I don't know what devil the dev team had to sell their soul to in order to get this to run on GZDOOM, but holy crap is it technically impressive. Even completely ignoring that, it's a phenomenal game, with the gun feel, movement, and enemy AI fine tuned to a T. It plays a lot like the F.E.A.R. games, with aggressive AI that operate in squads and dish out pain if you let them get even a couple bursts on you. It's a constant game of maneuvering to fight as few of them as possible at any given moment, and in the late game they start coming in numbers that makes that challenging. The devs clearly know that fighting squads is where the best gameplay is, as every level is designed to have mostly enclosed spaces with lots of walls, doors, and other chokepoints to help you funnel and flank enemies. The few more open arenas only show up after you get the sniper rifle, which gives a fun break from the close-quarters stuff and doesn't overstay its welcome. Everything in these fights gives off major hard-boiled vibes. Particle effects and destructible props turn everything into a cacophony of meaty gun sounds, gibs, explosions, chaos, and frantic twitch moments. Did I mention this is GZDOOM? Because that's just crazy.

When not in the thick of things the game plays a lot like half-life and other linear shooters but with old-school secrets. Though the ones that have upgrades are pretty easy to find, and it's not necessary to focus on them if you prefer not to. The pacing is well done, with slow build ups and exploration before the area you're poking around in inevitable turns into a shooting gallery.

My only criticism, which is intended to be entirely constructive, is that the narrative is hard to follow. The story is primarily told through journals, which are well written but probably not something everyone will read. It's also hard to tell what your motivation is (beyond the obvious weird alien kill teams want you dead) or why you're going from point A to B. What makes the story of games like half-life memorable is having clear objectives drip fed to you on the journey. Perhaps a person in your ear rarely feeding you major objectives would give more sense of purpose to what you're doing, or if that's not appealing just give Dawn minor internal monologue about what she needs to do. I think that'd be way better then the current checklist objectives that pop up on your hud (that I found myself almost entirely ignoring). I have a suspicion the devs may know all this and are saving a more integrated story for later releases in case they want to reorder things. Not sure though.

Despite this being early access, I think it's still well worth the price. Here's hoping the next two chapters are just as good!