A love letter to your favorite 2000s FPS.

Wow the credits for the game just rolled like 1 minute and I can say confidently that this is the best FPS game released in 2026. SPRAWL zero almost never runs out of fun, unique ideas for weapons and the design philosophy that studio, “MAETH” came up with to get as many weapons as they could into the players’ hands by not having any sort of inventory works perfectly.

Music

The first thing I want to talk about is how good the fight music is in this game. It perfectly suits the brutalist art style and is never just a background component. Whenever I got into a fight I was impressed each time as to how high quality this soundtrack was, something that reminded me of Mick Gordon’s DOOM (2016) soundtrack. I think this might be some of the best electronic music in 2026 and congrats to composer Carlos Lizarraga for doing such a good job.

Art

Going into this game with no background knowledge the art style was the main thing that I thought I would end up not liking as much. I was very quickly swayed the opposite direction. SPRAWL emphasizes the best artistic choices of early 2000s games with the texture work and elevates it all to the next level with phenomenal lighting that sometimes just makes you stop playing and appreciate the work that went into this game.

Another place I want to credit the art team is how good the city looks and how interesting these places are to explore. The game adopts the very brutal dystopian city with some really cool looking areas that heavily reminded me of places like City 17 from Half-Life 2, even going so far as to even have their own citadel looking building. In my 5-hour playthrough not once did I feel like one area dragged out visually. I was constantly exploring new areas and now after finishing the game I could glance at someone else playing the game and know exactly what part of the game they are at.

Gameplay

The gameplay is hands down the star of the show and did not once get old due to the fact I was constantly using my gravity gloves to fling a new weapon into my hand every 20 seconds, my personal favorite being the Deimos since it’s basically an incendiary shotgun and can wipe out groups of enemies in one shot. The way in which I was picking up weapons, throwing grenades back at enemies, and even throwing enemies back at each other with the gravity gloves felt so good it reminded me very heavily of the Half-Life series developed by Valve and was very clearly inspired by it. Speaking of Half-Life there were so many times in my playthrough where I just said to myself, “This is literally Half-Life”, for example some of the enemies you encounter literally look like combine soldiers from their silhouette and make a pretty similar death sound when you kill them. Also after taking significant damage you get a “seek medical attention” robot voice which was very recognizable :).

The movement system is also pretty great, you can gain momentum by sliding down ramps, and you can jump out of a slide to essentially get an accelerated bhop and travel super fast. Then there’s the level design, which is very intuitive and fun to traverse, reinforced by the objective marker the game equips you with from the start. Each level felt fresh and unique, with cool new objectives that differed significantly from the last: sometimes you’re sprinting throughout a level, breaking open these poison gas pipes, trying not to kill yourself, and sometimes it’s the middle of the night and you’re facing off in sniping battles on rooftops with enemies miles away from you.

Verdict

In conclusion, SPRAWL zero is the perfect example of modernizing the 2000s era aesthetic of FPS games and giving it a fresh coat of paint with very deliberate, creative gameplay choices made to maximize the amount of enjoyment the player gets. The only places I feel were a bit weak were the story feeling a little unnecessarily confusing and some of the pacing in the second half feeling just a touch too slow but nothing major or anything that would significantly harm the experience.

9/10

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Review by Oliver Charlesworth

Published on Sep 9, 2026, 2:59 AM PDT