From the Ashes is quickly becoming one of my favorite games of 2019

When I saw a streamer playing Rest: ashesI rolled my eyes. Reduced to the most reductive height is Dark souls but with rifles. So what? It looked like a knock-off. But now that I've played it, I can say that Rest is one of the most interesting and entertaining games I've experienced all year.

Rest: ashes is developed by Gunfire Games, which has made the average resolutely Darksiders 3. It takes place in a world in ruins where survivors fight to fight a demonic force called Racine, which manifests itself in armies of gnarled soldiers and weird wizards. Rest crushes various aesthetics. It tears ruined cityscapes from games like The last of us and other similar souls Vein Code. His monsters look like demons and dryads of The old rollers. The characters⁠ (harassed survivors, scrap merchants and wrestlers wearing riot gear⁠) feel as though they are visiting Fall or Metro.

At first glance, it's a clutter with no real sense of direction. How time passes, Rest begins to feel distinct.

It's a cliché at this point to compare a difficult game to Dark soulsbut Rest borrows smoothly its basic structure. Players venture into a world of monsters and fierce battles against their bosses, sit at checkpoints and interact with characters in a central area. You reset when you die, come back into the world constantly until you can take up the challenge that blocks progress.

The main difference is that Rest plays almost entirely like a third-person shooter closer to Armament of war instead of a very deliberate melee action game like Nioh or Dark souls. You have a choice of pistols, shotguns, flamethrowers and more. All of these elements can be upgraded to increase their stats, or have special abilities such as dropping into a health restoration field or covering your bramble body that protects you from melee attacks. Traveling through the sewers or into dilapidated churches eventually gives way to fierce fighting in which you will explode with scraped guns. You can also cut with makeshift axes, but only as a last resort.

This is the first gadget. The second is that Rest creates a slightly different world to explore for the players at the beginning of each game. There are multiple configurations: a post-apocalyptic Earth in ruins, desert realms, swampy worlds in the jungle. Each phase of play mixes enemy encounters, boss order, game events and other factors to create a slightly different experience each time.

This is not entirely realistic because there is no permadeath, but some aspects of procedural generation are at stake. When I listened Rest Yesterday, viewers enthusiastically asked which boss I met first and commented on things they had not seen. I am about four hours and only during my third meeting with a great chef. The idea of ​​being able to start a new game and face new challenges and new worlds is exciting. It's also good for players who like cooperation. Although I chose to play solo to take on an additional challenge, it is possible to play with friends or even with strangers. I can imagine friends enthusiastically comparing their fights or starting the game for a new run from time to time.

Until here, my time with Rest was an explosion. What originally looked like a generic shooter has grown into a game that I can not wait to keep playing. Whether it's to go back to my solo game and face a giant monster with a shotgun in hand, or to throw something completely cool with a friend, I'm excited. Rest is a welcome surprise and I will continue to explore the ruins and debris.