Have you ever wanted to play the Doom campaign with your friends in a cooperative fashion? With Perish, you can do just that! Developed by ITEM42 and published by HandyGames, Perish is a cooperative first-person shooter that has players jumping through various regions and facing countless demons in an attempt to reach Elysium!

To get there, you must cross multiple districts within Purgatory in order to reach the end. Make sure to not die because if you and your party are wiped out, you will be sent back to your coffin and will have to start all over again. Your progress is not in vain however as killing enemies will give you drachmae which you can spend on fantastical weapons and upgrades to give you the edge necessary to reach Elysium!

While Perish can be played solo, the developers were adamant that the game be played with up to four players. Luckily, I was able to recruit a few of my friends to try it out with me and we had a blast while playing. There was a bit of a learning curve initially as the game makes it very clear that health is at a premium and any hit will result in the loss of one of your health bars.

My friends and I played the first two rounds rather cautiously since you start off with a broken sword that acts as a dagger. However, we all got into the rhythm of the game after twenty minutes and things really got exciting once we began to unlock the various weapons, crowns, and rings that you can buy in the store.

The weapons in Perish come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. You have weapons that go along perfectly with the ancient Greek theme of a spear, sword, bow, and axe. However, the game quickly gives you access to a revolver, semi-automatic rifle, shotgun, and a flamethrower. Now they don’t just come out of the blue and ask you not to question why there are powerful firearms in your hand.

Instead, the game provides lore about every single weapon and why it was created. On top of this, each weapon comes with challenges in order to unlock new skills to use with them. Some take a matter of minutes to do while others require such specific circumstances that you could end up spending three runs just trying to run into the right situation.

Speaking of runs, not every single one will be the same. While the stages are all played in the same order when you start from the very beginning, the objectives that you are given in each stage are not always the same. Each stage has about three different variations that differ in both scope and difficulty.

On top of this, the difficulty of the tasks in each stage increases based on the number of players that you have and the overall difficulty that you pick when launching the game session. Every variation of a stage has a certain level of difficulty based on the weapons, rings, and crown that you have. Additionally, some enemies perish more easily to different combinations of weapons, rings, and crowns. That is why having four players in a session is a great way to even the odds because it allows you to have as many combinations of gear as possible for your party.

The crowns and rings in the game are items that always enhance your abilities in a variety of ways. Everything from increased jump recharge to things like more health, more throwing knives, and much more. Sometimes the items that you equip will also come with effects that can change how certain things happen in your campaign. There is one crown that will decrease your health to one hit, but will increase the value of the drachmae.

Other crowns and rings will allow you to bypass parts of the campaign in order to cut the amount of time that you need to spend in order to get to Elysium. While you can only wear one crown at a time, you can wear up to six different rings which will allow you to do more mixing and matching.

Another thing that adds quite a bit of variation to the game is the card system. After you complete every stage, you are given the ability to pick from three different cards. Each card has a different effect that will help you in some way throughout the game.

Some will give you damage buffs, while others will alter how some of your stats change, and others will allow you to adjust how much drachmae you get at the end of your run. Be aware however that you will lose all of your cards should you end up dying. As such, cards can make the difference between your party being able to make it through the next stage.

During my time with Perish, I ran into a few strange bugs. During one run, we had a friend disconnect in the middle of a session, but his body continued to spawn in the safe room in between stages. This caused the enemies to not spawn on the stage, instead, they spawned in the safe room with us.

While this caused a bit of panic in the beginning, we eventually got used to the safe room becoming a short death gauntlet and the stages becoming a leisurely stroll. There was a bug that popped up once or twice where we would be disconnected from our lobby or we wouldn’t be able to make a lobby. However, those bugs quickly disappeared after relaunching the game. Any other bugs that we ran into never ruined our experience, but definitely made us tilt our heads slightly and question what we just witnessed.

If you are looking for more games to smash and shoot demons in, then I would suggest checking out Mike Reitemeier’s review of Warhammer 40k: Darktide on PC right here. If you have any questions about this game or if you have any impressions about the game once it launches, then feel free to leave them in the comments below.

PC Copies of Perish were provided by HandyGames in order to write this review.

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Perish

0.00

9

Score

9.0/10

Pros

• Excellent Multiplayer Experience
• Great Soundtrack
• Interesting Art
• Fascinating Lore

Cons

• A few bugs