Now you’re probably thinking ‘Why is this game called Trepang2?’ when you never heard of Trepang in the first place. That’s because the original game was made for a game jam and was an unrelated side scroller. The name itself means sea cucumber in Indonesian, rather innocuous in comparison to the game itself. Trepang2 is essentially an entirely new IP and rather unexpectedly, a spiritual sequel to the F.E.A.R. series in many ways.
If you’ve played F.E.A.R., you know it’s a supernatural horror FPS and extremely good, both for AI design and horror. Trepang tries to amp this up and in many ways succeeds but you’d never know that anything weird was going on at first. The first rather lengthy level is entirely straightforward combat against teams of enemy soldiers in order to give you a feel for the combat. The story is suitably vague as you play the shadowy #106, some sort of super soldier experiment that’s gone wrong and endowed you with temporary invisibility and the power to slow down time. The more enemies you kill, the longer you can slow time for, resulting in some wild chain attacks if you’re fast and accurate enough.
If that wasn’t enough, the Horizon Corporation, the baddies in this game who altered you to be more than human (and perhaps less as well), are also creating a variety of spectacular monsters as bioweapons and the only one that stands a chance against them is poor, augmented #106. Working your way through the stages diligently will net you additional weapon modifications and slowly refine your skills with your abilities, allowing you to proceed. This is no normal FPS though. There’s a sharp tactical edge built into Trepang2’s design, forcing you to plan, strategize, and sneak your way about at times, while other levels force you to run blood-soaked gauntlets of corridors as enemies rush to slaughter you.
Trepang2 takes more than the spooky bits from F.E.A.R. and that’s a good thing. The original F.E.A.R. was known for its tactical AI which would flank and attack you, detect your flashlight, and communicate to coordinate their assault on your position. You can expect many of the same tactics in Trepang2, although not quite as effectively as in Monolith’s masterpiece. Enemies call out to each other and throw flares, trying to lure you out. When they spot you, they flank your position and assault from all sides, sneaking up and firing from behind. It’s an effective strategy and many enemies are remarkably fast an accurate, necessitating the bullet time mechanic simply to survive the onslaught of weaponry.
However, the AI isn’t nearly as smart as it might appear and between invisibility and bullets, you can pretty much fake out any enemy fire team pretty easily. If you’re a tactical player, you’ll know that hiding around corners is incredibly effective and the Trepang2 AI doesn’t search too far for you if they don’t hear or see you. This allows you to run through an area invisibly and find a solid hiding spot as they don’t seem to hear your footsteps. Once you’re hidden with an area you can run to, you can lure enemies with a bullet or two and they’ll trickle into a room hesitantly, allowing you to gun them down one by one. Even ‘high value targets’ (read: bosses) fall for this, and if you have a way to dodge the grenades they throw, most enemies will fall fairly quickly on Normal difficulty. Players online are recommending Hard difficulty as default as a result but unless you’re patient and sneaky, Normal is still a challenge.
The monstrosities that Horizon has been creating are entirely different from a tactical standpoint. Enemies that spawn and race at you or which bullets simply bounce off of lead to vastly different tactics from stage to stage. Bosses are gigantic and terrifying too, but make for some fun high-stress combat when you learn how to fight each one. Trepang2 isn’t entirely linear either, a refreshing change for an FPS. Once you’ve completed the first couple of stages, the game opens up and allows you to select side missions or main missions from a central blacksite hub that serves as your home base. At the base, you can also change your appearance and run combat sims as well. There are places to refill ammo, but on Normal, ammo is plentiful enough that you’ll almost never run dry as long as you’re not practicing a ‘spray-n-pray’ approach to the game.
Modifying your weapons to include scopes, laser sights, supressors, and recoil mods improve your strength in combat impressively in Trepang2 and as you conquer levels on various difficulties, you’ll also unlock a wide variety of cheat options which will allow you to expand your game even further. Activating cheats knocks your save down to Easy difficulty and most of them are soft-locked until you complete certain tasks at certain levels of difficulty, but infinite invisibility or stamina certainly change the dynamics of the game. There are plenty of cheats to choose from once you get the hang of the game and if you’re playing on fan-standard ‘Hard’, you’re going to unlock lots. It’s neat to have a menu built right in that shows you your cheat progress and infinitely more motivating that plain old achievements. I’m not just doing this for the trophy after all, I’m doing it to get a fun new mode in the game for my next playthrough! That’s motivation.
While it’s a particularly dark game, Trepang 2 looks like a AAA title or close to it, even though it’s a tiny Vancouver-based studio. Sure, there could be more detail in the dead bodies and some of the background textures aren’t as complex as other games, but it’s dark, things are coming at you fast, and it looks cool as hell. The light effects are excellent, bullets leave visible pockmarks, and the time-slowing filter shifts your perspective slightly to give everything a surreal jelly-like look. Things get crazy when you take damage too and the screen starts to turn red, obscuring your vision as you’re swarmed by enemies and you start to panic. Building and character designs are excellent overall and the monsters look particularly neat. A lot of care was taken with boss design and they look like alternative Resident Evil monsters, which is awesome. There are a few slight glitches in the visuals here and there, light bleed from an intel point through a solid wall or a corner here and there that doesn’t match up but the high-octane speed of the game overall really glosses over these and makes them entirely unimportant.
Sound is also a key factor in Trepang2. The first thing you’ll really notice is the enemy chatter and noise. You can hear the enemy coming and you can typically pinpoint their movements through audio alone. Enemy soldiers talk a lot (and swear a lot so don’t play this one around kids!). High value targets have a HUD marker visible through walls but everyone else you have to listen for. That’s particularly disturbing in a bloody empty hallway with monsters gurgling about almost next to you, but it’s also terrifying in the best possible way. There’s no real push to full horror in Trepang2 the way that the F.E.A.R. series did and the majority of the background narrative is told through intel pieces that you pick up in each level, slowly piecing together what’s going on. That means that the tension has to be generated by the soundtrack and sound effects. Squishy organic noises, moans, screams, and thuds abound and the music keeps pace, ratcheting up to a fever tempo as enemies start to attack. The music is used incredibly effectively, reminiscent of Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal, though not quite as good as either of those. It’s still awesome though and a Trepang2 soundtrack would really get the blood pumping if one drops online! All in all, the clear and intentional soundscape of Trepang 2 elevates the gameplay effectively.
If you haven’t gotten the idea by now, Trepang2 is a high octane, bullet-soaked, blood-drenched rollercoaster of a ride that has players on the edge of their seats the entire time. While the narrative could be a smidge better and the AI isn’t without a few flaws, the game is not only incredibly cool but it’s ridiculously fun as well and it’s clear a lot of time and effort went into refining and polishing the visuals, designs, sound, and gameplay of this outstanding shooter. Even if it’s not as scary as it has the potential to be, it’s an outstanding achievement from a small studio and there hasn’t been a game even remotely like it in years. Bringing back this approach to FPS design is long overdue and with a few tweaks, a bit more story, and some scarier scenes, Trepang2 could stand with AAA titles easily. As it is, it’s one of the best surprises in a long time to come out of nowhere and a must play for any serious FPS fan. If this is where the genre is going, strap us in and mainline it into our veins because Trepang2 is worth every penny of the $30 it’ll cost you on the Xbox Store. But hey, don’t take our word for it…go check it out! You definitely won’t regret it.
This review is based on a digital copy of Trepang2 provided by the publisher. It was played on an Xbox Series X using a 55” Sony 1080p TV. Trepang2 is also available on PS5 and PC on Steam.
Nate Van Lindt has been a gamer since the days of yore (aka Commodore 64), and has played a bit of virtually everything out there. He's also an avid comic book collector, both vintage and current, and reads a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy. On top of that, he watches a fair number of movies and TV shows as well. Oh, and he has a family, a full-time job, and lives somewhere in the urban wilds of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, foraging for old video cables and forgotten game soundtracks.