Redfall review – A bit of a mess, but not without its pleasures

I’m a fan of the Chickering safe house. I’m glad I unlocked it. The fast travel is handy, but also it’s just a nice kind of place to hang out. Not sure about the floor-to-ceiling stars-and-stripes on one wall, but the flag got less creepy, at least, once I moved in close and discovered that what I’d taken to be a string of bulletholes across the middle of it actually resolved into a chain of Christmas lights once the textures had loaded in. Elsewhere, big fridges, med kits and ammo, sleeping bags covered with the odd spray of discarded playing cards. Throw in a bean bag and a copy of Rumours and I never want to leave.

Redfall reviewPublisher: Bethedsa SoftworksDeveloper: Arkane StudiosPlatform: Played on Xbox Series XAvailability: Out now on PC and Xbox, and via Game Pass.

But those fridges. That large metal sink. Wait a minute! What did this place used to be?! A doctor’s office? A morgue? Actually, the answer lay on a sideboard, below some voguish honeycomb shelving. Cake stands, all of them empty, and cake dishes with those glass covers that make them look like bell jars. This was a cake store! One look at the hand-drawn map on another wall all but confirmed it. I was smack in the middle of what had once been a little shopping district, with stores and a brewery for neighbors on either side. When I walked outside I saw an area where there had once been tables and chairs, perhaps, and a sign still up: the Fruit Fly Smoothie Bar! Mmmm! And also Yuck, obv. Because that’s Redfall.

I have thought about this smoothie bar a lot over the last few days, the smoothie bar that was then overturned to create a makeshift shelter during a vampire apocalypse. So much of this confounding game about a small town overtaken by bloodsucking horrors is wrapped up in the layers I’ve found here in this smoothie bar, I think. There’s the ammo and the med kits, but also the dual nature of the bar itself – the sense at first that it might be a nice family-run cake shop followed by the reveal that, no, it was almost certainly a naff influencer smoothie joint filled with minted people drinking activated walnut water, no doubt, and taking pictures of their frappes for Insta. Those honeycomb shelves suddenly made a lot more sense, I can tell you. And the name – Fruit Fly – is perfect. ‘Fruit’! Mmm! Oh, and ‘Fly’.

Redfall ties me in knots. I am contractually obligated to tell you about all the things that don’t work, all the little problems that come together with slightly bigger problems to create a game that probably shouldn’t be out and about in this state. Redfall’s not unplayable by any means, it’s just a bit of a mess, technically, and, I think, in terms of its design. The reviews are low, the user reviews are much lower. Phil at Xbox just apologised for the whole thing. And yet when I go through my day and my alarm beeps and I think, Oh, time for a bit more Redfall! When that happens, I don’t mind at all. I don’t roll my eyes or shudder. I’m happy to return to this place, and that has to count for something.