Developed and published by Gaming Factory, SlavicPunk: Oldtimer is Blade Runner-esque cyberpunk shooter that has too many flaws and missed opportunities to be good.

“SlavicPunk: Oldtimer is an isometric shooter video game, based upon the works of Michał Gołkowski, a renown Polish science-fiction and fantasy books author. It is him who created the story of Yanus – a private investigator with a troubled past, now trying to solve an unexpected case revolving around a stolen data carrier, all this while fighting his own inner demons, the urban gangs and a nigh-omnipotent corporation responsible for the downfall of the city he used to call his own.”

I believe that this was released on PC last year, but now it has been given a console port. Right off the bat, this game suffers from what a lot of other PC-to-console ports do, tiny font syndrome. Why devs, why do you do this? There is a lot of text in the game too – which you can’t read because the font is so tiny. There is an option to increase the UI size but as you may have already guessed, that just increase the size of the UI. There is text everywhere in this game too. NPCs talk to each other, you get messages pop up in the corner of the screen, communications that further the plot, etc… can’t read any of them. I would love to tell you more about the story and characters, but the tiny text makes that next to impossible.

See that tiny text in the corner? No idea what it says. The gameplay of SlavicPunk: Oldtimer is, at heart, a twin-stick shooter and it plays exactly how you think it will play. I do like a good twin-stick shooter too, it is just a shame that this one is bogged down with bizarre game design choices that ruin it. First, weapon upgrades. You can find and buy multiple upgrades for your guns, but then the game forces you to limit what upgrades you can use. As an example, each upgrade has three levels. Let’s say you have the incendiary upgrade for your shotgun and you have the level three one, you can only equip up to one level three upgrade at a time. Got a level three ammo upgrade that you want to use too? Nope, can’t have both. Each gun can only have up to a third level in total, so you can have three level one upgrades, a level two and one upgrade, or just a level three. Look, I put the time and effort into finding the upgrades, I scoured the map for money to buy them, I should be able to equip all the upgrades I want. The restrictive upgrades really ruin what could’ve been a more fun experience.

Then there are the upgrades for the main character, I can’t tell you much about him due to the tiny text that can’t be read, but I believe he is cybernetic – so a perfect chance to have some great futuristic upgrades. Nope, the only thing you can do is increase your health and stamina. So the upgrade system is too restrictive, but perhaps the biggest flaw is the really stupid camera/graphics blocking your view. As you can tell from the trailer and screenshots here, SlavicPunk: Oldtimer goes for a top-down/isometric-type thing. As you walk around, plenty of overhead scenery will block your view. Overhead walkways, lights, cables, pipes and such. These things are slightly annoying, not too bad but still slightly annoying. However, buildings and walls can block your entire view…

See what I mean? I have no idea what is going on there, and I was playing the game to get that screenshot too. Not only that, there is this really obnoxious and annoying blurring effect that makes your already impossible to see what is going on problem – even more impossible to see what is going on. There’s no in-game map, so you have to try to memorise where any shops are. There’s a lot of crate looting, no idea what I was picking up because the font is so tiny. At around £15, SlavicPunk: Oldtimer doesn’t come with an expensive price tag but even if I look past all of the issues listed above, what you are left with is a very mediocre shooter with about a 4-5 hour length before the end credits. There’s just not enough depth of gameplay, and what gameplay is here is very mundane and too simplistic. Great setting, below-average and uninspired gameplay.