Beyond Sunset is a fairly decent retro cyberpunk shooter and a fantastical journey through the story and sound, provided by Karl Vincent of a wild cyberpunk world. The world is bleak but so full of character, embodying the idea of synthwave / cyberpunk aesthetics weaved with a lot of DOOM.
This review covers the November 2023 Early Access Build.
This is one of the few games where the smooth door animations actually impress me. A world built around a strong cyberpunk theme waits for players to jump and slide their way through its streets and towering mega-skyscrapers.
If you’re at all into the music or the gameplay of DOOM, this is a definite purchase. If you need some more details, let’s dig in.
What is Beyond Sunset?
Built on GZDOOM, Beyond Sunset is a retro DOOM-like FPS with multiple hub maps, a full story driven campaign, inventory, RPG elements, side quests and NPCs. It’s not a DOOM type game in the sense that it’s not mindlessly going around and blasting at things. It’s DOOM in the sense the combat works in that same way where you only worry about left and right, not up and down.
Combat is beautiful. It’s hard to explain how DOOM could be more beautiful than it is but the fluid mobility that the game offers along with the really tight weapons gives you such satisfying gameplay. The graphics are gorgeous and the combat, especially as a samurai is fantastic.
The game explores a lot, including cyberspace and various mazes and puzzles. It all adds together to an experience that I think gives this generation of gamers a chance to experience the joy that DOOM had to offer everyone with the enhancements it deserves.
It loves throwing heaps of enemies at you which is satisfying.
Gameplay Loop and the Rocky Bits
Most of the game involves moving between story beats, exploring a large open world and taking out enemies left and right as you do. It’s not a linear based game, so much as more open world. The maps that you play through often will not put you so much into a boss fight, but more into an arena with lots and lots of enemies coming at you, making the game kind of challenging and a lot of fun.
The game suffers from being basically a DOOM engine game. The low-fi graphics smear when there’s a lot of activity. I didn’t find any crashes, etc. but I also played a later version exclusively.
The game isn’t just a shooter, it’s got a lot more to it and the cutscenes can be rather long. I love it though.
The developers are still active and still working on the game weeks after release.
Conclusion
If you love DOOM and synthwave and cyberpunk then get the game. If you don’t, then watch some videos and see before you dive in. Even if it’s your first time playing a retro FPS, it will likely be highly memorable. Well-polished and worth the price, we recommend Beyond Sunset.
A game key was provided by the publisher, but not used by the reviewer of this article.
