SELACO | "It's Kinda Complicated..." Early Access Review

I wanted to try the old demo, but couldn't because it didn't have gamepad support. I have a disability so I have to use my pad. I couldn't understand why it wasn't available because GZDoom has had amazing built in gamepad support for a very long time. So I went on the steam forum and made a post simply asking why they had turned off gamepad support. I said I thought the game looked awesome and was bummed I couldn't play the demo. The dev responded with a one word sentence: Yawn. Also, he had me permanently banned from the forum.
I'm playing the game right now. I didn't get it from steam, if you know what I mean. The game is really fun, but the dev is an asshole and also total genius who clearly doesn't need my money or support. lol.

Game is incredibly unbalanced, between the bland enemy visuals that blend into the chaos, their prefiring that is just a tad too over the line, the overabundance of visual clutter and bullet spongy designs.

The weapon roster feels bloated and confused, weapon switching needs to be much faster.
Enemy pain states more consistent.

Ai seems to just ran at you with a two way split for directions, its neat that they flank but the level design rarely compliments this.

Welp, I saw that one on steam frontpage and just skip it. Time to put it on wishlist then.

Your reviews are currently the most valuable to me, because I'll actually know if I'd like the game at hand.
We look for slightly different things in games, so you will often dislike something I like (or the other way around), but that's easy to account for.

havent seen the video yet does it mention the all ion fury ripoffs? gman did but only on the surface its actually lotsa more

I played it for a bit this weekend. I agree that the weapon switch speed needs to be increased. I think that the enemy encounters could be increased as well to balance this.

I agree with nearly everything you said

The movement and animations are too slow. This is meant to be a hectic game, so, apart from the gameplay benefits, the player ought to be frantically moving. It would make it much fairer and more fun.
I second the pacing issue - it definitely does feel like 'ah! things are gettting fun!' ... then it's over - this gets frustrating.
The story telling part is also lacking - getting to know who the player is, why they're doing what they're doing, what her main goal is. You can get a bit of a sense of this from reading data tablets - and I think this could be a great way to tell the majority of the story - but I agree, more is needed or clearer.
Enemy ambushes when backtracking would help a lot too - like you said
Visibility is too much of a problem also - when fighting, it takes next to no time before you can barely see the enemies or what's going on, because of all the smoke

Some things you didn't specifically mention that I thought of : The dash movement should be longer - at the moment it is so little that it's barely worth bothering with. I also didn't like was that you cannot dash forward - you should be able to slide forward, but when that move is no longer available, you should be able to dash forward also.

I think the game looks great, but it still has some flaws
Thats probably why it is in early access

I'm so glad you made the criticisms you did. With the amount people praise every game they buy these days and the slapping of the jester emoji on every single bit of criticism on the steam reviews/forums, you can start to feel like you're the only person seeing these issues. I agree with just about everything you said here. The game almost feels at odds with itself or it's inspirations at times. You see this a lot with these blended inspiration or homage type games. You have slow movement speed but enemies are fast as hell. It takes inspiration from fear and pushes tactical play, yet there is no lean mechanic and much of the cover is destroyed in a fraction of a second. Forces you to peek corners, but the enemy reaction time and near hitscan speed of projectiles results in your slow movement speed being a death sentence or at least punishing peeking far too heavily. Levels are gorgeously detailed, but often feel claustrophobic and have a very similar look across all areas. Smoke looks great and obscures player visibility, but enemies magically see right through it. Just a ton of annoying things add up to me not having a ton of fun with the game as it is.

My biggest complaint is I can never find the fucking way around these levels. I know what I need to do but I have zero guidance on where to look.

I've been wandering around the streets with the construction site and the yoga place looking for a canister to restore power for 20 minutes. I'm getting flashbacks from Hedon and Bloodrite.

10/10 review
the slow pacing and the large empty areas really pissed me off..
when ever i have a great time with the combat and am starting to love the product, the game switch to these slow long exploration sections
and they suck.. am sorry,
the level design is really weird and very hard to digest especially in your first playthrough
everything looks the same, it's not easy to progres in these levels not because they are deep and intelligent.. but because they're not well made and structured
it's like am playing quake 2 in 2024.
if we had more combat and more bosses and enemy types + good story and voice for the main character.. and better pacing/ level design..
the game would be AMAZING

Something you fail to mention is that the dark grey enemies are literally the least visible elements in the hyper-detailed bright neon environments. Well-made shooters, especially ones from the Doom/Build era, understood the importance of making the enemies more visually distinctive than the environments. Selaco gets this exactly backwards.

The Ai is great ,still i've liked Prodeus a lot more , in fact even Project brutality take the cake the win for me (even with the bloated weapon problem that PB has).I don't know , to much walking around without action , puzzle for puzzle sake without actual story outside of notes that i don't want to read . I think It has the boomershooter DNA but without the mindless fun . The AI is the best thing about selaco imo. the rest is just a few a step above Meh , imo

i had to refund it, for some reason i got 7fps anytime a gun fires no matter what settings i change

I'm not sure if the lack of boss fights is really bad thing. This seems to be a "realistic" hitscan shooter where you fight "human" enemies, I can't think of a single game that does this that has good boss fights. Monolith even cut out the Paxton Fettel boss in FEAR because it was apparently hard to design.

Graphics are terrible. Ghost of tsushima recently came to pc and blows this game away

Who else heard the Batman NES level 1 and TMNT NES under water bomb level music?? 😎

I'm knee deep in my first playthrough and I feel pretty similarly to you on most of my experience. Like, it IS good, but I also haven't found myself being like "man I'm having a lot of fun" you know? I end up feeling like a bunch of little frustrations build up until I want to take a break. I'm gonna finish this game, and I like it more than Trepang2 by a decent margin so far, but it's definitely not without it's serious faults.

this a good review, very fair points of criticism, hopefully the devs take it into account!

Hoping this comes to console at some point. Looks fun!

I really appreciate your review style, Mayo. You paint a very good picture of the game's mechanical identity, as well as giving a very good idea of its strong and weak points. I like the unvarnished honesty with both the praise and the critique.

The game itself looks pretty darn impressive, especially given the engine its running in. I'll definitely be keeping my eye on this one, though I'll probably wait for some of its issues to be resolved before playing. I'm hoping to get a really good first impression when I eventually do play. ^_^

I'm definitely not a fan of under the mayo but I respect nearly every critique he made in this video and believe that the game will be better if the developers listened to his criticism.

With that being said I don't agree with his characterization of the game I think it's much better than he suggested

I didn't like the demo at all last year. Looks like all the problems are still there. Hard to see anything, hitscan enemies doing too much damage, hard to navigate levels.

The king of bad takes is back.

I think my biggest problem with selaco from what I've played is the automap. Doom's automap and especially gzdoom's is great for understanding where you need to go, with usable walls plainly marked. Selaco's automap is uniform lines and the map markers don't give as much useful information as i'd like, although I'm very glad what's there is there. Marking movable objects required for progression is an extremely good decision

This review is PEAK get good.
This has been great schadenfreude on the other hand... also maybe learn to aim at the head, you preaim at foot level, and then after playing multiple times (seeing your upgrades before they unlock in the campaign). I'm playing on a harder difficulty than you, and I've never had that SMG issue but its good to know. I think easy or medium at most is probably how you want to play seeing as you stand in the open, don't check your flanks, preaim at the floor, use the recoil shotgun not as a rocket jump, keep the shotgun out the entire fight without cover peaking. I am going to assume you don't play many of these games or at least not any of the ID and Build engine games. The only thing I find extremely tedious is the burger clicker game but its cool that it runs in the background while you play the normal game.. and I heard it doesn't accumulate over first play and NG+.. I am very happy the devs ignore you, it would fundamentally change the game from fear like arena fights (on the hardest difficulty for fear and without the lean spread reduction) to doom clone/duke open side strafe run and gun. I will say, you should use the dual smgs as someone like you would use the doom shotgun, you stay in front of the enemy and blast while side strafing. This strat only works on single target, without shields and obviously not a captain or buffed. You won't read this, but I am glad you die a lot in this game, its almost like weapons like the pistol, shotgun, smgs, and rifle all switch quickly, and then the heavy weapons like the sniper, grenade launcher, and nailgun all have much more committed use... almost like you are intended to go behind cover/concealment as ypu weapon swap... OR FIRE THE SHOTGUN. lol.. Still IMO the best secret hunting I've played in a long time, I have 100% the first 4 areas so far.

smg ammo - keep track of your ammo
no movement - don't full dive in unless you'll win
slow animations - keep track of your ammo, prepare for upcoming enemies and have eyes in the back of your head
visibility - just shoot through the smoke, dump mags then rotate
getting stuck on geometry - just hold crouch lmao
i agree with the notes and lack of story that shit is a pain, I did read it all though and it gave alot of world building but not much else.
yeah the backtracking is a slogggggg, secrets need to be a little easier/ more area specific to save time its such a pain scouring an entire level for a single upgrade

look I sound like a dork about this but alot of your issues just seem to come from not being able to get use to the games extra dimension of combat, all of your complaints from the devs side were (I think) intentional. They add fun limitations to combat that force you to think quick and shoot straight. I had alot of trouble on some encounters thanks to playing on captain but 80 percent of the other fights ran so smooth and felt so right. idk just get better I guess lol 🥸

I have no idea where I’m going in this game. I returned it on steam. Maybe I’ll buy it if they fix this issue

I really feel like this game tries to do too much, and while it does some things well, others I just don't get the point of.

Like sure, I can turn off the lights in a room, or flush a toilet, destroy a stack of papers, etc. but why would I care about that stuff? The enemy encounters feel so few and far between that most of my time is just spent walking around these massive, empty levels. Some of the weaponry feels redundant too, like it's just there to pad out the arsenal unnecessarily.

I went into Selaco hoping to love it, but in the end I just kinda feel like it's okay. It's trying to do too many things and as a result it feels like it's just missing something to make it a great game, sadly.

how do you get through the entire game without realizing that you aren't supposed to full send every engagement?
all of your weapon issues (except for the duel wielding SMG's thing but that can be solved by just managing your ammo better lmao) can be solved by simply learning the game flow

you seem to just throw yourself at a brick wall and get mad when the wall doesn't move, stay in cover and don't put yourself in terrible positions by sliding directly into a full squad expecting to win.

I wish there was a LEAN function in this game. It seems half the time I’m just finding the enemies by just face checking them. The silent protagonist can work like in Return to castle wolfenstein, with BJ really only talking in cutscenes or with comic panels/diary entries like in Ashes 2063. There’s some interesting lore in the game but none of it is really pushed in a way that is interesting.

I feel like in any of your controversial reviews you could say the same exact criticisms and get basically no hate back if you just said your criticisms differently. I guess you shouldn't change because people get made at you but I wouldn't want to deal with it.

Well this is all a total revelation. I just got Selaco last night. The two worst things about it is the name (Seroco? Secario? Solaro? Bollocks I'll have to Google it using a description again to find it) and the fact that NOTHING is explained! Well it is a bit, but....explosions. as it stands though, it's super interesting.

The criticisms are quite fair. I felt the same too. The lack of direction wasn't a huge issue for me, at least not in a second playthrough when I already know where to go. But in a silver lining sort of way, it actually allowed me to run into hidden areas which gave me significant boosts and upgrades.
Despite the slowness with movement and weapons, I guess I try not to think of the game as a boomer shooter akin to Doom. I made myself think more tactically. Reload all my weapons before the next encounter. Put mines where I need to. Stock up on health. And set up an ambush point. And then I found myself enjoying it a bit more.

this looks impressive

I just finished my first playthrough and I have similar feelings. There's a lot to like about this game, but there are so many points of frustration that happen frequently enough that they drive me to stop playing after 15 - 30 minutes. I played through on the very hard difficulty and by the mall level, I really wished that I could lower it. I had to resort to abusing quicksaves and trial and error far too often for my liking to get through the game.

Massively underrated video, you explain things that others just never addressed in their heaps of praise. You actually explained the appeal

I liked Selaco, but holy hell were there some insane difficulty spikes.

One thing that REALLY got old though was the amount of times you were about a half second away from coming across allies, only to round a corner and find them either retreated, or all dead.

I swear it happens about 10 times throughout the game. The whole game i feel like I'm supposed to be catching up to my compatriots holding the line, and the invasion is unfolding infront of me, but since it's framed that way, NEVER interacting with another living soul or always having them be just out of reach was incredibly isolating.

This woman has comedically bad timing.

Oh dude, there is soooo gonna be a followup to this video. I went to this game expecting it to be hard as nails so I picked the medium skill and I was so surprised how softcore and forgiving it was. Up to the burger joint I felt barely any real pushback or rersistance and only at the Mall I felt like the game was finally expecting me to git gud. Then I watched a video by Fractal Cactus about several game mechanics that really affect the combat and it was like playing a different game - everything was clicking. After I beat the game I went for another round on Commander and took several additional difficulty modifiers to spice it up even more and it still feels too easy - yeah I have to replay some fights multiple times but it's more because I'm trying out different ideas all the time. Weapon swapping and reloading speeds are fine tuned with mobility options, environmental accessories and ways to take cover. This is the same DNA as Doom Eternal - there's a lot of stuff the game doesn't tell you about but when you learn it and apply then everything makes sense - dashing to the sides to dodge enemy fire and take cover, staggering enemies by sliding into them, punching them or throwing everything and the kitchen sink - that last one only works with most objects if you hold the attack button to throw it harder - I only figured that part out a moment ago and it opened so many additional combat options. It's such a rare situation where I even need to reload any weapon in the heat of the combat because slide kicks and melee attacks are so deadly effective that I can just keep switching to a different weapon and there is always one that is still loaded. When I do need to reload, swap weapons or wait for the shotgun cocking animation to finish I always make sure I'm behind cover or moving away. I never felt like it takes too long to do any of these actions.
It's unfortunate that you started with a wrong difficulty level, If I did the same without knowing the ins and outs I probably would have a similar reaction. That's on the devs, but this combat system is a work of art. It's like a fighting game with guns in first person. I can bet money that it you will fall in love with it eventually.

Ok, its been a bit since I've checked in and that fakeout cue was hilarious.

Loved that musical lead-up to... Deadspace. A very satisfying misdirect.

The game is really hard to read visuallt. Not sure if that’s on purpose but doesn’t feel like the best choice for a brutal, fast paced shooter.

Selaco is awesome but hard 😅

"They hated him, because he told them the truth."

I also played the game on commander difficulty, and didn't find it that hard except for a few moments. Would have chosen a harder difficulty, if i could have switched mid-way. Except for that great game. I really enjoyed it, except for a few moments where i was stuck. happened maybe 2-3 times, and i'm to blame for not focusing more on the map/and the objectives (The clues are there). The game ended just when it got really interesting and hectic, oh well - we just need to wait for the 2nd chapter.

really don't understand the hype behind this one. it looks... fine? the first (ironically) red flag i saw was the purple blood in the early trailers. id almost rather have no blood in the game, it just looks stupid

lol i loved the atmosphere of this game and some parts remind me of dead space 2

Tired of these generic boomershooters. Also hitscan enemies plus bullet sponge bosses are not fun to fight.