What The Fog Review — A Clear Return To The Classics

Back during the early days of the FPS genre, its games were mainly an infinite cycle of shooting, gaining boosters, and progressing to the next level. It was merely mindless shooting fun and as FPS titles developed, their modernization added tons of complexity. So, with What The Fog, the team behind Dead by Daylight returns to those simpler times by adding minimalistic yet addictive gameplay that you can sink hours into. 

Gameplay

As a traditional co-op wave-based shooter, What The Fog’s gameplay loop features a healthy combination of action, movement, teamwork, and survival. At the start of a run, you can pick one of three available characters—Dwilight Fairfield, Claudette Morel, and Feng Win—each with 4 unique skills that you can repeatedly use mid-combat. Keep in mind, though, that not all your abilities will be available from the get-go.

Once you boot up a run, your objective is to collect Blood Points by killing enemies and using them to activate 5 Power Generators randomly scattered across the level. Each generator contains a power-up, like extra damage or movement speed, and upon activating all the generators, head back to the exit to progress onwards.

As a traditional co-op wave-based shooter, What The Fog’s gameplay loop features a healthy combination of action, movement, teamwork, and survival.

After completing a level, you can choose to unlock one of the character’s skills or get an extra power-up for your existing skills. This is a crucial choice because each level features tougher enemies and higher-level Power Generators, so your early-game decisions play a huge role in shaping your later encounters. There are 15 levels in total, each with randomized mobs and map layouts.

After every 4 levels, you’ll face a boss packing a ton of HP and power, but there are no extra bonuses except the usual perks you get with beating a level. Oh, and there’s almost no healing in this game; when you die, you’ll have to rely on your party members to revive you using the Hook, essentially any activated generator. Besides that, you can gain some HP back once you beat a level or get the Regeneration ability by chance.

Completing a run for the first time gives you Feng Win, and each time you complete it on the highest available difficulty, you unlock the next difficulty. Initially, you can choose between Very Easy, Easy, and Normal difficulty, but as you progress, you can play on Hard, Very Hard, Spooked, Panicked, and the most challenging, Terrified. 

A Simple Style Backed With Playful Details

Besides a few interesting mechanics, the gameplay is as simple as it can get, and honestly, there’s a certain charm to it that I really like. One of the reasons I got so invested in the combat was the fluid movement, keeping me on my toes throughout the experience. The game has a dash mechanic, which you can use after a small cooldown, and it’s a great lifesaver to get out of corners or when surrounded.

Besides a few interesting mechanics, the gameplay is as simple as it can get, and honestly, there’s a certain charm to it that I really like.

There’s chaos in almost every direction, and since you can’t heal unless you unlock the regeneration ability or one of your party members is Feng Win, every drop of HP counts. It’s an adrenaline-packed fiesta that becomes even more fun when you’re with friends—the intended way to play.

The music is also a major reason why you’ll feel the thrill as you tear through hordes of enemies. What The Fog offers a solid list of Rock n’ Roll tracks that give you the energy and focus you need to persevere. That may be an exaggeration, but just note that the developers did not cheap out on the music.

The only concern I have at the moment is the amount of content. With only three characters to play and nothing much to unlock besides a few abilities, difficulty settings, and achievements, the game may get really stale after a week or two.

I’m hoping for long-term support because having more unlockables and characters can make the game much more dynamic and open to player creativity. As of now, though, I’m thoroughly satisfied with the fundamental mechanics since it’s a fun concept that needs further development.

Visuals And Performance

What The Fog combines the ever-growing cartoony art style with striking colors and details that give the environment personality and quirkiness. It’s a complete polar opposite of Dead by Daylight, and personally, I really like it and appreciate that the developers took a new approach by implementing this sort of art direction. 

Although the visuals are more on the simpler side, everything is well-detailed, crisp, distinct, and easy on the eyes. The Video Settings give you tons of graphical options that you can mess around with to get your favorite blend of presentation and performance.

What The Fog combines the ever-growing cartoony art style with striking colors and details that give the environment personality and quirkiness.

And with this minimalistic artwork, you can fully expect top-notch optimizations with no performance hiccups. While running What The Fog on a GTX 1660Ti and an Intel Core i7-10750H, I didn’t notice any messy visual bugs, glitches, stutters, or any other technical issue that would otherwise hinder the experience. 

Verdict

What The Fog brings wave-based shooters to the new age with a bang, reintroducing that addictive gameplay we all know and love. With consistent content updates, the game could have a healthy lifespan thanks to its multiplayer mode. Even having a competitive aspect like ranked mode or deathmatch could be a welcome addition, but we’ll have to wait and see.

It’s clear as day that Behaviour Interactive wasn’t particularly looking for a groundbreaking release; instead, by keeping this title under wraps, they want to release a project that’s nothing but mindless fun, especially in co-op. If you’re someone with nothing to do on the weekend, booting up What The Fog with your friends is probably the best experience you’ll have on a Saturday.

This has been my What The Fog review. While you’re here, consider checking out some of our other articles. 

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• Manor Lords Early Access Review
• Tales Of Kenzera: Zau Review
• The Last Of Us Part 2 Remastered Review
• Hades 2 Early Access Review