How do I play this the "right" way?

[Aqua]

Just to preface, I am utter, rancid *ass* at anything tactical, so I'm really just finding the game really overwhelming right now. Even on medium difficulty every encounter basically mows me down, and I don't know what kind of approach I should be going for. I've seen so many clips of people just jumping and sliding around, blasting entire squads without breaking a sweat, but for the life of me I'm just stumbling around, essentially just sliding into walls like a goofball, trying to frantically figure out whether or not I should be wasting ammo from the pistol or shotgun, or just stick with the rifle.

How do I just... Not suck at the game? It's clear from the get-go that Selaco isn't a run-and-gun kind of boomy shooty, but between all the explosions and particles completely blinding my screen at every possible moment, and then every single bullet basically instantly shredding my health and armor faster than I can react, I dunno what to do without just dying constantly or limping forward at like, 10 HP. Should I just knock it down to easy difficulty? If it affects enemy spawns I won't be too keen doing that because I still like facing off against big groups of enemies, but not when they can instantly tear me apart even if I'm at high health and armor.

I had the same struggle during the demo, so this is entirely just a skill issue on my part. game still rly gud, don't be mad at me :(

[Sar]

When I played the demo it took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize that the enemies are not hitscan. They fire very fast projectiles which can be dodged. At longer ranges you can peak, quickly shoot and hide before the bullets hit. Try to force enemies into long range engagements until you have the shotgun.

[Wolfe]

I honestly feel kinda the same way as the title, it's a strange and perplexing game so far. I thought it was initially like FEAR but there's no slow-mo or horror elements, and then it also has immersive sim elements, while additionally having a strange system for backtracking for upgrades. What's odd is combat encounters are over so fast that I'm just left wandering around these kinda empty levels looking for enemies, feels oddly barren.

I want to like this game but something about it feels missing, not sure what. The music is great though, by far the best part. I do hope someone will make a slow-mo mod in the future, I think it would make things way more fun, albeit easier. I also kinda wish the game had some melee moves like FEAR had too, that was great. The game just needs like a pinch of salt or slightly more seasoning tbh

[Aqua]

At first I had troubles knowing what exactly to expect of the game going in. Frankly, I had zero idea what Selaco would be when I first booted it up, besides being a largely FEAR-inspired shooter, and my 30 minute run of the demo way back lol. Selaco takes a *lot* of elements of various games and genres and blends them into a very bizarre unique kind of experience that's almost a genre on its own. Of course, not being able to exactly pinpoint the kind of game you're about to play can be a little puzzling when you're wandering through the first initial levels.

Pre-patch, I was having way more issues with the difficulty, though what irritated me most in particular is that I was on Lieutenant for my first playthrough, and got absolutely melted in nearly every encounter for the whole game. Post-patch the ride was a lot smoother throughout, but what always irked me for that first playthrough was the wording in the difficulty description, in which Lieutenant's recommended as the go-to for people with a healthy amount of shooter experience. Post-patch it's perfectly fine now, and I established way earlier in the thread already that my lousy experience was purely attributed to a terminal case of certified skill issue, but since then I've been kind of thinking about how things are worded and otherwise presented to the player, especially in the very early sections of the game where I think adjusting to the style of combat and exploration that Selaco expects could be a bumpy ride, to say the least.

I wonder if there's some way to better assert some of the more vague expectations for new players diving right in, especially for those who might be picking up Selaco after hearing of all the rave reviews by the bigwig review shows and news sites covering the game. I can't help but feel like there's some misrepresentation as to what Selaco is as a game right now, and could use some clarification in-game and maybe out and about on the internet as well, with how some people talk about and otherwise summarize the game. It ain't yo average boomer shooter or classic Doom wannabe, yo!

Weird rant, not sure if this answers anything for the thread reply above, but that message just sorta resurrected an interesting thought that's been swimming in my head for a while. I love this game to bits now and I really hope plenty more people get to experience it, but I'd hate for them to experience their first run the way that I did.

[Aqua]

I think I'm probably a huge outlier in how the average Selaco playthrough might go though, in all actuality, because to be completely honest I tend to have the attention span of a squirrel hyped up on a can of Arachno-cola. So who knows! Figure I'd get that thought posted regardless so that I'm not going silently crazy about it lmao

[Cadaver747]

It's doorways and land mines for me in Selaco. Enemies are too strong for me to fight more than 2 at once, so I hide and listen to their footsteps, on some maps the music is too loud on default settings for me to hear them properly but it's manageable, the patch should improve it, so far didn't reach that specific maps to notice any difference.

[Stoibs]

Originally posted by Cadaver747:

It's doorways and land mines for me in Selaco.

Mines are great!; until I forgot I replaced the 2x usage Mod with the Discus throwing 300% "More Firepower" attachment and decided to throw one down at my feet

[JtDarth]

Originally posted by Solar Field:

Having played MANY Doom-like and Duke Nukem 3D myself, I had to change the way i play if I wanted to stay alive for more than 5 seconds.

The game seems to be heavily inspired by F.E.A.R though and I feel like that's how you should play (could be wrong?). Doesn't mean you have to be a tactical mastermind but you need to take cover a lot and to pay attention to small details like enemies voices and noises they can make, so you know where they are and where they are going.

I've seen a lot of people complaining about the difficulty and the level design but to me everything feels natural (not saying I'm super good at it though).

I also appreciate the fact that the game is completely playable with a controller.

Anyway, yeah the game requires some adjustments cause it's not really the typical "doom-like" even though it might look and feel like it.

I love everything about Selaco though, I hope people who are struggling with it will enjoy it eventually

Anyone labelling Selaco a 'boomer-shooter' is misinformed and doing the game and themselves a disservice. If you approach it like Doom or Blood or w/e, as a straightforward gung-ho shooter, you will not have a good time. The game rewards a methodical approach.
They assume based on the engine and artstyle that it will play like Doom or other typical 'boomer-shooters', when it's actual encounter design concepts are QUITE different. It's honestly more like someone mixed FEAR's combat arena approach and AI with Half-life's environment interactivity approach.
I well and truly fell in love with the game when my thought of 'how does the game handle metal in an MRI machine?' had not only the expected result, but I was outright rewarded for it. A significant chunk of the secrets I've found thus far are actual puzzle thinking results, instead of just 'hump walls pressing interact'. I even found a few just by looking at the automap and noticing things didn't quite match up.

[Cadaver747]

Originally posted by Stoibs:

Mines are great!; until I forgot I replaced the 2x usage Mod with the Discus throwing 300% "More Firepower" attachment and decided to throw one down at my feet

Mine happens ;)

I died that way also, once I forgot to change grenade type to a normal one with timed detonation so it was an instakill for me due to a very sneaky enemy coming up to me. But I had the Additional Charge Mod enabled, but the mine was fully upgraded so I guess I had no chance. And I absolutely love the Face Hopper Mechanism upgrade!

[DAVOS CENSORSHIP 2030 FTW!!!]

Depends on the Difficulty.

On Captain and above is better to wait for Enemies around Doorways or Corners to knock them down first and then shoot them.

Melee is pretty damn OP in this Game, you just have to know when to use it.

Same goes for the Slide Spam.

Mines and Grenades are also pretty OP and they have Upgrades.

Consider the Enemy A.I. always when repositioning for Camping due to the Flanking Patterns.

Some of the Puzzles are pretty well done here even though i bet a lot of the so called Run and Gun "Boomer Shooter" Casual Players don't expect them so it might be off putting for them, specially when it comes to Zoomer Gamers not able to concentrate or pay attention for more than 5 Seconds since it messes up with the Game Pacing.

Who knows but still feels like even Admiral Difficulty got easier after the Patching, but could be me getting used to the Game.

I'm just glad this doesn't try to be another Generic Speedrun Retro Shooter to quench the Zoomer Consoomer Anxiety.

They tried to do a lot with this Passion Project and i can only praise the Devs for it.

And yeah, no one ever misses the "Blood" Hitscanner Cultists. Trust me on that one.

[Maclintok]

I definitely relate to your "blinding my screen" comment. More than many other similar shooter I find that I'm often shooting into smoke. Maybe it's also the large muzzle flash? A big reason why I stuck with the default zoom view instead of ADS.

[Grampire]

Selaco checks you hard when you commit in a firefight. Many FPS games abide the player taking risks and sustaining fire, but if you don't accurately read the encounter you'll get punished hard here.

My only advice is to give ground and rely on bursts of fire when you're outnumbered and multiple targets have LoS on you. You won't win and they are going to burn you down. Fall back and reposition and try to single an opponent out. Use landmines to cover routes you aren't watching.

Camping and hiding in choke points can work in lower difficulties but I'm not finding it effective. You really have to work the encounter and try to pick of units that are out of position while maintaining cover. It's not easy especially when you hit an encounter for the first time.