The Red Solstice is a serious game with a steep initial learning curve for new players. With strong guides to the game and an encouraging online community with high involvement by its developers, new players can benefit from the wealth of knowledge only if they are willing to learn. Once initiated and educated in the mechanics of the game, you will be sufficiently rewarded with a survival horror game that sells on the high replayability aspect of Multiplayer.If online co-op mulitplayer is your cup of tea, do yourself a favor. Give this game a look and buy it.I am a fan of survival horror and co-operative team-based games and will be explaining this review based on my experiences. The idea of The Red Solstice stems from the ficitonal future where humanity lost Earth to a deadly virus and now inhabits Mars.GameplayA top down shooter where players control a single marine at any given time, using keyboard for navigate, camera, skill and inventory management and mouse for aiming and shoot. A simple setup but works really well given the game operates in real-time mostly and with fast fingers on a keyboard, you'll find yourself in better control of the flow of game.The game utilises a countdown timer and wave system to signal incoming waves of enemies that spawns at specific timings. From the start of a game, weak enemies such as zombies would spawn and time progresses, the subsequent waves would feature a variety of dangerous enemies that are capable of single-handedly wiped out a team if they are not prepared.Generic survival horror mechanics such as scavenging for items, ammo control are also important to survive beyond the first 10 minutes of a game.Single PlayerFollows the event that the virus outbreak occurs on a colony named Tharsis, with Tyler Hunt and his team being sent in to investigate. Here an exclusive game mechanic called Tactical Mode slows down time in game by 90% (aka 1 sec in reality = 10 secs in-game) allowing you to assume control your squad of marines. Since it is single player, you are the commander of the team and its individuals at all times where you can switch to otherwise ai controlled followers in Tactical Mode to access their inventories, skills, etc.The overall campaign is based on set events that are in place over the maps that you play but you will decide how to accomplish them. A simple description would be a sandbox style where player can employ multiple approaches to the objectives.MultiplayerThis segment continues where single player campaign ends and a squad of generic marines controlled by players are sent in to follow Tyler Hunt's footsteps. In this segment, player gain experience and rank up to unlock additional classes, skills and equipment to carry into battle.Players are also treated with the sandbox style of freedom in approaching objectives and the type of objectives and their locations are randomly generated so every other game feels different. On top of that there are additional game settings such as increasing drop rate of waves, shortening time between waves that can be selected before the start of a game so players can test themselves in various ways.Here, communications between members and leaders are crucial to be effective in the game as you no longer have a say in what other players choose to do. (Eg. Fail to ask for healing, you're gonna have a bad time) While team leaders are able chart routes to take and issue simple commands, there is an unofficial team speak channel at present maintained by one of the veteran players so players can speak to one another instead of using the in game chat.
