Diabotical Rogue – FZ.se

Diabotical Rogue has the most interesting game mode I've tried in a shooter in a very long time. And the more I play, the more impressed I am.

It's called Wipeout, and in short, you play four against four and have to knock out (or frag, as it's called – bonus points immediately!) the entire opposing team. The twist is that each time you die, it takes longer to respawn, and when all players on one team are eliminated at the same time, the other team wins the round. The first team to four rounds won takes home the match. At first it's annoying (“it's not enough that I die, now I get to play less!”), but soon I realize what exciting matches this leads to.

Because you can have the upper hand and try to hunt down the last opponent. But if it takes too long, the opponents will come back. and suddenly your team is spread out and vulnerable. A bang and boom later, the announcer says “Alone!”, which means that you yourself are the last one left. Then it's instead about playing smart, sneaking and meshing until the teammates are back on the court. The pressure rises immediately.

The matches turn in an instant, often several times, and you can never relax or count on anything being decided. And the longer the match goes on, the more exciting and tense it gets! Being the last one left against an opponent in a decisive duel when the rest of the participants are watching is as scary as it is wonderful feeling (conclusion: I lost unfortunately…) I can really see other games screwing this up in the future.

“The fact that it works depends on the fact that everything depends on skill”

That it works depends on the fact that everything depends on skill. There are no microtransactions, nothing to unlock – just jump in and enjoy. There are three different classes (heavy Chunkbot, mobile Scoutbot, and healing Eggbot). They work exactly as you'd probably guess, but each has different movement abilities (big jump, grapple, teleport to friend), various weapons and different power-ups. Before each round you can buy cards that give small buffs to weapons and abilities, and by playing you collect credits to buy more things with. This also allows you to strategically choose to wait to buy, and then be extra strong in later rounds. The only small RNG influence in the game is that you get three different cards to choose from – if you are not satisfied, you can wait until the next round.

Regardless of which class you play, you influence the matches a lot. I haven't noticed any one class dominating; rather, it is skilled players who do. The abilities are reasonably strong, and you have to practice using them correctly – too soon, and you've wasted it, too late, and you're dead. Again: player skill decides, usually to my detriment. But it's still fun!

“Again: player skill decides”

There are a handful of maps, and visually they're fine, but geometrically they're very interesting. Hallways and corridors cross each other, become open spaces and rise in several floors. They help make the matches good – it's never a deadlocked positional war, and you can't camp in any one place. At the same time, there are opportunities to sneak away and try to avoid the enemy if you are last against three or four opponents. And if you learn to play tactically around the teleport, you get an advantage.

The little thing I could possibly complain about is the lack of a kill cam – I want to see how the opponent outsmarted me and learn from it. A clear comm-wheel might also have helped when driving with unknown players (you can ping and there is voice chat). But on the plus side: I haven't noticed any technical problems at all.

Diabotical Rogue is something as rare as a very well-thought-out shooter that does things better than many other games – and that's only in early access. It not only attracts me to fragging Poles here, but I think the game also has all the ingredients to become a viewer-friendly esport in the future. Hopefully Diabotical Rogue delivers on everything the game promises at this early stage.

Footnote: Diabotical Rouge was released in early access on Steam and Epic on June 5th.
Test computer: Ryzen 5 2600X, RTX 2060 Super, 16 GB RAM.