Review – Trepang 2

Trepang 2 is a first-person shooter by Trepang Studios and published by Team 17. The game follows a super soldier who has a personal vendetta against the biggest company in the world. The game combines different genres, such as boomer shooters with over-the-top gore much akin to Doom, the movement and speed of the Call of Duty: Black-Ops games, along with the narrative out of a Resident Evil game.

Content Guide

Spiritual Content: There is a fanatical cult that believes its leader to be a godlike entity with some willing to act as suicide bombers. The cult doesn’t have any depth to it as it mostly serves as an ally to the villain corporation in the game. The boss fight on the stage takes place in a church-like setting without any real religious symbolism.

Violence: The game offers the option to turn off gore in the combat of the game however it doesn’t turn off cutscene gore with one cutscene showing a person’s face bashed in.  The game is incredibly gory with blood and guts present in most combat. The game is littered with corpses and body parts on any given stage and enemies scream in pain when killed. Additionally, there is body horror in the game such as multiple bodies sewn together to form a flesh golem. The game also has verbal mentions of violence such as notes about characters dying in painful and gruesome ways. There is also a bonus option that makes the game even more gory however it is locked behind beating a stage on the hardest difficulty.

Language: The game contains every swear word and they are used semi-frequently. There are also instances of taking the Lord’s name in vain.

Sexual Content: There are instances of minor male nudity in art pieces that mirror Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. One of the game’s achievements also makes a 50 Shades of Grey reference as a joke.

Drugs and Alcohol: Some stages feature bars however the player character and those around him are not shown drinking. There is an instance where a fellow soldier tells the player character they owe him a drink after the events of the game are over and another instance of the player character injecting themselves with a dual-wielding drug through a syringe.

Review

Trepang 2 is a shooter that’s set in an alternate reality where Horizon Corporation, the leading biotechnology company, uses human experimentation along with numerous other illegal activities. It is up to the task force led by a shadowy leader to fight back against the injustice being faced by thousands of people. The player is tasked with cutting a carnage-strewn path through the organization to ultimately destroy it and everything it stands for. This is accomplished with unmitigated violence towards every facet of the organization. The super soldier the player controls has many abilities such as the ability to camouflage themselves and also slow down time to perform Matrix-like feats in combat.

Gameplay-wise Trepang 2 offers some unique abilities such as the ability to take enemies hostage and use them as either a living bomb by putting a grenade on them and throwing them into a group of enemies, or using them as a bullet shield, or just outright stealthily killing them. The gunplay of the game is solid though it is mostly hip-firing so sometimes accuracy can be an issue on guns without a scope however for the most part it’s resolved by using laser attachments. The game plays much like a mixture of Doom and classic Max Payne. Oftentimes the player can hunt for secrets such as data files to add to in-game lore or weapon attachments along with high-value targets to kill to cross them off the board in the HQ. Higher level difficulties of stages offer unique and new rewards as well such as attachments and high-value targets that are only available on them, giving incentive for replaying stages.

Trepang 2 also has various side quests often falling into survival missions that involve hacking data servers while the player stays alive with the ability to purchase upgrades and weapons by racking up kills. Along with the side missions, there is also a combat simulator that offers the player unique rewards based on the difficulty beaten. The training simulations play similar to the sidequests however they offer many more stages.

The narrative of Trepang 2 is not anything new however its execution is quite well done. It gives the game a good polish outside of its very compelling gameplay loop. The narrative mixes X-Files intrigue, with Resident Evil biological horror, and military-esque black-ops missions that wouldn’t be out of place in a Call of Duty entry.

Trepang 2’s graphics are high caliber. Every stage looks incredible, especially for being an indie game. The environments are all polished and visually impressive. The most notable instances are the castle stage and the Russian bunker.  While the UI of the game is on the basic side it serves its purpose and is not cluttered. The UI for gun modification is great as it mirrors many popular shooters by adding attachments and modifying skins.

Sound design is incredible in the game. Trepang 2 manages to capture the loudness that firing guns in different settings would sound like. The soundtrack of the game is diverse and is very high quality. Voice acting throughout the game is solid and never sounded as if it lacked direction or was unprofessional.

Overall Trepang 2 is a masterpiece of game design. The combat is fluid and enjoyable. The narrative while not overly memorable did offer multiple instances of surprises and plot twists. Graphically, the game was very impressive rivaling big-budget triple-A releases. The game’s sound design left nothing to be desired with masterful sound effects, a high-quality soundtrack, and good voice acting that made the game fully immersive. Support of the game is also ongoing with a new DLC release.