Recent reviews by Vampyre

Up Front, this is a Free to Play game with lots of those predatory practices that have given F2P a bad name. This is not like Warframe. You're buying power. Yes, you can buy convienence and cosmetics, but even that's really predatory.

Go into this with the plan to not spend any money on it. When you get tired of it without giving them money, quit. The gameplay is good. The movement is good. The story is typical JRPG shlock. There are boob windows and skimpy outfits and a lot of things in the cosmetics that don't make sense. If that's a dealbreaker for you, then don't play this. If you can't control your spending, do NOT pay this.

If you're comfortable with the free to play model, and willing to take the time to grind, the gameplay is there. It is very repetative at times. I will tell you that after you complete the normal story and hard mode unlocks, the missions ARE different and HARDER. It's not just 'give the mobs more HP and damage' difficult. The mobs stay stupid, but the missions (I mean the 20 minute long dungeon missions) change. You also lose matchmaking.

The Colossi are awesome. Fun, difficult, and even in the matchmade mode you have to work together. Well, unil someone like me comes in and kills your colossi in 3 shots with their lvl 100 sniper rifle. Sorry about that.

I don't think this game has a lot of staying power, as is. The battlepass is trash. The cosmetics are trash. The monitization is predatory and trash. Some of the mechanics for how it moves you will piss you off if you get moved in-mission (you'll freeze for a couple of seconds in place but you can still get attacked and die there, including on respawns). It does need work.

It also has some bugs. I have to alt-tab out and in again to fix a screen jitter. I have a fairly beefy rig, and I limited my frame rate to 60 FPS. It's pretty, but I'll say I'm not overly impressed compared to other games; this isn't going to wow you like Cyberpunk 2077 will.

BUT IT'S FREE. Play it until you're not having fun anymore, then stop. If you like it enough to give them money, well, you're getting taken advantage of, but that's your choice.

The listed drop rates are false. This is a Nexon game, after all. They just got a huge fine for scamming players on drop rates for over a decade. Keep that in mind as well. Don't buy anything that's not guaranteed. But the rest? That's just how grind works. Warframe's drop rates were false too, and they lied about it the entire decade I played that game. Welcome to F2P.

This is genuinely probably the best single-player game ever made, even with flaws. And it has flaws; particularly on PC. It's obviously designed for consoles and requires mods to fix some of the control scheme issues. That said, it's still the best. Yes, better than that game you're thinking of; better than that game series you're thinking of. The music is perfect. The story is perfect. I've replayed this game and despite being massively frustrated at times, it's still the best. And I say that as someone who's played Cyberpunk 2077 through multiple times.

It doesn't look the best, but it looks great. It doesn't play the best, but it plays well. It doesn't sound... wait, yes it does.

Trust me, play this game. It's evidence that games are art and can change your perspective on life as a whole. Thank you, Yoko Taro.

I can't honestly give this a good review anymore. At the time of release, this was great fun. It would still be, but the networking seems to no longer work, and so much of this game is about playing with friends and combining different kinds of spells to create new spells. And because the netowrking doesn't work, That doesn't work.

The developers have said they're done with this game, and honestly, it's been 13 years so that's understandable, but if you're thinking about buying this, don't. It's really just a single-player game at this point, and that defeats it's entire purpose.

The interface is Clunky, and there's no real tutorial. For those of you who like building/crafting games and want to figure out everything on your own, this may be for you. If you want to understand how to play without watching hours of videos of someone explaining it, then you're SOL.

I cannot understand the appeal of this game.

This game has a lot of inexplicable design decisions. Why is it limited to three players? Why are some of the environments so poorly designed and repetitive? Why do you have to go into the settings menu to quit the game?

If you can get this on a steep discount, it might be worth your time, but frankly, it's probably not. If you're REALLY into the aliens franchise, this is definitely better than Colonial Marine, but that's no ringing endorsement.

I've put plenty of time into this game, more than I should have, and ultimately? Other game companies make a better product, at a better price, and without giving your money to people who actively hate their customers.

If you don't already own this one, give it a pass. You're not missing out.

I admit, I was a bit skeptical. I played the first, long after it came out, and I thought it was great, for a 20 dollar game. This was twice the cost with half the assets; there are no vehicles or mechs. Does the PoV change really make it a better game?

As it turns out, yes. This is essentially the same game, with a PoV change, and some monitization that's not really as predatory as it looks. You can earn the premium currency in game, and never have to pay anything else for this game. The 'pay-for' battle pass can be bought this way. And, assuming what the devs have said about the progression, the 'battlepasses' are not FOMO because they never expire. Play as much or as little as you want, and you'll eventually earn the currency you need to get whatever you want, because it'll still be there.

On PC it has some connection issues, and some rare bugs where you get stuck inside objects or in other player's ships. It didn't happen to me, but someone once fell through their ship and just fell toward the planet infinitely, and there was nothing they could do but force-close the game. The game needs work, and at $40 that might be a bit of a big ask; I'd planned to wait until mechs were in game, but it was gifted to me instead.

I've since 'paid it forward', but I will say this; Helldivers 2 is going to have some legs to it, so you'll get your money's worth out of it. I would not pay for the expanded version unless you REALLY want that armor's look. Everything else you can earn in-game.

I do find some of the environments annoying. That said, it's part of the game and part of the challenge. It is hilarious to play, but only when you play with other people. If you're playing solo, play with pubbies, because this is designed around you playing with friends, or at least other people, and some of the content just can't be done alone.

Still, ultimately, I recommend this. It's the 'live service' game Destiny 2 should have been.

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I think I would rate this as a do not buy right now. While the information above was true at the time, that was prior to a lot of 'balance' changes which have objectively made the game worse. It's still playable and initially it'll be fun, but as you need to obtain more rare resources, the difficulty ramps up. Matchmaking still doesn't work well, and the developers have chosen to punish players who aren't in full teams. They also have a proclivity for nerfing weapons from older warbonds, seemingly to push continually purchasing the new warbonds. You can still farm up the necessary supercredits, but now it's much more difficult to do it alone, making it much more difficult in general, and this appears to be a push toward making people buy supercredits if you didn't already farm them. Overall I think this game gets more right than it gets wrong, but the balance team continually works to make the game worse for the player, and the community has become much more toxic as a result. I'm looking at you, Discord and Reddit. So, at this time, I'm going to rescind my recommendation. I might change my mind again,

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DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT. They've since altered the store page, and are trying to force you to create a PSN account and link it to play, so they can scrape your user data and sell it. Given how much personally identifying information they leaked the last time the PSN got hacked and had a data breach, you really shouldn't subject yourself to this huge vulnerability. Moreover, the last patch constantly makes my antivirus delete files it believes contain viruses. To play it, I have to exclude it from scanning, and I've never had to do that for a game before.

Whatever you feel about Arrowhead, this is bad and you SHOULD NOT BUY THIS GAME with these issues.

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https://twitter.com/PlayStation/status/1787331667616829929

As of today, I'm going to go ahead and revert my recommendation.

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I'm revising my review, yet again. In it's current state, while the game is playable, every time I sign in I have to deal with a different set of bugs that make it almost unplayable, and it's just not fun. A few days ago, my camera moved like it was stuck in molasses for no reason. I fixed it by changing the mouse rate in keyboard and mouse from 0 to .8. Today, I log in, and the camera moves so fast that it makes you sick to look at it. Fix it by lowering that rate. Every time I drop into a mission, inexplicable bugs. The game already had issues; a stupid balancing philosophy from the start that continually made the gun not-fun to play. Continual ramping up of enemies, spawns, and especially heavy armor. Not fun to play. Did that change? Not really. They claim it did, and especially with their long-overdo buffing patch they said it did, but it didn't.

It's just not fun to play like it was, and all the people who were playing it? They're not anymore.

I bought three copies of this game as gifts for people. None of those people play it now, and none played it much. It was fun while we played it, but the frustration with the continual problems, bugs, difficulty ramp up on the same mission level, and nerfing of weapons drove them all away.

At this point, if you're not part of the 'git gud' crowd who love to drive people from a game so it can be your niche thing, this game isn't for you. It doesn't matter what the new CEO and the CEO who stepped down said or say, this game is made for that tiny portion of people who're willing to deal with the random crashes, lost progression, and ever changing game landscape.

There's a lot to like about this game, initially when you play it, even now. The early levels are fun; and you're unlocking new stuff at a rate that it doesn't feel like a problem. Don't like this gun? Just use another one. Eventually you hit the wall where you've got two types of enemies, all the missions start to feel the same, you take the same loadouts depending on what enemy type and occasionally if it's just a 'kill enemies' mission you'll wear different armor. There's a lot in this game that just isn't worth using and you'll figure that out and realize that all of the options you think you have aren't there, because the developers are forcing you to play the game the way they want you to play it. And then, you'll either like that because you're a 'git gud', or you won't, and you'll uninstall this, like I'm doing now.

There are better games I want the drive space for.
P.S. Sony is eventually going to force their login on the PC players, and never going to let those countries where you can't get one buy this game again, because that's still their intention. They're just waiting until the playerbase dies enough that the online outrage isn't big enough to matter. And it's getting close to that, now.

I'm going to tentatively recommend this. It still has it's issues, but frankly as a game it plays well. The combat loop, the graphical fidelity, the music and sounds... that's all there and well done (baring some bugs that've cropped up). If you liked Vermintide, but want more gunplay in your verminitide, this is the game for you. If you want to play a FPS in the Warhammer 40k universe, this is the game for you (yes, I'm aware of boltgun). If you like Left4Dead style coop games but want more, this is the game for you. Keep in mind though, these caveats.

1) This is substantially more difficult to play than Left4dead. It requires more skill and thought, and practice. You're intended to reply a lot of this over and over, and there is some character progression. There's a skill tree for each class which substantially changes how it plays, and you don't pick up weapons in the missions, but rather you head out with a particular loadout of ranged and melee weapons, and three trinkets that give you stat bonuses as well. It's not very well documented and frankly you need mods to make this understandable.

2) Crafting is bad in this game. You have to engage with the crafting system if you want to engage with the end-game content, but there's too much RNG and the costs are too high for how much RNG there is. That said, if you like Looter-shooter games you might be okay with the amount of RNG. At least here you can fix some of the bad, as opposed to a game like Destiny where if the gun is bad it stays bad forever. That said, you get a lot less 'loot' and should be prepared to have to buy it and upgrade it and hope you get some nice stats, and that you can fix the bad perks and blessings.

3) This game has a pretty decent amount of maps. You can tell if you play long enough that a lot of the 'tiles' are reused in different maps, but they're reused in ways that make them feel and play differently enough that it's not obvious or offensive. It doesn't feel copy-pasted, but rather thoughtful reuse of assets, and I appreciate it.

4) The AI 'Director' can be sadistic and difficult, even on easier difficulties. This can make for some exciting gameplay, but it often feels very unfair. That also feels intentional. You're going to die; there is no hardcore mode. Get used to it.

5) The cosmetics in game are overpriced and predatory, but you can completely ignore this if you have the slightest ounce of willpower. It's not in your face like in a game like Destiny, and there are decent cosmetics you can earn with in-game currency or by completing achievements called 'Penances'. Say that 5 times fast and see if you don't say 'Penises'.

6) Some builds and weapons are just better. This can and does change with patching. This is supposed to be a 'live service' game which means new content funded by cosmetic purchases, and with that comes balancing patches. Sometimes they're good changes, sometimes they're not. If you've played this sort of live-service game before you're aware of how all of that works and should be ready for it. Youtube can help you find what works well and what doesn't. There are some toxic players but it's mostly okay.

7) Speaking of toxic; crossplay is enabled with Xbox and you can't turn it off. You're going to get into lobbies with Xbox players. Some of them are great! Most are awful. Still, few talk, so you don't need to worry much about the usual 'console player words' that people seem to associate with gamers as a whole when it's really just 12 year olds trying to be edgy bugging overly sensitive nirmods who don't understand how to ignore morons or how to block them (and yes, you can block speciific players and mute them in game). There is built-in voicecom but I never use it.

8) One of my favorite things to do in this game is look at people's player names and account names (you need a mod to see their account name). Lots of people with great senses of humor.

This game is good. It's got it's issues, but overall, after putting more than 600 hours in this game since release, I can confidently say this is worth your money if you're looking for a coop shooter with progression, 'loot', and willing to work on skill, because if you're not willing to engage with the melee combat system in this game you're going to have a bad time of it.

I will also say I played Vermintide 1 and 2; and I have enjoyed this game much better than I ever enjoyed either of those games.

If you're looking for a 'story' game, give this a pass. The story there is feels unnecessary. I do think it could go someplace, but this isn't Destiny 2 or Remnant 2.

Okay, so I'm not going to hold back. This is not my typical style of game, so let that help you understand the bias my review her has. I saw someone play this on Youtube and thought it looked fun but maybe a bit harsh. The maybe was an understatement. This game looks like it probably has a lot of potential, but here's my issue.

I'm 45ish minutes in, and no matter what I do, i can barely ever afford to buy anything. You start slow, you have barely any life compared to the damage you'll take, your dash cooldown is short and the distance it dashes is short, your pickup distance is okay, but what you're picking up barely ever means anything. The early rounds when you should be farming up money for upgrades don't last long enough; short rounds mean more shop trips but most of those are entirely wasted because you're poor. And you stay that way. That video above? You're not going to see 95000 squares. You're going to have 18, or 32, or maybe if you save up you'll get over 100. That means maybe if you're good and you get lucky rolls on your level ups you'll be able to be an orbital on the wave you die. There's very little forgiveness, especially early on, and the upgrade path? May as well not exist for how likely you'll be able to afford it.

You can lean into crit builds with lucky level up rolls to health and level on crit; doesn't help enough. You can try luck to get more coins on pickups. Maybe that helps, but not enough. HP? Nope. movement speed? Nope. Most things don't affect your damage much; the biggest being something that just adds 1 damage to your orbitals and drones (drones being the basic guns you start with and directly control). Just buying another drone slot is 200! I've never obtained 200.

Progression? That requires triangles. I've yet to see one.

So, maybe I'm just bad at this game. Fair assessment. But I'm pretty sure I'm not going to get better before I could refund this, and I've a sneaking suspicion that no matter what I do I'll never enjoy this, because it's needlessly brutal and cheap early on. The enemies aren't a big deal; there're just too far away for you to farm them at all to grow early, and too many and hard to kill shortly after and your only real upgrades are from leveling, because you will NOT have enough coins to buy anything.

Honestly? I'd give this a pass. I like the theme, I think it has potential, but the early game is stupidly hard for no discernible reason, and all those available choices you have? You're not going to get to make any of them because you can't afford anything. Because the early stages are too short on a timer and you can't farm for coins or xp. Nothing stays between waves, so if you don't pickup those coins from long range kills, and you won't, they may as well not exist. Some enemies won't drop coins anyway. If you don't spend anything you might have 100 coins by wave 4, and maybe you can buy an orbital, and it won't help you enough.

Save your money; this game needs a lot of work.

I've not played very much of this, and I've never played D&D. I get that this game is full of praise from so many places, how can it possibly be bad?

Have you played one of these games before? If so, then maybe you can't see it. But come into this as someone who's played computer roll-playing games before, but not D&D (I guess that might be a very limited amount of people) and you will. The tutorial is terrible to non-existent. How do spells behave? What are saving rolls and how do you know if they'll apply? Why is it if you save-scum to test a roll 20 times, you'll get almost the same result every time, and other places you won't? I did this test so yes, in some places either the RNG is terrible or more likely they've weighted it to ensure a certain result... so why roll at all? The plot? Who knows. The Voice acting? Sure, except that lots of your own lines aren't spoken even though they have you select a voice. The load screens? Pretty frequent? The autosaving? Not so much. Be prepared to manually save often, or to redo large parts of what you've just done because shocker, there are bugs that people are ignoring.

I walked through a door, a statue's eyes starting glowing. I lost all control of my characters; the interface was up, but if I clicked anywhere the game ignored it. Entire party dead, because the interface stopped working. The camera system is frustrating; what should probably be a right-click to look around is a middle-click. You'll accidentally click on something and people will think you're trying to steal it, because rather that just looking at something, that means pick it up and take it. Except, how do you look at something in the interface without clicking on it? Don't know. Character has a skill to speak to animals? Why, it doesn't work, except evidently in combat, and why would you want to use it in combat? And even on balanced the combat can be frustratingly difficult; no doubt enhanced by basically not having an actual tutorial on movement, skills, or combat. Inventory management? Frustrating. Healing? Frustrating. I've only played three hours and I've rage-quit twice on two different days. Maybe future playing will change my mind, but this game is NOT the game of the year of 2023 (well, not for people like me who actually play games rather than being paid to advertise for them).

There may be a good game here, but this game needs work, and don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise. It may do D&D very well, but it doesn't do GAMING well, and I didn't buy D&D, I bought a computer game.

I don't expect this review to do much in the tide of 'Me too, look at how great this game is!', but I'll just say it. Buy Cyberpunk 2077. You'll be happier and the game will play better and explain itself better.