La Quimera Review – Short, But Not Sweet

La Quimera is a new story-driven, linear FPS from Reburn, the studio formerly known as 4A Games Ukraine. While 4A Games was initially founded and entirely located in Ukraine, as Reburn chief executive officer Dmytro Lymar explained to Wccftech previously, when the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine in 2014, the studio split between a Ukraine-based team and another based in Malta.

But Reburn didn’t start developing La Quimera over a decade ago. Development began in 2020, after work on Metro Exodus was complete, and the studio took a new name shortly after Embracer Group acquired 4A Games.

Suppose you’re like me, and you like a good story-driven, linear game, particularly a good story-driven FPS game, which feels like a rarity in the modern video game landscape. In that case, as I was, you’d probably be very excited by the pitch of ‘developers who worked on the Metro games making a new sci-fi story-driven FPS that can also be played entirely in co-op.’

Unfortunately, my excitement was quickly diminished when I sat down to play La Quimera. I’m sorry to say that my favorite thing about it is that it’s a short game, and I was able to finish it in a little less than 5 hours.

I’m sympathetic to the fact that I absolutely cannot imagine what it was like for the Reburn team making this game over the last five years. I also appreciate that it’s not asking for a full $70 with its much more budget-friendly $30 price tag. But a bad game is a rip-off at any price, and not only is La Quimera not worth your time, but in its current state, I wouldn’t even say it is ready to be released.

I’ll admit that I don’t have the hardware to display La Quimera in its best graphical light. I grew up a console player and built my first PC, the same one I currently play games and what I used to play La Quimera five years ago, aiming for what I felt was mid-range and, more realistically, what I could afford at the time. It’s got a Ryzen 5 3600, 16GB of RAM, and an RTX 2060 in it that have always been up to the task for whatever I’ve thrown at it, which has honestly mostly been indie games I got for cheap on Steam and whatever else I couldn’t play on my PS5 or Xbox Series X.

I’m not trying to play at 4K/120fps with my 1440p monitor that caps out at 60fps. I built my PC the way I did because I needed a new computer at the time, so why not make it something that could decently play games as well? I’m giving all that context so that you understand when I say La Quimera is a bad game, I’m not talking about performance issues that a beefier PC would likely be able to push through.

I’m talking about bad audio that was either delayed or simply not there, and poor audio mixing that made loud crash scenes sound quiet. I’m talking about bugs like being unable to move my reticle up or down when aiming down sight on a controller, an issue that doesn’t exist when I play with my keyboard and mouse.

Enemies that are not fun to fight, whether humans or robots, the latter being half the combat encounters you’ll face, should you play this game. Weapons that don’t sound or feel like they have any weight to them, or feel like they’re making an impact despite their admittedly cool designs.

Writing and voice acting that made me wonder whether the lines from the human characters were meant to sound as stilted as the lines from your AI companion or any other voice that came from a machine. A story that set up threads which go nowhere, as if to set up a sequel that I can tell you now I have no interest in playing.

Nothing about La Quimera feels finished. Every part feels like a disjointed piece of the project that the team at Reburn stitched together without actually creating a singular image. Even the gameplay sits at the top of the list of positive takeaways from La Quimera by virtue of not being entirely bad.

The futuristic setting and the exosuit you wear after the opening mission, which is one of three, provide you with more options to make each combat encounter a little more interesting to get through. The scanner you get paired with a weapon that can shoot through walls helps to give you time to breathe in La Quimera’s more explosive firefights without actually taking yourself out of the fight.

Being able to call up your own defensive drones to even the odds against the ones thrown at you, or taking a few moments to catch an enemy by surprise by entering a cloaked mode, are features I appreciate in a futuristic shooter. Not that there’s any real stealth gameplay to go along with that latter feature, mind you, since enemies are quickly aware of your position once you’ve taken one of them out with a sneaky attack.

Regarding its setting, once again, I was intrigued by the idea of a futuristic dystopia set in Latin America, but what La Quimera’s Steam page describes as a “lush jungle” and “breathtaking megalopolis” boils down to uninspiring levels with more grey than green on display and a story that throws in the odd Spanish word or phrase while everything else is in English.

I will say that it’s clear a lot of work went into trying to make La Quimera look very sleek. I’m sure it would look more than fine if I had top-of-the-line hardware, but that proves that La Quimera is all sizzle and no steak. And while I’m not complaining that I didn’t have to spend too long with it before the game ended, the short runtime doesn’t give La Quimera any room to go anywhere.

I could replay the missions to earn more of the in-game currency and upgrade my exosuit, but I can’t say what I would get out of it. Maybe a fun video game, after I’ve played it enough times to get the rest of the upgrades, but why would the ‘real’ fun arrive so late in the experience?

Also, I will note that playing this ahead of release, I didn’t get the chance to play it in co-op, which is an aspect of La Quimera that is consistently highlighted in its marketing. I could see it being more fun with friends at my side, jokingly mimicking the flat dialogue and running through the whole game in the same time it would take us to play a few rounds of whatever multiplayer game we could have been playing instead.

But that’s not a winning argument for why you and your friends should download La Quimera and spend time with it over other games. And, as someone who was playing solo, the fact that La Quimera requires you to always be online, whether you’re playing with other people or not, is absolutely a point against it. If I’m not playing with anyone, and it’s a single-player experience, an offline mode should be available that lets me pause the game.

I really wanted to like La Quimera. The idea of a quick, intense FPS that tells a good story that I could play through again with my friends is one I can get behind. Besides, it’s not like there haven’t been excellent FPS games with a short campaign that are incredibly fun to go back to again and again.

Unfortunately, La Quimera isn’t one of them. While that could be a result of not enough development time, it’s difficult to see this game improving tenfold if only its bugs were fixed. A lot more needs to be changed and reworked to bring La Quimera up to par to compete in today’s overcrowded FPS market, even if it is one of the few offering a single-player focus over a multiplayer one.

Reviewed on PC (code provided by the publisher).

4

WCCFTECH RATING

La Quimera