Takedown: Red Sabre

Serellan seems dedicated to shaping Takedown into its original pitch, but it needs far more time in the planning phase. [Feb 2014, p.90]

Rarely exciting, mostly disappointing. An unfinished tactical shooter let down by technical issues and terrible AI.

Takedown: Red Sabre is a wasted opportunity, a game with many problems of gameplay, a terrific AI and a poor technical realization.

There’s nothing natural about AI that faces the wrong way in combat, or a shooter who doesn’t know what gear he brought into combat, or squad members who can’t communicate. When shooting for authenticity, a half step is not enough.

Takedown: Red Sabre sums up the fears of every Kickstarter backer: that in the end they’ll have paid up front for something that doesn’t turn out very good. With clumsy presentation and wildly uneven difficulty, the game fails to be a competent FPS, much less a tactical one. The best advice I can give is to avoid it, which is little solace for those who backed it in the first place.

Whether a future patch will rectify a lot of problems with Takedown: Red Sabre or not is irrelevant; Serellan should not have released a game this unfinished in the first place. The core of the game could be good, but not until a number of issues have been resolved.

Takedown: Red Sabre was supposed to be an eloquent love letter to the tactical shooter genre, but the final product ends up reading more like hate mail. There isn’t a single part of the game that rises above mediocrity, and much of it dips below that mark. Worst of all, the very fans who have been craving a new game like Takedown are the ones who will be disappointed by it the most.

Please, don't get fooled by Serellan's proclamations and don't fall in the trap. Takedown: Red Sabre is a terrible first person shooter, ugly to watch and painful to play. You won't get any fun from it, even if you insist on fighting against its flaws. Stay away from it.

A game that its own bots would probably refuse to play it.

Financial issues killed an old-school promising shooter in its own cradle.

With boring level design, horrid AI and lousy visuals, Takedown: Red Sabre is a horrible game.

If you burn $15 and scatter the ashes, you will have more fun than you would by playing this game.

Clunky UI, appalling gameplay, broken and buggy mechanics mean Takedown: Red Sabre should be avoided at all cost.

Takedown: Red Sabre is a Kickstarter failure. How anyone could have used the gamers' money to create such a bad game (ugly, stupid, without tactical options and with boring maps), is beyond me. The game has one important good point - it uninstalls really quickly. It takes just a few seconds to delete this nightmare. My advice is this: stay away.

An unfinished, broken mess of a tactical shooter that offers not even one redemptive bright spot.