So first and foremost I'm impressed with the playtest's quality. There are a lot of complex interactions going on and only a few things that break up the flow of gameplay. I'll start with my improvement suggestions.
Suggstions
My first piece of advice would to always have the playtests boot up into the Tutorial. I completely missed it on my initial launch after seeing the option to just play. I was left trying to figure out the controls via trial and error which didn't come naturally. Maybe after the first time of the game launching it bypasses the tutorial and opens to the menu.
Speaking of the controls there are a few choice I feel need to be revisited when it comes to the scheme. Mele in my opinion should be binded to either "Q" or "E" for attack. When I'm out of slowmo or exiting and I left click it confuses me because my brain naturally expects to be able to fire from the hip. Exiting slow mo to then get stuck in a mele animation I didn't mean to initiate ruins the flow of the movement in my opinion. Sliding on your knees I also feel should initiate slowmo like pressing in the middle mouse button does. It's way too cool of an animation and movement not to utilize that gameplay mechanic automatically like the diving jump.
I found myself struggling to switch between weapons, maybe using the scroll wheel up and down to switch weapons would resolve that. The intro level feels very wide open/too big most of the time. I would narrow down some of the larger open spaces. The intro hallway is cool for establishing Rass as a tough guy but it's far too drawn out without more audio such as music, another character walking by or paintings to decorate the empty hallway that grab your eyes attention as you walk further down the hallway. Or having robots initiate hand to hand combat in the hallway before leading to the room where you can begin shooting would clear the dead air. Oil leaking out of the robots once you've defeated them would also be a nice touch.
What I liked
The variety in the weapons left me wanting to keep playing with them. (Would 100% recommend putting an outline of the weapon you're using next to the ammo counter). The animations and movement just are done so well, every movement feels fluid. Each of the weapon sounds is satisfying and varied. One small detail that often makes me happy is the coat tail flowing behind the character during fights. With the mele combat and the different ways to fight I felt less like Max Payne & closer to John Wick. Feels like he can do way more fighting than how I perceive the earlier version of Max Payne. The baton for mele is also a nice touch. Even after playing through it for more than an hour I didn't get tired of the loop when it comes to combat. Made me wish there was more honestly so I really hope you continue this project. The gun recoils I actually like, I just really wish there was a hip fire that made your shots more inaccurate when not aiming. Leaving me with the choice to aim with right click versus forcing me to. The visuals also felt good, even though I know this is in the early stages of the game but the visuals have a mood to them.
BUGS
I only ran into two bugs I would say when playtesting. One was an audio bug when hugging against the wall. It made a gun shot sound 3 times as loud as normal from an enemy. The other bug I'm wondering if it was caused by either the muzzle flash particles at the end of the second room or from a memory leak. I've attached a video example of this below.
As a composer/producer I couldn't help but to fill the ambience of the game with some music. I wrote two pieces, one calm and one for action when in combat. I feel it complimented the game. It was a fun exercise and I hope it's a pleasant surprise to the dev when watching my gameplay video. I did my best at editing the music so during sequences of calm it plays the calm theme then jumps into the action theme when during fighting
Overall I'm very much looking forward to future updates, I'd wishlist it on Steam right now if I could haha.
