration from. However, a certain mission towards the end of the game will hold some terrific surprises for those who enjoy online horror content. We dare not say more. Thankfully, if scares aren’t your thing, Trepang2 has other ways of incorporating other grim elements into its gameplay.
Gore hounds rejoice as Trepang2 also shares a surprising number of similarities with Soldier of Fortune. As in, an absurd amount of detail is put into how enemies die. Most enemies, upon dying, will enter a prolonged “twitching” state wherein their limbs and digits will reflect their thousands of brain synapses, all firing at once. Firing off a few more bullets will end this animation prematurely. Locational damage is also alive and well, with each limb able to be blown into individual sections based on how much lead you pump into them. And yes, if you were to fire off your shotgun point-blank into some unsuspecting mercenary, they will turn into a pile of red goo.
Speaking of turning things into goo, the soundtrack will do the same thing for your ears. Taking notes from the techno metal popularized by the likes of Mick Gordon’s Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal soundtracks, Brandon McKagan has contributed almost two hours of original compositions that make up Trepang2‘s soundscape. Yes, you’ll find the hard-hitting, chugga-chugging grooves of distorted guitars and bass accompanied by thudding drums. But there’s an equal amount of ambient bleeps and bloops, combined with orchestral accompaniments, that give each track a grandiose feeling. With occasional ambient breaks, you’ll hear most tracks start and stop with the flow of combat, syncing up with the constant barrage of bullets in the most satisfactory ways. It makes the few quieter moments feel all the more powerful as a result. Some standout tracks include: “Furnace Tension,” “Pillar of Anomalies,” “Hidoi,” “Waterworks,” “Hoods,” “Patty,” and “Server Technician.”
Trepang2 isn’t perfect by any means. There’s rarely a product that is. The game does a lot, and for the most part, it works brilliantly. But some parts don’t stack up as well compared to others. Boss fights leave a bit to be desired, with most devolving into dumping lead into the bosses’ heads until they die and others fizzling out into a circle, strafing things to death, or just waiting in place for an enemy to attack. There’s little in the means of conveying a sense of progression, with the dual-wielding upgrade mentioned earlier being the only one of its kind. For comparison, F.E.A.R. allocated upgrades to extend the size of your health and the time you can spend in slow-motion. Barring the ticking of boxes amid the potential to discover a secret ending, there’s not much the story is building toward, minus some occasional boss dialog. Some may also dislike the game’s length: for a modest $30, it took a bit over six hours to acquire half the lore entries, play a few of the combat simulator maps, and complete every mission (including side missions) on Hard. While it’s better to be left wanting more than slogging through something too long, it’s still worth addressing.
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Speaking of which, a minor footnote should be mentioned: Trepang2‘s technical performance. On “High,” the second-highest setting for the game’s graphics, frame drops and other issues were practically nonexistent on a refurbished Nvidia 2060 card. An Intel i5-8400 CPU managed the game’s plentiful physics objects with no major issues, even when corpses would hilariously clip into the surrounding environment.
Ultimately, there’s a reason why Trepang2 comfortably sits with thousands of positive reviews on Steam at the moment. Similarly to how Dusk filled the niche of those longing for the days of Quake and vertex animation, Trepang2 brings us back to the days of experimentation, an approach of throwing just about anything at the wall and seeing what sticks. In a rare instance, however, just about everything that matters in Trepang2 does, in fact, stick at only half the cost of what an equivalent game would’ve been two decades ago. Is it worth recommending? Absolutely.
Trepang2 was officially released on Steam in June 2023, with plans for a PS5 and Xbox Series X/S release in November 2023.
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