(Played on Steam Deck.)
There can be a mystery in how to pronounce the title 2023’s Trepang2. “Trepang Two”? “Trepang Square”? The most likely one is “Trepang Studio’s Second Project”. A solo dev did put out a game titled Trepang back 2011 for a game jam before they started a 4 people studio named after said game. Though this pixel game starring a sea cucumber takes up the quality of creepypasta now as people just learn about it from other people on the internet. Perhaps it’s fitting since Trepang2’s horror element is rooted in creepypasta.
The silent player character of the game is a super soldier simply known as Subject 106. He is a prisoner of Horizon Corporation, a big pharmaceutical company with formattable private arms and weird shit in the basement of all their real estates. Liberated by the mysterious Task Force 27, Subject 106 is soon sent back out to erase Horizon once and for all.
Unlike 2005’s First Encounter Assault Recon only taking in 2 urban myths, Trepang2 takes in at least 4 creepypasta pieces, Mothman, some fire-worshipping death cult, Backrooms and all that jazz. The level design feels like the developers tried out what they can make in Unreal Engine 4 then made up a narrative to link the pieces together. The game has 6 Campaign maps (2 added later as DLC.) and several Side Mission maps. It’s a good thing those do not repeat. The main story took me 4 hours to see credits on the lowest difficulty, and there are reasons to go back.
Also unlike F.E.A.R, the game only allow player 2 guns instead of 3. The level design in Trepang2 is also more linear, lacking the multiple penetration points in the 2005 games. The enemies also tend to charging at player screaming more here. Laying around the corners is sadly left in the mid-aughts.
The game’s lacking zoom in or aiming down sights does make it feel mouse and keyboard first. The controller button mapping is a mixture of Halo and Call of Duty, there is the left trigger to throw grenades (Or silent kills like throwing knives and axes) of the former then the left stick click to sprint and right stick click to melee of the latter. The mixture does lead to the right on D-pad to use scope if the gun has a scope.
Despite the game marketed its dual wielding heavily, the feature does not come in until the middle point of the third Campaign mission. And it’s through down on the D-pad to pick up another gun the player currently holding.
The player character is a super solider with more than one perks, and thankfully the game does not put those into the same resource pool. Left bumper is for Focus, aka bullet time (One almost needs it to hit anything with controller and the juice only recovers through more killing.), right bumper is Cloak, aka invisibility. Up on D-pad is a thankfully infinite flashlight.
The game can be separated into “gun & run” and “just run” segments, the latter can be lackluster due to the relatively lower production value. The game’s melee has 2 features over its more expansive counterpart: a slide to sweep enemies over their feet and grab a stunned enemy by the same button to switch out guns.
Trepang2 is a 2000s throwback for better and worse. For better, it’s lean mean hard-hitting action game that 2020s rarely makes. For worse, when compared to the similarly lean mean hard hitting action game made in 2020s, this one does have obstacles that make one go “Could be better”. After experiencing the gun throw in Severed Steel before it and 007 First Light after it, Trepang2 can feel too limited when it comes to empty guns among other things. Still guess this is the closer thing to a F.E.A.R 2 than that highly CODfied one released in 2009. So, if you got a slow-mo itch to scratch, you can do a lot worse than Trepang2.