I took a quick look at The Citadel last night. Not my amazing puzzle game from 1991 which I'm sure everybody remembers but a first-person shooter.

I was roadtesting the demo. It looked kind of promising with the visuals, initially and the handling is very DOOM-y.

This was the first warning sign... this "lamp" here is actually a button to open the door. There are plenty of lamps in the game. Not all of them are buttons...

This was a level hub; you could talk to some characters about the (thin) story about killing the sleeping god to liberate all the people you're about the shoot dead to reach the god (?).

The figure at the back here is a shop who can be found in a secret location on each level.

You meet a lot of red monks at first, who throw projectiles at you. They are pretty easy to defeat. The turquoise aesthetic is interesting but the high-def enemy graphics jar with the surroundings.

What would a first-person shooter be without gibs?

Not sure I found every hidden place in the first level, but occasionally they were fun to find. The real issue with The Citadel was boredom.

Most of the enemies I encountered were pretty easy to defeat: the only dangerous one was the yellow astronaut armed with long-distance flamethrowers.

I don't have a picture of them because I was running backwards fast. :)

I got through two full levels and a secret level and it just wasn't challenging, no flair to the level design nor interesting to explore. No hook to keep me going. It felt padded, if anything.

It is supposed to have 30 levels, so I'm sure it gets harder later but I just couldn't justify spending any more time on it.

If you're interested in checking it out, it's here on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1378290/The_Citadel/