Recent reviews by Jesus IV

TL;DR: I generally recommend the game, but with some serious caveats (and some potential dealbreakers)

Overall, it's a game with lots of rough edges that I think are worth overlooking if you're looking for a truly difficult coop experience and have the time to dedicate to it.

Edit: My hours might be misleading here, I have all my progress on a family-shared account with ~400 hours at the time of this review.

I would absolutely avoid GTFO if any of these apply (see the negative reviews that refunded for lots of examples of these). Part of being a narrowly-scoped/niche product is that the game won't really appeal to everyone, and the concept of GTFO is definitely polarizing.

Having to use Discord for matchmaking is a dealbreaker for you
There IS matchmaking, but it has always been sparse, and now that it's split across 7+ rundowns it's almost impossible to find anyone for ANY level, let alone the ones you actually want to play. If you're not playing with friends, you will need to use Discord to find lobbies.

Do not have large amounts of time to dedicate in one sitting
Levels in GTFO take a long time (>1 hour for almost every level, especially if you're moving slowly as new players will). Some levels can take up to THREE hours for a successful completion, although the average is definitely closer to 60-90 minutes in my experience. It definitely does not have the same "drop-in" playability of something like L4D2.

Don't enjoy difficult or time-consuming games
This game has a massive learning curve and even the easiest tier of levels in GTFO are hard enough to give new players serious trouble. There's no real laid-back and casual way of playing this game, so if that doesn't appeal to you then GTFO is 100% a bad pick (I don't want to sound gatekeepy or elitist, it's just the nature of the game).

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If none of those have turned you off, I think GTFO is a super unique blend of action, stealth, and resource management that really delivers on its promise of being "hardcore". It absolutely nails the "desperate prisoners fighting for survival in an industrial hellscape" vibe, and I've never seen a game deliver the sense of dread GTFO does before.

The feeling while preparing for the last section of a 2 hour level when all you've got is four revolver shots and a hammer is hard to describe, but the gratification of making it work and extracting successfully is incredible. GTFO is probably the most stressful game I've ever played, but in a good way.


Stealth:
Stealth is how you spend most of your time in GTFO. At first, learning how stealth works can be daunting, but once you get the hang of it basically becomes a puzzle of "how quickly
can I murder a room of enemies" rather than a real stealth game. There's definitely missions where they ramp up the difficulty and things get intense (going for the fourth code on R7E1 is spooky), but that's mostly due to time pressure or the danger of the enemies rather than the stealth mechanics having any real depth or challenge to them.

I don't know that I enjoy the stealth mechanics themselves, as they're fairly basic ("red light, green light" rules apply -- stop moving when sleepers make noise, move when they're quiet), but it's serviceable enough that I don't have many complaints.

Shooting:
The gunplay in GTFO is very good. The audio and animations are solid, recoil is manageable but still noticeable, and things feel weighty in all the right ways. Not much to say here except that the "shoot things" sections feel great. There's definitely an effectiveness hierarchy to the guns, but none of them are unusably bad or blatantly overpowered.

There is practically no direct story in GTFO. There are tons of logs and other tidbits on terminals scattered throughout the game (although mostly people read them on the internet) that provide backstory and lore. Generally, people seem to find these interesting and well written, but I haven't followed it closely enough to weigh in. The later sets of levels (Rundown 6/7) have some narrated parts that give you a more focused idea of what you're doing in a particular mission, but as of now it's not really clear what all of it amounts to in a grander sense. Given the way things have played out so far, I'm incredibly skeptical Rundown 8 (the final rundown) will bring a satisfying story conclusion.

If you are looking for a compelling and straightforward narrative experience, GTFO will not deliver. This isn't necessarily a con, just a design decision to take into account.

The strongest point for GTFO, in my opinion, is that it's uniquely and unremittingly difficult. With other high difficult coop games (HoE in KF2, Cata in VT2), if you're competent you will USUALLY survive and sometimes get dealt a bad hand. In the later tiers of GTFO levels, your odds are never good even if your team is.

A lot of the difficulty in the game can be overcome by trial-and-error and map knowledge (knowing what will trigger error alarms or fog, learning where enemies will spawn, the best places to abuse pathing, etc.) which isn't as compelling to me as the rest of the game, but honestly even having a concrete plan sometimes things go to ♥♥♥♥.

Managing your incredibly limited resources while dealing with hordes of enemies is a uniquely stressful kind of entertainment, but if it sounds fun to you, no one has done it better than GTFO in my opinion.

GTFO is a fairly buggy game for something that considers itself a full release. Not unplayably so, but there are loads of rough edges and unpolished surfaces that can be frustrating. Checkpoints have been unreliable since their inception more than a year ago, and losing literally hours of progress to a bug like that will sour people FAST. I find myself telling new players "oh yeah, that's a known bug" pretty much once per session, although there are very few that are truly gamebreaking.

The content stream for the game has also been incredibly slow since the release of rundown 6, which feels inexcusable when you look at the quality and quantity of modded rundown releases. Overall though, I do think the $30 price tag is fair for the amount of content currently offered (R1 - R7), but sticking through most of the early access was painful.

Overall, it's a game with lots of rough edges that I think are worth overlooking if you're looking for a truly difficult coop experience and have the time to dedicate to it.