EARLY ACCESS REVIEW: ‘La Quimera’ Is A Short Bore

Editor’s Note: La Quimera was originally scheduled  for a full release on April 25. After the review period was completed, the game’s release was indefinitely delayed and released in an Early Access period on May 7. However, because the game maintains its $30 price tag, and because we experienced the full game during the review period, we have decided to publish our review as an Early Access Review while retaining its score  

La Quimera is a new co-operative first-person shooter set in a cyberpunk Latin America and developed by Reburn Studios, rebranded from 4a Games Ukraine, the studio behind the Metro series. Unfortunately, it struggles to reach even a fraction of the fun, depth, or identity the developers have proven themselves capable of. Instead, La Quimera is a discordant package that is as frustrating as it is uninteresting, leaving it failing to justify even its modest asking price of $30.

In La Quimera, players are put in the shoes of a recruit to a private military company in 2064. In the decades prior, the world was ravaged by war and natural calamities until society fractured into small, isolated states that allowed private military companies to flourish. Meanwhile, technology marched onward to invent robots, exosuits, and numerous other stereotypical military-focused future technologies. What is unfortunate about La Quimera‘s interesting setting is that the vast majority of information about it is communicated to the player via the first few seconds of a playthrough and its product page on Steam.

The game’s lack of communication regarding its world stems from two primary issues: poor writing and extreme brevity. The writing in La Quimera is, simply put, void of character or interest. Its characters are trope vehicles that spout cliche action-movie lines while mechanically moving the player through an outline of plot points without displaying interest in illustrating the game’s wider world. The story it pushes players through is woefully underbaked as well, with numerous plot points getting brought up that are never resolved.

Multiple playthroughs offer little variety.

This leads us directly to La Quimera‘s absurdly short story content, even accounting for its diminished price point. All the content in La Quimera is contained within only three-story missions that take less than a handful of hours to complete and have no variety across multiple playthroughs. It feels completely unfinished and fails to justify La Quimera‘s price tag as its only component of content.

To make matters worse, the game’s missions are rarely fun to play. La Quimera builds around a traditional first-person shooter skeleton that equips players with a primary and secondary weapon and a grenade.  On top of this, La Quimera introduces an ammunition-type mechanic that sees players switching between traditional weapons against human enemies and electromagnetic ammunition against robotic ones. The system ends up disappointingly thin, though, as guns all feel the same regardless of their ammunition type, and the damage bonuses they give generally prove negligible.

On top of their standard loadout, players can unlock pieces of an exosuit that grant unique abilities like invisibility and summoning drones to fight alongside the player. Setting aside the fact that stealth is not an option in La Quimera and that to unlock these abilities, players have to repeatedly play through the same three missions, some of the exosuit skills are fun. However, they struggle to shine in the game’s cluttered and chaotic firefights.

La Quimera is a relentless exercise in frustration. 

Overall, firefights in La Quimera are nightmares of laser-focused hordes of enemies, a disorienting and clogged HUD, and a drought of ammunition that leaves the player constantly scrounging around in corners for a couple of measly rounds. It is an unending exercise in frustration with no payoff that struggles to function appropriately at any level.

Firing weapons is not fun because they feel too similar, and their audio design lacks punch despite some clean and interesting visual design. The maps players navigate in firefights have confusing layouts with barriers presented as cover despite frequently not being big enough to protect the player while behind them. Enemies have little to no notable differences in how they approach combating the player, and there is a complete lack of reactivity to how the player plays. All of this comes together to make the actual gameplay of La Quimera feel like a chore to play through, which is more often irritating than entertaining.

The most disappointing part of La Quimera is how it struggles to bring its good ideas together, leaving them buried in lesser ideas and poor execution. There is so much here that could have worked well. It has an interesting framework for a futuristic cyberpunk world. It has an intriguing ammunition and exosuit system that could have led to interesting builds and more dynamic firefights, especially when accounting for its three-player co-op. But in the end, those interesting ideas are buried in a lack of content and poor execution that makes it all unfun to engage with on any level.

La Quimera is available now in early access on Steam.