Sker Ritual Review (PS5)

Sker Ritual is in fact a spinoff of a 2020 single player horror game called Maid of Sker, with both titles being developed by Wales Interactive. On the off chance that you are familiar with contemporary mediocre horror titles then you may have already known that, but if not it doesn’t really matter a great deal, given that this is a multiplayer co-op horror game lifting most of its DNA from Call of Duty Zombies.

Thankfully, Wales Interactive did give Maid of Sker an upgrade after release, and these combat mechanics have been implemented into Sker Ritual. We will get into all of the COD Zombies mode comparisons later, all you need to know for now is that this experience can lead to a few laughs if playing with friends, but the seams of the game’s boundless mediocrity show pretty obviously when playing through the game alone.

Sker Ritual releases on April 18th for PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.

If you ordered Call of Duty Zombies from Wish, it would probably show up looking like Sker Ritual. That may sound like a harsh criticism to open with, but at least it is a step up from the “Zombies” mode seen in Modern Warfare 3. That felt like you had ordered COD Zombies from Wish, but when the packaged arrived, it had been soaked through due to being dropped in a puddle and driven over by the wheel of the delivery truck.

I am happy to report that this game does manage to clear that exceedingly low bar. I’ll concede that Sker Ritual is like one of those rare Wish orders where the package does actually show up in acceptable condition and sort of works as you expected it to when you ordered it. Just don’t expect anything exceptional, because this ain’t it.

The game features four maps that you can play through rounds in, each with their own basic set of monotonous tasks to complete while fending off an undead horde. Seriously, the repetitive nature of some of these makes them about as much fun as shaving your pubes with a cheese grater. There are only so many reskinned fetch quests one can complete without needing to scream into a pillow.

Each map features a different layout, but they all resemble one another due to the murky graphics and textures that the game features and the same assets being reused time and time again. The enemies are also the same in each map, so once you have encountered one deep sea diver that can fire laser beams from his head, you have seen them all.

Bang, bang, you’re dead… again

The weapons in the game are precisely what you would expect if you have ever played COD Zombies, starting with the humble pistol, then single shot rifles, then shotguns and machine guns, and then eventually some more exotic offerings. The issue is though, none of them pack any real punch. Most of the firearms sound like a wet fart in a padded cell and the melee weapons don’t connect with the satisfying fleshy crunch of those seen in something like Dead Island 2.

There are other thing to spend your points on too, though I’d hesitate to call them perks. They are more like boosters which replenish your ammo, top up revive tokens, etc. And of course, enemies periodically drop perks when killed like triple points, unlimited ammo, insta-kill etc. These are all things that we have seen done better in COD Zombies.

Sker Ritual is also pretty easy, even when playing alone, with the only real decision required being whether to rush through to the next area as soon as possible, or to let the rounds progress and let the enemies grow stronger. However, even this one element that could potentially elevate this experience beyond feeling as monotonous as counting the flakes of orange flavoring on a single cheese puff is something that has been present in Call of Duty Zombies for over a decade at this point.

“We already got a George”

That is the main issue with Sker Ritual; it doesn’t do anything whatsoever to elevate the sub-genre that it is aping. It would be like forcing someone to only drink Coca Cola for a decade and then wheeling out the local supermarket’s own cheap brand of coke and then expecting them to be impressed. The questions I am left for after my time with this game are who is this for, and what is the point? Not exactly the sort of things I want to be asking myself.

Add to this the fact that the game struggled to run at certain points on PS5. The framerate would stutter whenever the onscreen enemy count reached double digits and issues like pop in, audio glitches, and screen tearing were persistent across each environment. I also witnessed more than one enemy corpse clip through the floor after dying and also managed to get stuck in the environment myself a few times.

With all of this being said, I cannot bring myself to recommend Sker Ritual, even at its reasonable launch price. If you are looking to have a laugh in a co-op game with mates, there are a vast array of preferable options to this. If you are looking for a similar experience to this, I’d even recommend purchasing one of the old COD games that contains a Zombies mode before picking this one up.

Sker Ritual – 4/10