Recent reviews by FlyingPenguinOFC

This is actually now one of my all time favorite COD campaigns now (I gave up on COD multiplayer a long time ago).

I bought this game back in 2017 and never played it until now, 6 years later. This is the COD in Space game that received poor reviews for it's multiplayer, but hot damn, I have to say the single player campaign is a blast. First off, it has a real good story, and it jumps right into the action. The weapon physics feel good. There is very much a BSG feel to the game. You're based on a Battlestar Galactica type space carrier.

You still have traditional projectile weapons, and some pulse energy weapons, and the energy weapons actually feel like they're firing something, which is hard to pull off in some games. You have to pick the best weapons for the particular mission: energy guns are best when you expect to be up against robots. The grenades are very fun to use. Some are traditional, and some are far out. One is an electric shock grenade that works against both humans and bots, but particularly effective against bots. A seeker grenade that unfolds into a small spider like robot that seeks out enemies, attaches to them and explodes (tons of fun). A black hole projector grenade that sucks enemies into a small black hole. A zero G grenade that negates gravity over an area, rendering the enemies above it helplessly floating out of cover so you can pick them off. The grenades are so much fun.

You fight in a city in the beginning, and then inside ships, facilities on various planets, and yes sometimes in space in zero G. Low grav and zero grav combat is fun, and well done. There are even missions where you pilot a fighter, and the combat for that is also well done.

Curiously it's also the first COD campaign, that I can recall, that is not linear. You choose your mission from a map table that shows current available missions. Some are side missions that just gain you intel and new skills and equipment you capture from the enemy. The intel often makes new missions available. Campaign missions are clearly indicated, and they progress the main story, and the main story is very good. The map table is the one place where the game engine fails to work properly with a wide screen monitor, which is puzzling for a fairly recent game, and they never bothered to patch it. You can't see the whole map table in wide screen. I've googled it, but there's no fix, so I've consigned myself to playing in 2560x1440 instead of 3440x1440 (you could switch back and forth, or just ignore the info that's cut off at the edges, but that info tells you details about the mission).

Graphics are very nice, and I must say that they have really pushed the IW engine to do things it was never meant to (like space combat) and it does it well. Solid capped 140 fps with full eye candy on my 4090.

It's worth picking up on sale just for the single player, if the idea of Battlestar Galactica in the COD universe sounds attractive to you. It's ridiculous that they are still charging $60 for this game, though, when it's almost 7 years old. It's good, and maybe even worth the $60, but with newer COD games out, and the fact that multiplayer was a flop, this should be priced lower.

I am actually enjoying the game, now that I have guns (the early melee combat is a bit unbalanced and awkward IMO). The game is not terrible, despite all the hate. The engine is very smooth (compared to the still rather glitchy Dead Space) and the story is very good. The visuals are stunning, and the game runs silky smooth. I'm getting a rock steady 95 FPS with everything on high (RTX 3080)

Where it does fail is the overly linear parts of the game. There are a lot times when you aren't actually playing. You just press a key to start a sequence of events. For instance, any time you are crawling through a vent, climbing a ladder, or squeezing through a narrow space, you are essentially in a scripted sequence. It feels cheap and lazy, and ruins the immersion. I think it was a poor artistic decision at best, or lazy programming at worst. The other annoyance is if something jumps on you, combat changes to a childish game of tap the stomp key repeatedly until you shake it off, but there is no real feel to how to do this properly. You basically need to start bashing the stomp key immediately and fast enough to throw him off, or the game goes right to the you getting torn apart and killed scripted sequence. It feels like it's purely luck and nothing to do with any combat skill, so I just try not to get jumped.

It also suffers from some really annoying save game points. Sometimes you have to replay a huge area over again just to get back to the spot where some boss killed you, and then rinse and repeat several times until you beat that boss.

I'm enjoying it, and I can recommend it if you liked Dead Space, but it does have it's flaws.

Xcom in the old west with zombies. What else do you need to know?

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Followup after finishing the game:
As an XCom fan, and recently replaying all the Xcom games, and their DLCs, Hard West 2 (HW2) filled the need for more Xcom type gaming.

The combat mechanics are great. Yeah, you miss Xcom's Overwatch mechanic, for a while, but then realize how much fun (maybe better) the Bravado mechanic is in HW2. Ricochet shots also add a very fun twist to the shooting mechanic, but it works both ways. There's some darn hard maps late in the game where the enemy sharpshooters use ricochet shots on you to brutal effect.

Cover is treated very similarly to XCom, and as in XCom flanking is important. I feel the hit percentages are treated more realistically in HW2 as opposed to the XCom games.

While not a fan of cards used for skills in a game, the poker card mechanic works very well in HW2. I don't even play poker, so I had to refer to a wikipedia article to know what some hands were. But basically, each card gives some bonus skill (luck, health, weapon damage), plus each character has special abilities that are enabled or improved as you give them a better hand. By the end of the game you'll want to give each of the four of your final posse, a straight or flush to enable most of their abilities. You can change card hands around before each mission, and you should. Maybe you realize in order to complete a mission, Bill needs as much health as possible so give him all the health bonus cards.

There is also at least one ability each character has that is only enabled by increasing their loyalty to you, and this comes from making 'Oregon Trail' style decisions during conversations or to resolve an argument.

The tutorial feature is implemented very well. You actually get prompted what to do on the first mission, and whenever a new ability is revealed like the ricochet shot. It's not intrusive, and it can also be turned off at any time.

Like XCom, the game makes auto saves, and you can do a manual save anytime. So save scum to your heart's content. I tend to do a save before each mission, and at key stages in a mission. You can type descriptive save game file names, so something like 'just before storming the barn'. I have often gone back to an earlier point in a mission to see if I can do it better with less losses, or to get a bonus for something I failed to do the first time (you get gold and item bonuses for optional goals listed for the mission, like 'kill all the sharpshooters in the first round'.

There are main and optional missions. I chose to do all the optionals which led to around 34 total hours of gameplay. They are worth it for extra gold and items, and also lets you practice tactics for the harder main missions.

Pro tip: Once you get Lazarus, always take him on a mission. He is essentially your medic. He is immune to effects (poison, drunk, crippled, bleeding, etc) as he can recover from them at the end of the round, and he can steal enemy's health and give it to members of your posse, while removing their effects. Once you figure out how to use Lazarus effectively, you will find seemingly impossible missions to be fairly straight forward, if challenging. Say a 20 hit point bad guy is coming and Bill has 2 health and is bleeding at the start of a turn? Steal the bad guy's 20 HP and give him Bill's 2 HP and his bleeding effect. Then have Laughing Deer race over and bonk him on the head, or just wait one more turn for him to bleed out.

I plan on playing it through again in the future on a harder difficulty, and I would like to make better use of Cal’Lish and Laughing Deer. On my first game I preferred to stick mainly with the gunslingers with pistols and rifles. I didn't really appreciate how effective the shotgun is in the hands of Lazarus with the Shotgun skill enabled, until late in the game, and Laughing Deer's ability to run behind enemy lines and wreak havok with a melee weapon.

Overall I would highly recommend the game to anyone who likes the turn based Xcom style shooter genre. If in doubt, try the demo first. It is the first few missions of the full game, and will give you a good idea if you will like it. Be aware that the demo save games do NOT carry over to the full game, so you'll have to start all over, but you will also have learned from your earlier mistakes.

If you loved Minecraft, or you're OCD like me and like to spend endless hours putting things in order, this game is for you. I have 240 hours into this game at this point - much of it spent in 7 hour spurts that make time seem to disappear. I'll tell myself "I just need to dig a little deeper" or "I need to activate another teleport" and hours will blow by without my noticing it.

The game is extremely stable, and at this point even has an end-game, although you can continue playing after the end game if you want to remodel your base into the perfect architectural construct.

If you have less than 6 hours or so into the game, and you are finding it repetitive, then WAIT. I felt the same way at first. In the beginning you die A LOT and you are also in the first "level" of the nebula. There's only 4 or 5 ship types at this level, and they ARE rather repetitive. There also aren't many hazards at this level.

As you delve deeper into the nebula, new ship designs come along. Some are huge 20 suite luxury liners, some are giant torpedo ships, some are space hangars for tug ships. Some are small little scouts, and eventually you even find another of the giant office cubicle ships from the first mission. In addition to that, the hazards come in more varieties. All this also makes it harder.

The other issue I had at first was the parts and workbench. At first it felt a bit overwhelming but eventually I got the knack of it. It's worth reading some tutorials because there are things that I somehow missed for a long time like a button to scrap useless parts, and the locator button to have the map point you to the part you're looking for once you build a detector.

There's a lot of depth in this game after the first few hours, and it's worth the wait. Even when I have a ton of ammo I try to find creative and cost effective ways to kill enemies.

I did find constantly dying and losing everything except the workbench and parts was annoying, but there actually is a way to backup your game saves (effectively giving you a save point) which makes it less painful to get started (just Google it). I know some people say this defeats the purpose of the game, but people should be able to play the way they want to play. Some of us find the learning curve a bit too steep initially.

So if you're still running around with just a pistol and a stapler, and the ships are getting boring, wait and it WILL get more fun.

Great "throw back" retro FPS. Looks and feels a LOT like Quake era games. Not just the graphics, but the map design, the secrets, the simple puzzles. It all makes me feel like I'm playing a lost Quake mod.

The controls are very tight and the gameplay is frantically fast. Sound and music are excellent.

FYI: For those who prefer not to be tied to the Steam client, this game DOES NOT HAVE DRM and will run just fine without Steam. While you do need Steam to initially install it, you can copy the game folder anywhere you want and just run the DUSK.EXE executable. I have confirmed this works.

I found out about this from this Wiki listing all non-DRM Steam games: https://steam.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games

Great fast coop gameplay in the spirit of the original Killing Floor. Not happy with the dev's recent focus on in-game purchases, but to be fair it's all cosmetic stuff and you don't need to buy any of that. Play long enough like I have and you earn a few nice goodies on your own.