MALWARE. Starts a browser window during the "loader" that plays a Youtube video that can't be shut off, even after the game loads. When exiting, game still runs and must be force-closed via Task Manager. DO NOT DOWNLOAD.

Why does the game launcher autoplay a YouTube video on startup, and why does it automatically open the developer's website when exiting the game? I don't like this sketchy behavior.

Also, the motion blur cannot be turned off.

I liked the now-discontinued Cemetery Warrior 2 despite its short length, so I was predisposd to like the latest installment (haven't played CW3 yet).

First things first. There is a shady scummy launcher that doubles as a browser hijacker. The developer claims the shady scummy publish added this after the game was finished. IT IS EASILY BYPASSED! Right click on the game in your library, go to manage, browse local files, and then select the actual game instead of the launcher. (Chew on THAT, Falco Software.)

The game is an arena-based FPS, in the tradition of Serious Sam and Painkiller but much stripepd down.. Each level is a series of discrete battles, each with its own layout and combination of monsters. You can pick up ammo and weapons and trade coins to the Soul Collector for more ammo, life, and "Demon Roars," your special attack that renders you invincible and damages enemies. Everything takes place on a level floor, though you can aim vertically (think Chasm: The Rift).

The frenetic gameplay really gets your blood pumping, and before too long you'll be swarmed by enough tough monsters that you'll have to strategize and play it on the defensive. CW4 isn't easy, and not always for the right reasons. Sometimes you're just praying that they stop spawning before you use up too many explosives or Demon Roars. The soul coins scatter and roll far and wide and have a small hitbox. (Pickupbox? Whatever.) Your hurtbox, by contrast, sometimes seems a bit big, especially when you're trying to run past those lowest-level enemies. The space bar maks you warp forward a short distance, an unusual mechanic that takes some time to master.

The graphics are a marked improvement from CW2, which had the look of an early-to-mid-aughts budget title. CW4 is much more colorful and detailed, brinnging the graphics well into the 2010s. I actually had to turn all the graphics to their lowest settings and play it in 4:3 to kep it from lagging and straining my CPU. (That could be not so much an indication of poor memory optimization as an indication that my 2013 laptop is not cut out for 2019 games.) The monsters are detailed and creative; there's something so satisfying about shotgunning one of those . .. graboid ground-piranha things out of the air.

The game has a couple of other unfortunate design choices. When you run at an enemy, instead of sliding past them like in 99% of other FPS games, your Manly Demonic Might pushes along with you, even if you only touch a corner of them. Giving them amble time to slice and chomp away health before you realize what's afoot. Also, as you get near death, blood and wounds appear on your field of view, obscuring the gameplay somewhat, and don't fade. Come on, guys. It was quaint when Operation Body Count did that, but let's move on, shall we? The level 2 boss is essentially impossible to beat without a full stock of three Demon Roars (maaaybe you could do it with two). I came out of the difficult fight before him with only one. Since the game auto-saves after each battle, I had no way to beat him and had to restart the level.

In spite of all these flaws, CW4 manages to be a pretty fun, arcade-y experience, with a story and given away for free, no less..You'll enjoy it if you like the previous games, but may find it unfair and to simple compared to its primary inspirations. At this point, I wish the developer would stop making these three -or four-level games and put in the effort to make a full-length game, one with larger areas and slightly more diverse gameplay. They have a decent amount of skill, even if Cemetery Warrior 4 could stand some improvements.

Here is a video of this, experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVBX3ixMYiQ

So I have covered the previous game, Cemetery Warrior 3 , and it was a terrible game. Having saw they were making yet another one, and Free, I figured I could give it a shot and see if they learned from their mistakes...

No, they absolutely did NOT learn from their last game! This game is terrible! You can go back and read my review for the last game, and it suffers from pretty much the same things! But let me state some of the changes it has.

The movement is a little bit faster, but still feels slow. There is a sprint, though it's not that much of a speed increase. The game removes the "jump" from the last game, and instead adds a "dash" ability that has some really bad screen distortion and doesn't move you very far.

There is no overly loud sounds/audio that would blow your ears out like the last game, and no monsters seem to share Doom monster sounds... However the music tracks from the last game are all in here in this game as well.

There is only 4 weapons in the game, and no melee weapon (no sh*ty chain like the last game had, thank god!) Problem? They work well, but are very generic and not very interesting. Picking up a weapon does in fact have ammo this time! There is some ammo pick ups, but there is still no health pickups in the game, or even an armor system. The only new pickup is "souls" (which is actually just gold coins) that you can use to "buy" health and ammo.

There is a powerup you can use "Demon Shout" that gives you temporary invincibility and kills most monsters in front of you. You only get a few charges unless you give your soul coins to this "goddess" who will give you a power charge, health, and ammo.

The biggest issue I had with the last game, and even with this game, is the TERRIBLE levels. These levels are tiny rooms and corridors. On top of that, there is only 4 levels once again! This time there is a level selection screen, as well as the option to jump to the bosses if you wish, which is handy. One problem! The bosses are super cheap and deal way too much damage. These bosses can kill you in just a few hits, and their attacks have huge hitboxes its hard to tell if you will be hit or not. I struggled to beat the first boss, let alone the second boss! Even better when most boss attacks can go through walls and still damage/kill you. Fun fact, the second boss room is just a tiny square room with NO COVER! A boss that moves around fast and charges you. I also want to say that the amount of screen shake the bosses cause is just insane.

This game boasts that it's "inspired" by Painkiller and Serious Sam, well they didn't take what made those games really good and implement it. The lack of interesting weapons, the small and plain levels, the overall "speed" of those games are lost and not present here. I know the "story" is you are the Demon that you defeated in the last game, but your arms are an army dude, and using futuristic weapons, not demon looking weapons.

Now, I could just forgive the game for just being bad, but this game takes it even further! When you boot up the game, it launches a "launcher window" that plays a Dev studio thing with a YouTube video. On top of that, if you don't pause the video before the game loads, it will be stuck playing while you try to play the game! (This is in the video at the beginning, and at the end.) Once you close the game, it decides to open your web browser to their website! Stop it!

So yeah in cause you couldn't guess, this game is sh*t. It has achievements that will forever stain my profile for not being able to finish them, and honestly I don't care to try and play this game again. For the free price tag, just avoid!!

A good meaty shooter. The game is similar to Painkiller, Doom and overall looks good, the gameplay is well designed for a shooter, the dynamics are there. The downside is that the levels are too monotonous.
For spending your time shooting monsters is the best! Especially at a 90% discount.

Cemetery Warrior 4 is an improvement on all three previous Cemetery Warrior titles. It has a reasonable intro' with some control over configuring the graphics e.g. shadows, post effects, textures and screen resolutions; even the main menu looks more professional (at least compared to Cemetery Warrior 1, 2 & 3).

The game includes four chapters; each of which is split into two parts, the main chapter and a boss level i.e.1st Chapter = Catacombs + (Boss: Fallen Prince), 2nd Chapter = Abandoned Paradise + (Boss: Corpse Eater), 3rd Chapter = Golden Caves + (Boss: Rexoul) and finally the 4th Chapter = Cursed World + (Boss: Father). The graphics are also an improved on previous versions of the game and the weapons look even more Painkiller like, with excellent effects and lots of blood and gore.

Kill all the demons in each stage, making sure you pick up their souls before they disappear. These give you access to more ammunition and health regeneration via the soul keeper; but you have to touch it to gain both. Souls are especially important in the harder modes because no souls means no spare ammunition or health regeneration in the hardest mode. Once you've dispatched all the demons in a stage you unlock the next stage/gate and can then proceed; once a chapter is completed, you face a boss battle. There are three levels of difficulty (Imp, Demon and Satan). The easiest is Imp, with the boss having reduced power as well as all enemies with a reduced HP and all HP is restored when you touch the soul keeper even if you haven't collected any souls; whereas the hardest difficulty i.e. Satan, the soul keeper only restores health and ammunition if you have collected souls; plus, bosses are more powerful and enemies are harder to kill. Demon difficulty is somewhere between the above two difficulty modes.


Despite the relatively positive comment above, I cannot recommend this game in it's current state because of the following:

What really 'shocked' me was a Falcoware advert that pops up whenever I started the game from the Steam library. At first I thought this was because I'd just installed a free standing copy of Cemetery Warrior 4 that 'was' soon to be given away via a site I moderate and post review of the games given away. I usually get access before games goes live; however, I could have sworn I'd started the game via Steam. So, I checked the installed folder via the steamapps/common path and was shocked to find the Falcoware installer inside the games folder. When booting up any Falcoware game downloaded directly from Falcoware, you always get the Falcoware installer, which shows an ~ 30 second advert for one of the games they offer on their site. Also, when you close the game down, your browser is opened to Falcoware's home page. This earns Falcoware and the developer of the game money via the adverts you see at the boot up and when the browser is opened. This is the first time I've ever come across a game purchased via Steam that includes advertising from another distributor and it's really not acceptable.


You can play the game directly from the original executable without the adverts if you bypass (avoid) the Falcoware installer {the Falcoware installer looks like a red circle with a white forward pointing arrow within the circle} , but you have to first open up the installed folder. Why Valve have allowed this sort of invasive advertising is beyond me? Cemetery Warrior 2 & 3 that used to be available via Steam do not have the Falcoware installer, despite both still being available via the Falcoware site (version one is also available). Thankfully Cemetery Warrior 5 is also free of the installer.


The game itself is relatively mediocre compared to the likes of the Painkiller and early Doom series, both of which appear to have inspired this game. However, as mentioned above, this fourth title in the series is an improvement on previous titles. and is reasonably playable. If you like the Painkiller series or for that matter any of the early Doom games, you'll probably enjoy playing this game in short bursts. For me it's more a coffee break game than a fully fledged first person shooter. The four chapters included with this game should give you no more than ninety minutes or less of game play, depending on how good you are with this type of FPS game. You should easily complete a single chapter over a 15 to 20 minute coffee/tea break. :)


The following two anti-malware suites (via Virus Total) tagged the Falcoware installer with SentinelOne (Static ML) with a DFI - Malicious PE and Trapmine with Suspicious.low.ml.score; however, these are likely to be false positives because 70 other anti-malware suites, including most of the well known suites gave the installer a clean bill of health. You can check the results HERE[www.virustotal.com]. The following image link HERE[i.postimg.cc] shows you the Falcoware installer window with advert that pops up before the game boots up.

I may update this review once I've had chance to play all of the game on different difficulty settings. I paid for the Steam version, but got a free standing copy from Falcoware. You can copy the Steam version, remove the falcoware installer and then play the game DRM free with no adverts as a free standing game with no internet required.

How to stop the Falcoware Installer

You can stop the advert appearing and the browser redirection to Falcoware's home page by opening up the installed game (right click on the game shortcut in your library and select properties). This opens up the Cemetery Warrior 4's Local Files panel.

Click on the Local Files button (between Updates & Controller). On the right hand side of the panel you'll see a button labelled Browse; click that to open up the installed game folder.

Inside the game folder you'll see one folder labelled Cemetery Warrior4_Data, & thee files; the first is the Falcoware installer labelled Cemetery Warrior 4.exe, the original game executable labelled CemeteryWarrior4.exe and a library file labelled UnityPlayer.dll.

Delete the Falcoware installer file & relabel the original executable (CemeteryWarrior4.exe) to Cemetery Warrior 4.exe (just add spaces between Cemetery & Warrior and between Warrior & 4) and add spaced to the folder between CemeteryWarrior and between Warrior4 so that it looks like Cemetery Warrior 4_Data.

When you rename the original executable the icon will change to the red circle with the white arrow. You should now only have one renamed folder called Cemetery Warrior 4_Data & two files named Cemetery Warrior 4.exe and UnityPlayer.dll

The game will now boot up from your Steam library minus the Falcoware Installer & browser redirection when you close the game down.

:trolol:

The game is generally good. Feels like the author was inspired by classic shooters, in particular the game Painkiller. The development of the game is at a fairly high level, there is even a plot. After passing the cards, I can say that the game has come to me. In general, I recommend it.

I don't know which one is more weirder:
- The YouTube ad which plays automatically at start and stays in background (you can close it, no need for magic but still)
- The F2P model
- The game itself

I was worked in a cemetery as a guard for 6 months in real-life (There were too much dilapidation, stupid kids ruining everything...) also helped the grave diggers, but never encountered any of these demons and creatures... So...
I like it. Like the previous CW games too.

Also: what happened with the first Cemetery Warrior?... There is 2-3 and now 4.
Where's the first one?

shovelware

A good meaty shooter. The game is similar to Painkiller, Doom and overall looks good, the game play is well designed for a shooter, the dynamics are there. The downside is that the levels are too monotonous.
For spending your time shooting monsters is the best! Especially at a 90% discount.