If you’re looking at this PS5 review of Cultic Complete Edition and thinking, hang on a sec, didn’t you also review another retro style shooter about blasting cultists in the face not too long ago, you would be entirely right – there was and it was really rather good. That game is called Blood: Refreshed Supply and was a stellar remaster of a gothic skinned, Duke Nukem 3D style shooter that feels as good to play today as it did nearly thirty years ago. Cultic on the other hand, feels less like a direct evolution of that boomer shooter concept and more of a sideways venture into something more deliberate, atmospheric and dare I say, more modern than its immediate peer.
I won’t go too deeply into the story of Cultic, not least because its narrative setup is one that you could easily guess off of the title alone. Cultists are bad. The demons that they summon are bad. Both of them need to be decisively murder-exploded wherever you find them. Job done. Now, there are various diaries and notes dotted around each level which help to build a picture of the lore, but honestly, it’s window dressing that takes a back seat to the on-screen action.
Cultic Complete Edition PS5 Review
In terms of its similarities to Blood: Refreshed Supply on a mechanical level, Cultic on PS5 is a hyperviolent first-person shooter that has you decapitating, immolating, shooting, stabbing and blowing up all manner of cultists and demonic creations. Much like Blood: Refreshed Supply, you’ll have an impressive arsenal of un-aliving equipment with which to do it with too, ranging from a humble axe (which may be thrown), to handguns, sniper rifles, grenade launchers, TNT, Molotov cocktails and much more beyond all that.
And also much like Blood: Refreshed Supply, the combat itself is satisfyingly fast and furious, with the player able to sprint, jump, slide and execute a stamina-bar powered dash, all the while shooting with one trigger button and booting enemies in the mush with the other. Put simply, combat in Cultic feels palpably bombastic and always violent, which means that it stands in good company with Nightdive Studios’ recent Blood: Refreshed Supply remaster.
Cultic, like Blood: Refreshed Supply and the litany of boomer shooters that have followed in its wake, also chalks up the player’s performance at the end of each level, informing you how many baddies you put six-feet under, how much loot you scooped up and how many cunning secrets you discovered. Certainly in this respect then, Cultic hardly re-writes the book.
One bugbear I have with Cultic’s many scraps however, is that the enemies don’t have anywhere near the sort of dramatic death throes of the hapless foes of Blood: Refreshed Supply. There’s no panicked screams as they get blown up by dynamite, or pitiful shouts into the ether of ‘it burns, it burns!’ after they are set alight. If anything, the enemies in Cultic seem to be something of a muted bunch disappointingly, which surely feels at odds with the spectacular on-screen carnage they’re often subjected to.
Unlike Blood: Refreshed Supply which always seemed much more manic than ever being genuinely scary at any point, Cultic knows exactly how to make each of your hairs stand on end and it’s arguably this which serves as the main distinction between the two titles. A big part of how Cultic is able to do this is down to its level design. Rather than forcing the player through a cavalcade of similar levels one after another, each level in Cultic is functionally themed to a degree and offers something different than its predecessor.
One level, for example, kicks off by having you engage in high stakes sniper duels with enemy cultists in the grounds of an abandoned asylum. However, before you get a glimpse of your distant foe, you’ll see one of three beer bottles on a park bench shatter right in front of you from a sniper shot, serving as a neat and really rather cool introduction to this new adversary.
Elsewhere, Cultic is genuinely a creepy affair at its heart. Whether you’re skulking around in an abandoned tomb with a handy spotlight to guide your way, or navigating through a long buried mine with just your lighter to illuminate the environment, Cultic rarely wastes an opportunity to scare the brown stuff out of you, making the whole endeavour feel a lot more deliberate than Blood: Refreshed Supply as a direct result.
Another way that Cultic on PS5 separates itself from Blood: Refreshed Supply is that there are upgrade benches found in each level which provide a simple but meaningful form of progression. Depending on how many weapon parts you’ve collected, you can invest a swathe of permanent upgrades for each of your weapons from improved damage and clip size, to better sights and betterments of that ilk. It’s not earth-shattering stuff, but it does provide Cultic with that little extra hook that is missing from many other comparable shooters of a similar stripe.
Technically speaking, while Cultic is fine enough from a visual standpoint, leveraging a distinctly chunkier presentation that feels like an oddball mixture of Blood: Refreshed Supply and id Software’s classic Quake, it’s surprisingly in the soundtrack that developer Jasozz Games does its best work. Every track feels precisely calibrated to the on-screen action at hand, from rushing metal guitars that kick in during a scene of seemingly boundless, firearms driven slaughter, to the slower, more suspenseful strings which underscore Cultic’s many creepy levels, I would certainly say that the audio presentation of Cultic is absolutely on point.
Further afield, my only other real complaint I have (other than the aforementioned quietly perishing enemies), is that I just wish there was more of it. Though both episodes are included in this package, Cultic still only offers a fraction of the levels and content that something like Blood: Refreshed Supply provides. Here’s hoping for more campaign DLC in the future then, eh?
Cultic at once feels it’s much too similar to Blood: Refreshed Supply, and yet, it does enough differently to earn an easy recommendation. With a focus on much more deliberate atmospherics and thoughtful level design, not to mention an array of genuinely satisfying weaponry, Cultic is absolutely deserving of your hard-earned cash.
Cultic Complete Edition is out now on PS5.
Review code kindly provided by PR.