SEUM: Speedrunners from Hell Review

You receive a record in the mail, and decide to play it. This summons the devil, who’s plotting to take your precious beer. He takes your beer, but in the process cuts off your hand for trying to stop him, but wait! As he is leaving you slice off his hand, and attach his hand to your wrist, following him to his domain. There you are, a redneck with the hand of a devil, with the ability to use different powers to get through maps as fast as you possibly can, without dying.

This game right here is a speed running game, where you pitch your times against other people on the leader boards for each level. There are loads of fun powers to use, for example the basic fireball power, controlling gravity and teleportation. This game is a really fun game that tests your speed and reactions, and also your creativity in finishing a map faster than anyone else. You find that people on the leader boards have completed the map in such an absurdly low time, that it makes you wonder what secret they know. I will be talking about the positives and negatives of this game.

To start off, I will be talking about the Menu and Options. As you open the game, you’re greeted with the menu screen, after the splash screens of the developers involved in this game. In this menu, you’re given a wide amount of options to choose from. The menu screen has a nice aesthetic, and has an awesome glowing atmosphere of the background. The options to choose from are follows: Single Player, where you play the main maps, normally on your own. Extended play, where you can play any level packs that came out after the original game release. Speed run mode, which lets you play all of the levels with no interruptions, with the intent on beating a speed run record, or even extra challenges like collecting beers and also hardcore mode, which you cannot die once. Endless mode, which is a VERY cool randomly generated endless map to play on, every time you die you get a new one. Workshop, which lets you browse and play levels made by the steam community. Pit of infamy, which is the leader boards for each mode. Extras, which lets you view your game stats, bonus stats and re-watch the epic intro. Options, which lets you configure and change your mouse, keyboard, graphics, audio and bonus settings/options. Credits, which gives credit to any special developers, beta testers, special thanks and other people worthy of mentioning, and then the Quit button, which obviously lets you quit the game.

The options are very in-depth, and if you’ve read my previous reviews, you would know that I am very fond of an advanced and widely interactive options menu. You’re given the different options, choosing from mouse, keyboard, graphics, audio, and bonus settings. The mouse option is simple, mouse sensitivity, cross hair, and whether or not you would like to invert your mouse Y axis. The keyboard option menu lets you rebind all of your keys, and even choose secondary options to use, just in case you want to switch up on the spot, without changing options. In the graphics menu, you’re given the options to change your display mode, which is the obvious windowed or full screen mode. I would have liked a default windowed border less mode, but that can be configured in your steam launch settings for the game (-windowed -noborder). You’re then given options in the same Graphics tab, for the quality level, the resolution, which display you’re using (I have multiple monitors, so this was helpful), the brightness of the game, the field of view of the game, and three options to tick, v sync, screen shake and full screen VFX. These are average, and good options for graphics menus. It would be nice to have a more advanced option for the quality, like for example shadows, special effects, to turn on and off, for the people who want that perfect balance of performance and looks. The audio menu is good, with a global volume, a music volume, SFX and voices, and also an option to turn on subtitles. Lastly we have the bonus options, which lets you pick the difficulty, the language and whether or not you want your player model to have a hand, or no hand.

Compared to modern graphics, the graphics of the game is pretty nice, but it does seem like the models are a little too jagged, but you see this is a funny subject to speak on. Now, when it comes to video games development, it’s nice to be able to have low poly models, with higher resolution details (using normal maps) to make the models seem more organic or higher poly. Now this game, seems like they’ve really used this method, to make the game as smooth as possible. As a game on its own, it would have been best to have that balance of high and low poly to make the game look as immersive as possible, BUT due to the fact that this is a speed running game, where optimization and performance is VITAL, this game can get away with it. They’ve used a gritty painted art style, which is very attractive to the eye. The sharp models compliments the heavy metal soundtrack, and in my opinion it works really well.

Now the gameplay is very very interesting. As expected, you run at a fast pace, timing your jumps and your powers, to get through the level as fast as humanly possible. With these powers, you can use them in different ways to get there quicker. I found myself blind firing at places, to get somewhere faster, for example firing a fire ball over a wall to hit a switch to open something behind me, which I’d have to run over to, then run back to get to. It opens up your mind to being more creative about how you go around a level, but because of this, you find the simple levels throw you off because you expect something unique to get through, when the level just requires a simple move. The image above was a difficult level to play, these platforms were all rotating, and you had to jump at the right times, scale each platform, and jump to the next one in rapid succession to get the momentum needed to get to the portal.

I have found that one of my main issues with this game (which there isn’t many) is based around the collision boxes for certain platforms. They’re smaller than the platforms itself, it feels. Atleast, for some platforms they are. I found myself clipping through the edge of a platform, even though I was basically on it, from my perspective. Maybe this was a difficulty factor, but if the collision box is smaller, I think the actual model should be smaller too, so that you know where to land.

The music is absolutely awesome, and pumps you with the adrenaline to complete each level. It gives me Brutal Legend vibes, as that was another heavy metal game that I enjoyed for the music. This game perfected the atmosphere with the music and the graphics in a way that makes playing the game awesome. You feel epic, playing this game. The controls are simple, and the game’s replay-ability factor is through the roof. I feel like I will be playing this game for years and years, coming back to it every once in a while to play community maps, and speed run the game.

To finish off this review, I’d like to say that if you’re into games that are fast paced, play this game. I suggest you play it with a mouse and keyboard for precision, and have as much fun as you can, as it really is a brilliant game to play. The only main issue being the collisions, and that’s not even one to sweat about. This game is brilliant, and I hope you get this game. I give this game an 8/10 for its intense replay-ability factor, and endless gameplay!

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary PC code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.

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