SPRAWL review — Off the walls

SPRAWL is the perfect example of an “if you love that, you’ll love this” game. It borrows directly from a few different titles but does so effectively and tastefully. Frenetic shootouts and advanced movement techniques are the name of the game for this first-person shooter, so if that’s not your cup of tea, steer clear of SPRAWL. However, if you enjoy games like Titanfall 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops III, and Doom Eternal, you’ll have a great time with this one.

SPRAWL is the brainchild of MAETH, a small two-person development team. MAETH describes the game as a “hardcore retro FPS set in an endless cyberpunk megalopolis”. The development team also claims the game was heavily influenced by games like Titanfall and Quake, which is immediately noticeable through the game’s emphasis on wall-running, sliding, and “push forward combat”. All of these elements became mainstream in recent years thanks to the first-person shooter genre’s surge in popularity. MAETH created SPRAWL as a sort of love-letter to the movement shooter, combining elements of many different games to create something new and unique.

The ins and outs of the game’s story are not very important. Honestly, there aren’t really any complexities to speak of. You’re here for the shooting after all. Nevertheless, there is some narrative framework here to give purpose to the slaughter. SPRAWL is set in an endless dystopian megalopolis controlled by a corporate government known as Junta. Junta isn’t your average Amazon or Google clone. They’re focused on weapons manufacturing, human cybernetics, and marshall law – generally some pretty nasty work. You play as Seven, a highly augmented super assassin capable of wall-running, slowing down time, and handling an arsenal of devastating weaponry. After a betrayal by your former Junta allies at the start of the game, a mysterious voice begins communicating with you and ushering you further into enemy territory and enabling your onslaught.

As you can probably tell by now, the story of SPRAWL is little more than an excuse to shoot ugly bad guys to bits in slow motion. The Junta forces are made up of nameless drones shouting intimidating gibberish during standard encounters and boss battles in an attempt to flesh out the world and make you feel better about riddling them with bullets. Don’t think too hard about what is happening, why you travel to certain locations, and definitely don’t go into this expecting the next Cyberpunk 2077, because narratively, that’s just not what this is. 

On the other hand, SPRAWL’s presentation is a strong suit. The art style is reminiscent of a drab, pixelated urban hellscape that just screams dystopia. All of the enemy designs look like something out of Wolfenstein or Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade, and are intimidating to look at. The music of SPRAWL is incredible as well. Composed by one of the two developers, each track is dark and dirty as they are made up of hard-hitting industrial music. Admittedly, I’ve been listening to the soundtrack in the gym. It’s one of those.

The game is structured strictly around combat scenarios and some incredibly light parkour, similar to most movement shooters. The campaign is short – honestly a bit disappointingly short, as SPRAWL is a blast to play, with my playthrough only lasting about four hours. It is a linear campaign made up of around 90 percent combat arenas and 10 percent parkour challenges. Luckily there are a few more game types available for some bite-sized fun, including a challenging horde mode and a number of movement-based time trials. The campaign is separated into three acts, with each getting shorter as you progress. I would have loved just one more act to really show off my newfound skills, but I enjoyed the campaign regardless.

Since each encounter is a new shootout, mastering your traversal capabilities and arsenal is essential. Seven has quite a few abilities at her disposal. The most important is the ability to run along walls and jump between parallel flat surfaces. We’ve seen this many times in things like Titanfall and Black Ops III, but here it feels increasingly encouraged. Most arenas are bowl-shaped or feature plenty of flat surfaces at different elevations to allow for fast-paced destruction. You also move faster when wall-running, in turn making you harder to hit and incentivizing quick movements. Wall-running is extremely satisfying and equally as lethal, turning you into a ninja the minute your feet touch a vertical surface. Though effective, the wall-running can sometimes feel a bit “sticky”. Sometimes it feels as if you turn into a magnet as soon as you get close to a wall, forcing you to start a wall-run even if that wasn’t the plan. Nevertheless, this ability is the highlight of SPRAWL’s movement techniques.

Seven’s also has the ability to slow down time with the click of the right mouse button. This enables a bullet-time state that is charged by a meter. Slowing down time is extremely useful in SPRAWL; I found myself using this ability more than any other. In bullet-time you are able to dodge incoming fire, focus on enemy weak points, switch weapons on the fly, and combo different damage types together. Plus, as an added bonus, it’s impossible for a slow-motion gunfight to not look cool in this context.

The final movement abilities available to Seven are somewhat harder to master. Rocket-jumping, or shotgun-jumping in this case, is a valid movement technique here. It is identical to the Quake strategy of the same name: shoot a high caliber weapon beneath you, fly forward at insane speeds. Being able to shoot at the ground under your feet and propel yourself in any direction is useful in helping to get in and out of engagements quickly, though it is a hard skill to master. Bunny-hopping, or sliding into a jump and then quickly sliding again to sort of “hop” around the battlefield, is also possible within SPRAWL. Made popular by Titanfall 2’s movement pros, this technique is the definition of easy to learn, hard to master. I was able to get a basic grip on this ability but nowhere close to true mastery. I wish I could pull off crazier combos using these abilities in tandem but honestly I’m satisfied with knowing how to control them at all. Additionally, while these advanced techniques are useful and flashy, they are not imperative to the overall experience. I would say they serve more as a ceiling for advanced players rather than integral kit abilities like wall-running and bullet-time.

“Well what good are movement abilities without weapons to shoot while you move?” is what I would be asking myself if Seven didn’t have access to a sweet arsenal of weapons, including a shotgun, minigun, dual pistols, rocket launcher, a sword, and more. Each weapon serves a distinct purpose, some dealing explosive damage to enemies that are only affected by explosions, others deal ballistic damage to humanoid enemies permeable to kinetic weapons. Some are used for big damage while others are used to pepper your foes. Though none of the weapons truly steal the show, they are all extremely satisfying to combo and pop heads with.

One area I found slightly lacking in SPRAWL is enemy variety. I would say there are somewhere between 9-12 different enemy types not counting three boss-level enemies. All of them kind of just beeline towards dealing damage in a handful of ways. They more or less just run around waiting to be cut down, which would be fine if there were more types. Besides some using submachine guns, some using shotguns, and a few drones and turrets for good measure, none of them feel as though they serve a purpose besides acting as fodder. I think a few more unique and truly threatening enemy types would have served the combat loop well.

Performance-wise, SPRAWL ran great on my 3060. Very few frame drops, impressive draw distances, and zero crashes ensured this was a silky-smooth experience from start to finish. 

SPRAWL is what you get when you love the FPS genre so much that you just have to make a game. A love letter to its contemporaries, this short but sweet shooter is a pure adrenaline rush from start to finish full of death-defying kills for those willing to commit themselves to the breakneck pace. A few more enemy types and a slightly longer campaign would have gone a long way, but overall, I really enjoyed my time with this game.

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