Now, we have seen over the last few years the rise of cooperative shooters, which normally center on fighting supernatural evils, Alien creatures, or the undead. Games like Evolve, Left 4 Dead, and the upcoming Back 4 Blood, immerse players into an intense and thrilling situation the requires teamwork and communication. G.T.F.O is the latest in this genre and aims high with a visceral and brutal survival experience. It’s still in early access but from what we’ve seen and played so far, there’s plenty of promise with this title, created by former developers of the Payday franchise.
WTF is G.T.F.O
G.T.F.O (which you could guess what it means, Get the Fudge Out, of course) is an FPS, Co-op survival game, with plenty of horrors and intense action. Players will take on the roles of prisoners who have been deemed expendable and tasked with entering a massive underground complex to find valuable artifacts that have now been overrun by terrifying creatures.
To survive each level of the complex, players must arm themselves with weapons, tools, and resources but must also be conservative as all the above are limited. Work together to complete missions, unearth the answers about the complex’s past, and most importantly, how to escape it alive.
The premise is extremely simple, but with all types of games like this, they usually are. But there are definitely a few things that make G.T.F.O rather special.
G.T.F.O and the horrorFrom the get-go, G.T.F.O sets up everything perfectly. From a frantic and horrifying plunge into the depths of the Earth, almost simulating a dive into Hell itself, G.T.F.O makes sure you know you are in trouble. After the plunge into the Earth, players will see the complex, or rather each layer of it, as there are multiple layers, going deeper and deeper into the Earth.
The atmosphere is rich and bleak, presenting an unnerving and never-ending sense of dread and tension. The complex is a rusted shell of its former self, a place that you could was once thriving but now only houses many inhumane horrors. Plus, there is plenty of fog for added atmosphere!
As you begin to venture on, you will soon realise that it is important to take each step carefully, consider your path and what doors to open, and which ones to keep shut. It is incredibly important to pick the right tools and having a full team is vital for survival. A good setup would be to have someone with a good old shotgun, another with a rifle, pack a few turrets and one teammate will have to carry the bio-mass reader, allowing you to know what’s behind that all scary looking door.
Believe me, what lurks in the shadows of the complex, is the stuff conducted by the nightmares of John Carpenter and Clive Barker. The enemies are generally not too powerful, but their menace and impact are the same as wolves. Alone, you should be okay, but if enemies manage to band together and hunt in pacts, there is a chance you might not survive. Aside from the generic, low-level enemies, you do have some more powerful ones to deal with if the rest are unsettled.
So, while you do have guns, tools, and gear such as mobile turrets, you will have to more considerate and a little sneaky to avoid upsetting the hoard. Using your trusty sledgehammer to take on roaming or single enemies is a great way to avoid attention, but also to increase the tension. I will say that stealth is a little tricky and reading the awareness of standby enemies is very difficult. At times, me and my teammates would approach with care and often get spotted. Other times we would be firing our guns off in the next room and not cause any issues.
You must go in quiet and quick it seems, making it a little manic and unpredictable when it comes to sneaking. It takes some getting used to but seems fair enough for the most part.
Plus, if s### hits the fan, you got your guns to fall back on.
About that …
Gung-ho? …. No, no 
As mentioned before, picking the right tools and guns for the job is vital. But managing your ammo is key to surviving for as long as possible. You will not have a lot, at all. Enough to take on a few encounters, but you must really count each bullet or consider your options before a firefight. There are spoils around each location, but what you get can either be plentiful or just a humble fog reducer (reduce the amount of fog in a single spot … useless really). It’s tense, not to mention, there will be times when you only have enough to replenish ammo or health for a couple of teammates, not all.
G.T.F.O does an excellent job at raising the tension constantly and really pushes the value of teamwork and who your friends are. This is a game that can make or break friendships very easily.
Now as the developers were former employees behind the Payday games, you might imagine the shooting might be highly refined. Shooting does feel solid and has enough weight, but it’s nothing like the AAA arcade level of a shooting found in Payday. But I feel this is intentional, as you are not a highly trained soldier and shooting, while available, is not the best option unless everything goes to hell.
It is enough to get you through one of the many ambushes/standoffs, and there are some pretty neat guns as the heavy revolver. But overall, I felt a little underwhelmed at the weaponry. It is a little generic and lacks any character, compared to the rest of the game. Most guns feel generic and do not have the same level of inventiveness as the complex or enemy design.
I was hoping to see something like Metro, where the guns are rusty, beat up and barely holding together. But the more you play, the better you could improve your guns. Or just in general, have some weird, experimental guns that fit the world.
There are some neat items of gear, such as the glue grenades and glue gun which infused doors and enemies together, buying you time to make an escape or hold foes back. But most of everything else is a standard affair of shooting. I believe a progression system/upgrades for weapons and even your characters would make the difference, or simply having more inventive weapons would make heighten the experience.
And another thing …The objectives are so far not the most inspiring, as they tend to range from clear out the location of enemies to gathering samples or data. It is not anything innovated or simply interesting, but rather dull tasks that most shooters have. Even Payday would have cool situations and scenarios such as robbing a bank or taking on an armored convoy for sweet loot. I understand you can have those types of missions here, or not in the conventional sense, but gather samples and data is low-level mission objectives at it is best, or worse, depending on how you look at it.
There is a sort of story here in G.T.F.O as prisoners have been tasked by the mysterious Warden to dive deeper and deeper into the complex, in order to complete the grander task at hand. With each tier or Rundown as they’re known, the game progressively gets more difficult, but the tasks remain fairly similar, with collecting and processing samples and nothing more exciting.
I am hoping that the lowest tiers, such as Rundown 5 will have objectives a little more interesting, such as hunting a certain creature and harvesting it for samples, rather than simply collecting them off a table. Or to fuse all the doors together to seal off an area or classic example, place a bomb and make your escape before it goes off.
Anything like that would be more enthralling than “Collect Sample A and escape”.
Overall?G.T.F.O has a lot of promise and with the right guidance or additions, could be a mind-blowing experience. It is brutal and harsh but pushes teamwork and communication like no other co-op game. The environments and creature designs are immensely creative, the tension gripping and the atmosphere is rich and bleak. I will say the mission objectives are the real letdown here and guns/character progression could be a little more inventive.
But G.T.F.O has the possibility to change a few things and be one of the more memorable and sustainable 4 player co-op games on the market for now and a long time to come.
Early Access keys of GTFO were provided by the publisher for this preview.
