SPRAWL zero is an intoxicating old-school FPS where every empty gun becomes a projectile and every fight turns into a violent improvisational playground
I enjoyed the sh*t out of SPRAWL zero. It is an old-school first-person shooter that looks back at the early 2000s. The clearest comparison is Halo, particularly in the way its guns feel. You can aim down sights, but hip firing is so accurate and satisfying that I barely used it. Running into a room and trusting the weapon to hit exactly where I am pointing feels fantastic.
You play as FIVE, a cybernetically enhanced super-soldier sent into a collapsing city to eliminate the leader of a techno-religious group. There are factions, propaganda broadcasts, and collectible bits of lore. I honestly could not care less about any of it. The plot never gave me a reason to become invested, but it stays out of the way often enough for the shooting to take over.
That shooting is built around a brilliant rule: guns do not reload. Every weapon has a limited supply of ammunition, and when it is empty, it becomes a yeetable projectile. You throw it at an enemy for an extra hit, use your gravity glove to pull another weapon into your hand, empty that one, yeet it across the room hitting an enemy, and repeat. Once I settled into this rhythm, SPRAWL zero became intoxicating. I was no longer looking for one favorite gun. I was reacting to whatever the battlefield offered and turning it into carnage.
There are more than 40 weapons, with a rarity system that changes their power and sometimes how they behave. Pistols, automatic pistols, SMGs, battle rifles, and sniper rifles all feel great. The grenade launcher is a joy, while the spike gun hits with vicious impact. Heavier tools such as the minigun and Tesla gun absolutely demolish enemies. Every weapon has enough personality to make its brief time in your hands count.
The strange disappointment is the shotgun. Shooters figured out how to make shotguns feel devastating decades ago, yet the ones here feel as though they are firing dust. Their impact does not match the rest of the arsenal. Forgive Me Father 2 is a stronger example of how an absurd shotgun should tear through a crowd, but SPRAWL zero wins at making weapon swapping part of the combat itself.
Then there are the melee weapons. The katana is slick as f*ck. It automatically bats bullets away, letting you close the distance and dismember enemies before they can react. The gravity hammer is basically the one from Halo, right down to the fantasy of smashing a group into the floor with one enormous hit, and I mean that as a compliment.
Super abilities push the power fantasy further. Slowing time gives you room to line up shots or clear a group before anyone can respond. A protective shield catches incoming bullets and fires them back at the squad that thought it had you pinned down. The rush ability launches you toward an enemy and lets you punch them into red mist. Each power is satisfying, but the magic comes from combining them.
One encounter might begin with me catching a wall of bullets, sending them back, and throwing a nearby barrel into a cluster of enemies. Then I rush the survivor, grab his gun with the gravity glove, fire every round, and launch it into the next target. It has some of the gun, sword, and glove chaos I liked in Bright Memory: Infinite, but SPRAWL zero builds an entire campaign around that flexibility.
The campaign surrounding these fights is far less imaginative. Missions are extremely linear and regularly fall back on repeated objectives. Go from point A to point B, press a button, capture a position, then wait for a lift or door to open. There is also some annoying backtracking, and it drains the momentum whenever the game asks you to retrace familiar ground instead of feeding you another room full of targets.
The environments make that repetition more obvious. Most of the campaign takes place across concrete streets, rooftops, industrial interiors, and underground canals. The brown and grey palette sells its early-2000s inspiration, but also makes areas blur together. KVARK uses similarly dated textures and industrial spaces to create a stronger identity. SPRAWL zero has flashes of atmosphere, but too much of its city looks the same.
Thankfully, it performs beautifully on the ROG Xbox Ally X. I regularly saw more than 100fps, and the action stayed smooth when fights became chaotic. Controller support also feels excellent. The aim assist helps without dragging the reticle around or playing the game for me. Combined with accurate hip fire, it brings back that comfortable Halo-like controller feel immediately.
SPRAWL zero is at its best when it stops asking me to care about the plot or search another same-looking corridor and simply locks me in a space with enemies, weapons, and physics objects. The weak shotguns, repetitive objectives, forgettable story, and occasional backtracking are real problems. None of them could break the combat loop for me. Shooting, throwing, pulling, reflecting, slicing, smashing, and rushing flow together into something brutally satisfying.
If you miss shooters that let excellent gun feel carry a focused linear campaign, this is an easy recommendation. SPRAWL zero borrows openly from the classics, but its disposable arsenal and gravity glove give it an identity of its own. Once the shoot, yeet, pull, and repeat rhythm clicks, putting it down is the hardest part. Thanks for reading!
