Cultic Chapter One Review: A Legacy Bound By Blood

Way back in the ye olde times of the 90’s there was a rather brilliant First Person Shooter called Blood. It had the player murdering their way through wave after wave of chanting cultists, gargoyles and demons with archaic weapons like a pitchfork and hairspray turned into a makeshift flamethrower. It felt wonderfully edgy in its day. Much like its 3D Realms contemporaries, it mixed a humorously acerbic one-liner-spouting protagonist with extreme violence. Now Jason Smith, the one-man band behind Jassoz Games, looks to provide a spiritual sequel to the FPS he loved as a child with Cultic, while boldly looking to change the formula in some key ways.

The game starts with a series of notes pinned on a board about mysterious kidnappings and disappearances somewhere in America during the sixties. There’s newspaper headlines about a spree of killings and the lead investigator of the case being removed under strange circumstances. There’s a badge and gun on the table as if what they represent is being left behind. A man drives out to a strange compound but an axe ominously appears behind him. Next thing you know, the protagonist awakes from a pit of bodies, looking at his hands with disbelief, with a second chance to get even with the elusive cult that’s caused so much pain and suffering.

Right from the first time I picked up a gun, I really appreciated it. Every weapon looks and sounds amazing, from the pained clank of shoving another magazine into the handgun to the beautifully detailed animation of the double-barreled shotgun yawning open to receive another pair of shells. Aptly for the setting, the weapons feel suitably sturdy and old-fashioned. There’s a bolt-action rifle that can blow off cultist heads in a single well-aimed shot before loading another bullet into the chamber with a satisfying “chonk”. 

All weapons are fully upgradable with parts you find through exploring the world. It really lets you perfect your own strategy. Improving the damage and accuracy of the basic handgun gives it more mileage and lets you conserve more scarce ammunition for later. On the other hand, adding a choke to the sawn-off shotgun can instantly turn it into a viable medium-range weapon as it reduces the bullet spread.

Much like in Blood, thrown projectiles are a huge source of fun and they can be used in exceptionally versatile ways. You can use a zippo lighter in one hand to provide some illumination in dark areas, but a much more fun use for it is to carry dynamite and molotov cocktails and use the lighter to prime them for throwing with explosive results. What’s more awesome is that the protagonist can even lash a molotov and dynamite together for an even bigger explosion. The process is dangerous and a little awkward, and I definitely blew myself up a couple of times trying to get the hang of it, but that’s the way it should be for handling such dangerous ordinance in a really haphazard way! It’s really satisfying to get the hang of timing your throws well and exploding whole cohorts of cultists. Dynamite can be thrown unlighted so the player can shoot it at a distance, using it as a jury-rigged trap or use the explosion to blast open cracked walls to access secret areas.

Jason Smith advertises Cultic as being very much a “play your own way” type of game and this really comes across in the weapons and how they’re balanced. Carefully using the dynamite to set traps and taking conservative shots from behind cover is just as viable as wading in, dodging past bullets and getting up close and personal with the shotgun. It was always fun using a mix of styles to get through each level.

Cultic’s baddies are particularly creepy, not only providing a varied challenge to the player, but each being genuinely unnerving in their own way. There’s a sizable complement of human opponents – shotgunners, pistoleers axe-throwers, snipers and even flamethrowers – giving you plenty to contend with in pitched shoot-outs. It’s the more supernatural baddies who really stuck out in my mind though. There’s a psychic cultist with a sack over his head who hovers above the ground, causing the protagonist slowed movement and blurred vision as he telekinetically throws chairs and barrels at you. There’s zombies who leap towards you at terrifying speed, and they elicited maximum scares from me when they were lurking in darkened forests, with my only illumination being the dim glow of my lighter.

What creeped me out the most though was the bulbous, headless monster that looks at first like a lumbering hulk before its entire upper body bisected into a gaping mouth and it ran towards me on all-fours with cheetah-like speed. Every enemy in the game is a masterful part of creating a dark ambience, placed perfectly to surprise you, and never just simple cannon fodder.

The story is slowly unravelled through scattered notes lying around, detailing how the cult took up residence in the area and its true motivations. They’re always cryptic, and mysterious, giving haunting hints about what lies ahead. There are no exposition dumps or long-winded speeches. The protagonist does not even speak. Cultic has a very lonesome “one man against the world” feel. There’s only one sentence of coherent English spoken to the protagonist in the entire episode, and it comes right at the end, but it’s all the more powerful and effective for it.

What I did like about Cultic is that there’s a much greater focus on building an eerie atmosphere than in Blood, with humour mostly discarded in favour of horror. With the often sharp polygons in the scenery and muted, filtered colour palettes, Cultic often looks a bit reminiscent of the early Alone in the Dark games and definitely has that same feeling of mystery and foreboding around every corner. Apparently, the aesthetic of Cultic was divisive for Blood fans during development, but there’s something about the washed-out look that fits perfectly with the 1960s setting. It gives the many locations, from mineshafts to spooky warehouses to haunted asylums, a sense of being part of the same journey. The music is absolutely stellar too. It switches up from an unsettling background unease to an intense battle in a really dynamic way.

I managed to finish off Cultic in two intense evenings of play, but I’m already itching to replay it and find some of the hidden goodies I missed the first time around or challenge myself at a harder difficulty. For the first chapter of an episodic series, the ten levels on offer are a decent offering to sink your teeth into. Pretty much the only downer I experienced with Cultic is that I can’t wait for the next episode!

Cultic is an astonishing achievement for a one-man studio. It has the creepy, sinister atmosphere of the finest horror titles, packed with the cathartic carnage of the best FPS games. It’s an odyssey into the heart of darkness, with the path blasted open by dynamite. Far more than just a worthy spiritual successor to Blood, Cultic is a descent into pure madness that you won’t want to miss.

Final Verdict: 4.5/5

Available on: PC(Reviewed); Publisher: 3D Realms; Developer: Jassoz Games, 3D Realms; Players: 1; Released: 12th October 2022

Full disclosure: This review is based on a review copy of Cultic Chapter One provided by the publisher.