Recent reviews by Leiracal

I love first-person shooters, and I love coop games, but what typically causes me to turn away from beloved favorites is one simple thing: playing the same levels over and over eventually loses its lustre. Deep Rock Galactic neatly solves that problem with an endless series of procedurally-generated caverns in destructible environments that you'll tear into and shape to your needs faster than you can say "I dig a tunnel directly toward the escape pod."

Four miner dwarves (IN SPACE!) pursue objective-based missions in underground environments (IN SPACE!) teeming with all sorts of deadly creatures (FROM SPACE!) Across the planet's numerous biomes, each of which genuinely alters the layout and architecture of the caverns, you'll perform various mining-related missions, including securing precious minerals and eliminating the threats the local fauna - and now rival mining teams - create for your continued survival - and the company's profit margins, of course.

Each of the four classes features a tool that defines your role on the job (flares, shield barriers, turrets, and high explosives), along with a movement-based tool (grapples, ziplines, platforms, and drills) and two weapons. multiple layers of progression and unlocks allow you to slowly customize your character the way you want them to play, but the game does a good job of ensuring the starter options feel useful most of the time and that you're not being intentionally hobbled. The elements of progression that have direct mechanical benefits come pretty quickly as you begin play, but aren't overwhelming at the pace they come in.

You can play DRG in single player with a drone accompanying you (above and beyond the mineral-hauling quadruped that comes along on most mission types), but the meat of the game is the cooperation and chaos that evolves as four dwarves with a pint of sass and two pints of Glyphid Slammer brews try to see if they can collectively utilize each other's strengths to complete their objectives. While the BOSCO drone can pick you back on your feet a limited number of times, your flesh-and-blood allies can do so as long as one is still standing, giving you more of a fighting chance.

I'm about 500 hours in at the time of this writing, and I'm still thoroughly enjoying myself, still exploring caverns that make me go "huh, that's new," still finding new things to acquire (mostly various ways to make my dwarves look whatever combination of badass and absurd I'm feeling today). If you've wanted something in this genre that stays fresh, this one's worth a shot.

Closing note: the DLC is all cosmetic, and supplementary to many other, free unlocks. I'm mostly running an armor I got at level 100 along with a helmet from the first season.

A hilarious deconstruction of what it means to be playing a video game, and what to expect from a game in turn. The game plays like a choose-your-own-adventure book in first-person form, and the narrator's attempts to guide, help, interfere, correct, beg, plead, insist, or simply pack up his ball and go home make up the meat of the experience. Unfortunately, he's not necessarily in any more control of the narrative than you are, and thus comedy abounds.

If you've played a corridor shooter and wished you could interfere with the preconceived narrative, this is the game to let you pursue that impulse to his ridiculously inevitable conclusions. If you want to run around in a video game while a British man inexplicably responds to your every action no matter how much you're trying to go off the rails, this is that game.

Took 5 minutes to achieve an ending (if that sounds bad, you don't yet understand this game), and 5 hours to systematically explore every possibility I could find... which is probably not quite all of them.

Others will say "if you like Portal, play this." I'll be more specific. This is a game where you actively figure out the puzzle scenario placed in front of you using the tools you have. Your left hand will be busy (combining and alternating dimensions) compared to Portal's right-hand activity (of making portals). Timing is important, but split-second timing is not; planning is much more significant. The sense of humor tends to mad-science whimsy; John De Lancie brings his Star-Trek "Q" personality to the player's uncle narrator. The game's plenty challenging in its short length (I spent about 6 hours with multiple quick retries in several sections). In short, I was so fond of this I bought it for others.

EDIT: Since this review, Steam has added the ability to disable DLC individually. This alters the crux of my review since buying the DLC no longer permanently changes all your characters. Just the same, the blood-suck does replace the neck snap for all characters, which I still consider reason enough to give a thumbs-down.

Original review follows.

> WARNING: PERMANENTLY TURNS ALL YOUR CHARACTERS INTO VAMPIRES!

> If you purchase this pack, you will permanently lose the Neck Snap action (after you grab someone) and will instead suck their blood any time you attempt to perform that action. This change is permanent for all characters. If you buy this on Steam, you can't even delete the DLC to revert, since Steam will automatically put it back.

> There is a mod online that permanently turns this off, leaving you with the cash and respect bonuses this DLC also provides. If it weren't for that mod, I'd be furious about how this DLC permanently removed part of the game without any warning.

An entertaining preorder, but to be completely honest, I haven't touched any of this content since the first week. Mind-controlling rocket octopi are a fun thing to have in the RPG slot, since the RPG doesn't unlock until the second half of the game, but that's the strongest recommendation I can make.

Like something you see? These outfits are pretty straightforward. Thankfully, they have full coloring options. They all take the "Suit" slot (the Warrior Princess has two pieces) and the head slot, so there's not really any mix-and-match possible here.

I use the pants from this outfit on several of my characters. The torso clothing colors oddly (it mixes the existing green/gold and what you're trying to add, so you can't go pure white, for example). The grenade launcher is great early on (since the RPG isn't available for half the game), but you'll likely switch to the RPG when it unlocks.

The screenshot says it all, really. The outfit is an outlandish pimp outfit. The shotgun adds a trivial amount of cash with each kill, and cannot be upgraded. It's also a texture swap of one of the default shotguns.

Like normal cheats, actually activating these in-game permanently flags your save as "CHEATS ENABLED".

Some of these are identical to end-game perks (e.g. infinite ammo). Others are nice (the infinite mass car) but mostly for screwing around. Most of the game's cheats are accessible without this DLC.

If you want to see a shark burst out of the ground and eat someone, play Genkibowl VII. Skip this one.