Have you ever played Doom and thought ‘This is good, but I wish I was slicing down yakuza members with a katana all while synthwave beats underscored the action’? If you have, you’re in luck. Beyond Sunset is an indie boomer shooter that lets you live out that dream through an incredibly solid set of frantic gunplay and melee combat, fast-paced movement and a wealth of RPG mechanics. And with its most recent ‘PRELUDE’ update, all of this is now paired with a stellar synthwave soundtrack, composed by Karl Vincent. Think of Cyberpunk 2077, but faster, more furious, and with a seriously eye-popping all-over-neon visual style.
Playing as the street samurai Lucy, you’re awoken in the far future to a cyberpunk hellscape, forced to battle seemingly anything that moves. Beyond Sunset is an FPS game puts you up against the yakuza, robots, zombies and all manners of enemies, but you’re prepared. Armed with an arsenal to make Doomguy blush and a wealth of Ghostrunner-like high speed parkour abilities, you’ll slice your way to the top.
The game is also designed to be fully moddable, using its basis in the GZDoom engine to allow fans to create new levels, weapons and combat scenarios to make their own cyberpunk nightmare.
With the addition of the ‘PRELUDE’ update, you’re given a glimpse into how exactly Lucy got into this situation; the new prologue ‘Episode 0: New Life’ lets you experience her life before she was put into hypersleep. Fortunately for you (and perhaps unfortunately for her), Lucy’s old life was just as dangerous, so there’s no drop in the challenge despite its nature as a prologue.
As mentioned, the update also brings in Karl Vincent’s new synthwave soundtrack, which perfectly pairs with the gun-jutsu action and is also available for purchase separately. As well as general improvements and bug fixes, this update also includes one of my favourite patch notes ever: ‘Added more birds’.
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