Review: Dreamkiller (PC)

By Joe Haygood | November 4, 2009

After playing through Dreamkiller, I spent a week trying to put together the review for the game.  It is not like I hated the game, or overly liked the game, but it was more about me trying to place the game in a proper context.  Some will enjoy it, and some will hate it, but it does carve out a niche of its own, but only if you look at it as a throwback title to the FPS games of 5-10 years ago.

In Dreamkiller, you play as brooding psychotherapist Alice Drake, who has a unique ability to treat her patients’ phobias by entering their subconscious state, and battle their demons on their own plane of existence.  Each mission is presented with a diagnosis briefing that explains the type of phobia the person suffers from, and it does give you a few clues as to what you might end up battling in the dream world.  The story is a bit flimsy at best, as it serves more of a purpose to shift the player from one case to the next, but it does grab on to some real fears that affect many a gamer.  I mean, starting the game with a person that has a strong fear of spiders, or arachnophobia, is a realistic fear that many suffer from.

As I said, the story is just a way to get players from one battle plane to the next, and Dreamkiller makes no bones about being a throwback FPS title.  After playing through the first title, I found myself thinking of playing through titles like Quake, or closer in comparison, Serious Sam.  You will be bombarded with enemies from all angles, and the enemies are relentless.  And enemies do show a sense of intelligence, by sneaking up behind you, or flanking you while you get focused on a single enemy.  You will normally have three to five different enemies per level, and they all have a unique design to each level.  I found the creatures to be interesting, if only having rather generic textures.  I mean, one level has you battling in an office setting, and you are attacked by spiders, but they are made of paperclips, a great way to work a common enemy into a new setting.

Each level allows Alice to carry a melee attack and a ranged attack weapon.  Up close, I was using her power to shoot flame from her hands, while the range weapons will change up from a chain gun type weapon, to others, like a shotgun typed weapon.  The weapons have fancy names, and look different than their real world counterparts, but they are at heart, things like a chain gun or a shotgun.   The weapons seem a bit underpowered at times, especially when you get into some rooms where you get completely overwhelmed by enemies.

Visually, Dreamkiller is nothing to write home about.  It carries a dark, and washed out color palette, which I assume is done to represent being in someone’s dreams, but it just looks dull and uninspired.  I found a lot of the creature design varied and unique, but they all used rather dull textures, removing any sense of their cool design features.  The drab visuals does allow the game to run extremely nice on most PC’s, which could have been what the developer was looking for, but it seems like the world could have been made to look so much better.

Dreamkiller is being marketed as a budget title on the PC, and as such, does suffer from some big bugs and glitches.  I had one desktop crash while playing, the first day for an hour and a half.  Luckily this did not happen again, but there were moments where it seemed like the AI got confused, or just stopped working.  I had one level where I could have sworn I finished the section, but the door never opened.  I reloaded the level, and it worked fine.  Dreamkiller could have used a bit more time in the lab tightening all the screws before it was released.  It also does not help that Dreamkiller is being released in the middle of a very crowded release schedule, and with so much out there, the title will probably get overlooked by a lot of people.

Dreamkiller is an unapologetic throwback to the shooters of several years ago.  It is fast and furious, and you will be tested at every point in the game.  It can be a lot of fun when things are firing on all cylinders, but with the average visuals and nagging bugs, your frustration level will rise.  At the end of the day, Dreamkiller just plays out as an average shooter, and therefore, gets a 2.5 out of 5 Aeropausonauts.