Recent reviews by Seradhe

*THIS IS A REVIEW OF THE OPEN BETA, WILL UPDATE AS THE GAME LAUNCHES*

Equal parts Armored Core and Overwatch. The base gameplay is mission based; dropping you into a battle with a match made group against an opposing group to complete objectives. Your starter mech is an all-rounder, but the cost of unlocking specialists is rather cheap (in-game currency). Hitting your stride with a group of teammates, who all know what their mech is best for, is a blast.

Gameplay breaks down to two modes (currently). The first is a classic arena style match, with an objective to complete to ensure victory. With enough Mechs unlocked, this can feel like any Hero shooter: with a team made up of specialists who take charge of their tasks (healing allies, crowd control, etc..). most of the time, the fight turns into an all-out brawl, as Melee is drastically overpowered with its ability to ignore shielding. If you play a melee class, it's best to have a long rage ally to help finish the fight. As expected, healing and quick fighter mechs are more squishy; you'll never make MVP of a match, but you'll rack up assists like nothing else.

The second game mode is something more akin to a Battle Royale. You and two allies will drop into a very large map, filled with NPC enemies. The name of the game in here is to collect resources; heavy-hitter NPCs can be looted for mods, currency, and auxiliary weapons you can use. You have access to a cargo jet (with limited uses and a LONG cooldown), which guarantee the loot you send out in them. Otherwise, you have to reach and secure an evac point to escape with your loot. There are other player teams on the map, and dropping them will let you loot their bodies for anything they have found. The most fun I have had is the lack of a closing wall system seen so common in other BR-style games. Instead the map slowly fills with killer storms that grow larger as time progresses. Since they travel, it's possible to loop behind them and get loot you want, or use them to discourage an opposing team.

Customization is currently limited to paint jobs and your pilots outfit. There is a system for cosmetic skins, but currently there are only a couple very expensive skins for two mech weapons. There is a mod system, but its effectiveness is light. I like this, as it means player skill can still outperform a fully-modded mech, and the >10% difference a mod makes to something like shield recharge only truly makes a difference when the fight is between two equally skilled pilots.

You're going to see the same frustrations you'd expect in any other Hero shooter/BR game; heavy bruisers will always be a ♥♥♥♥♥ to fight, and snipers will make your life miserable. As of yet I have not felt salty from losing a fight, aside from a few runs in the BR zone where I had several containers of premium currency and was unable to evac due to enemy teams camping the evac points to snipe me.

If you enjoy fast-paced combat and giant mechs, it's worth checking out, there's enough here to keep everyone interested,.

The perfect balance of Deep Rock Galactic and Sea of Thieves.

The concept is simple: grab a ship and go out to the stars. Keep going until you call it quits or you die. You pick a ship with various pre-set loadouts, and upgrade as you go. All rewards are purely cosmetic, allowing any pick-up squad of veterans and newcomers to all start on the same foot, though the skill trees do give older players more of an advantage.

There's a somewhat small range of missions, ranging from eliminate the enemy ships to salvaging derelict space stations. RNG will determine if you will find additional resources to farm. Completion will spawn a reward container, which you can choose to pick up. Sometimes, however, it's safer to hop into warp right away to stay alive. forfeiting your loot.

There are four player classes to pick from, but their skill trees have no requirement to putting points in them. In a full crew it is very much worth it to have everyone fully kitted to their class, as the deeper skills provide a worthwhile advantage. Picking a certain class does not lock you in to that position aboard your ship, though. an engineer can pilot the helm just fine.

This is easily one of the more fun social games I've played. while not a time-consuming as Sea of thieves, but with a hair more depth than running a DRG mining trip. once you unlock the starting loadout for solo play, it's not hard to hop in and get a few rewards by yourself.

Simple premise, executed beautifully. Plenty of room for more. I'd love to see a gentle ghost roaming the cemetary

I gave this game a full six-week run before making my thoughts known. So here they are.

It's way more solid than a free-to-play game should feel.

The game itself is a little wild. it's equal parts Pal World and Control, making it a survival crafting game with an extranatural horror vibe that I really enjoy. Visually, it's impressive, landscapes are vast and open, and aside from the basic low-level zombie types, the monsters are all unique and fit into the aesthetic of the game very well. And the amount of varied content that has been packed into this is nothing short of amazing.

The reason the playable map is so big is because your base stays when you log off. You heard me right Fallout 76 players: the landscape will always be dotted with constructions varying from the beginner 'platform with a bed on it' to some truly impressive feats of architecture. This includes wiring up your own electricity and water pump system, building defenses, and decorating it however you like. The actual construction part has a small learning curve, especially if you come from Fallout 4 or 76. Once you break that bias, however, it's fairly intuitive. to prevent over saturation, each server is broken into ten 'worlds'. You can freely hop between worlds, and even yank your house into a new world if you want to neighbor up with a friend. (though getting on to the same server as a friend is a bit of a hassle at this time)

The game itself is a story-based progression familiar to anyone who has played similar survival games. You can go anywhere, but death comes much more swiftly if you don't spend time in each zone to upgrade your equipment. There's a surprisingly solid narrative on the PvE side of things, with repeatable dungeon-type silos, big boss arenas, and public events similar to any MMO. You also can start a home defense-type event at your home, which is how you earn the in-game premium currency. There is no pay-to-win; you have to work to get the good stuff. End game comes down to repeating these on harder difficulties, as well as running the much harder Prime War events.

I'll pause to give some serious props to the Prime War system. The map is scattered with these zones for the wars. When activated, those zones become merged with every world on the server, so any player from any world can hop in without issue. It does have some lag issues, most notably if players leave their personal vehicles in the way of the boss and suddenly the server has to calculate physics for a car being kicked across the map and send them to every single players' client. but when running it with a good group, it's a lot of fun.

Because the game was built for a chinese audience, progression is always swift. It was made with the Chinese gaming law in mind, so timers longer than one hour are extremely rare. (typically those are for crafting end-game resources, and since they run when when you're offline, it's rarely an issue). not to mention that story progress and leveling comes without much grinding.

There has been a lot of pro/con discussion regarding the seasonal reset system. After going through one now, I am much more comfortable with both the how and why of it. First off: it's optional, but the developers do say that the older servers will be taken down at some point in the future. Not to mention that continuing the games narrative requires a server swap. Progress that matters (weapon blueprints, mods, player skills, etc..) stay with you. you lose your gear and supplies, but in a game as easy to farm as this, that's not an issue. You are given a credit limit to yank things from previous seasons over, such a hard-to-get deviants or, for much more credit, your high level gun.

On top of that, there's a permanent island that never resets. You can bring stuff over from your in-game stockpile, or have it all dumped over there at server transfer. This is an entirely unnecessary part of the game, but at the same time, building geeks like me can make some truly wild stuff without worrying about it being demolished.

If I have any complaint about the game, it's that I feel there's an excess of mechanics. You can upgrade your weapon blueprint to make a stronger weapon, you can upgrade the built weapon to make it even stronger, you can upgrade the mod on the weapon to make it have stronger affects, you can swap out the weapons calibration perks to give it different bonuses, all of these require different resources and time to farm both the right mod/calibration you want. It's extremely daunting and confusing the first time you dip your toe into that pool. While I understand it now, there are times I have to stop and refresh my memory.

For this review, I only played on PvE servers, so I don't know how PvP feels. Though based on the single PvP public event in the PvE servers, I feel that high-level players in the PvP servers are literal gods; doming anyone lesser than them without a second thought. So my recommendation is the PvE side of things if you want to give it a try

This game has come a LONG way since its inception and, currently, I can say it easily holds the spot Destiny desperately wants to have. I gave this game a trial run many years ago, and at the time the mechanics and upgrade systems were too complex for me to grasp for a casual game.

Going back into it, I find I am enjoying the game much more now.

Don't get me wrong. The depth of the upgrade and combat mechanics is still maddening. Though after ten years of Destiny (and multiple forays into Korean games, and some Mobile games of the same vein), it's not as daunting as it used to be.

Gameplay comes in two flavors; an open world explore region, and random tile-generated dungeon style maps. The open world zones are there primarily for farming resources and doing bounties for that regions faction. The dungeons, however, are loaded into And have specific goals for completion, and there's no connection between the two that I have seen. Both of these are guaranteed combat in one form or another, and that's where things get wild. You will shoot, cut, bash, and inflict status affects on everything around you in ways oftentimes so quick that you'll not actually be following it on screen. The best comparison is like playing a 2D fighting game, where you can likely win by mashing buttons, but a pro will make full use of button combos and abilities in ways that make them seem unstoppable.

Progression, and "levelling up" is about as far from traditional as you can get. As you play, you earn Mastery in everything from your weapons to your actual warframe, maxing out at 30. mastery gives you points, which are used as a resource pool for installing mods. The mods are what actually affects your ability to dish out, and take, damage. They can themselves be leveled up for better benefits, at the cost of a higher chunk of your points being used.

The second leveling system is where most players can get frustrated. The Mastery Rank system only goes up by leveling individual warframes and weapons. Your starter frame and a small handful of free/cheap weapons will get you to rank five easily enough, but progression past that requires farming and earning new items and them using them to increase Individual Mastery.

This is where my personal frustrations come in. You can spend real world money and just get new guns and frames. Crafting them, however, requires finding both the blueprint and enough resources to actually make the gun. My biggest gripe about a lot of games in this vein is the resource gathering; I dislike when there's more than three steps between raw resource and finished product. To make a warframe, for example, you need to make this part, which requires finding the blueprint for it and having X amount of this refined resource, which in turn requires you to both harvest the raw item, and then buy the blueprint to refine it. A small amount of these can be traded, if you have a late-game friend with excess to gift you, but a lot of it you need to learn where to go and what to do online. And for a game with eleven years' worth of updates with next to no sunsetting, there are a LOT of things you can stuff your inventory with.

There is a story to keep you going, but a lot of it is locked behind progression gates. Typically this means completing each worlds individual missions. There's little to no hand holding for this; a small tile on the navigation screen tells you where to go next, and often times that zone is locked behind other requirements. And this is just the base game. I have not yet reached a point where I am playing the big, cinematic story missions I saw from Youtube. I compare it to Destiny in that regard, where it's not all that welcoming to new players who don't have a Veteran friend to help.

an FPS in a metroidvania-style open world with some RPG elements. I was sold on the get go. Immortals of Aveum promised a lot, and delivered for the most part.

gameplay has a solid foundation, but gets wild and hectic fast. It's rare I prefer controller to K&M for a shooter, but trying to manage everything across a keyboard with the default setting is a mess. while the game promises a wide variety of magic, in truth there's maybe nine basic spells with some tweaks depending on your equipment. It breaks down to three for each of the three major spell types, which you'll be using them all as breaking enemy shields requires matching color attacks. Add on the three sub weapons (called relics) you'll be switching between as well, combat against more than a few enemies of different types keeps you on your toes.

between story beats, you're free to explore anywhere you have already been, with the typical trope of these games that as you unlock new traversal abilities, you can reach new spots around the map. While not required, the rewards are almost always beneficial. Between crafting materials, boosts to your health and mana pools, and discovering higher quality gear, being a little thorough makes the end game easier, though game will not punish you all that bad if all you bring to the final missions is what you craft/find during the main story. However, certain resources can only be acquired from chests in these secret areas, and fully upgrading your end-game gear means you need to do some grinding between missions.

The main story itself is wonderfully written. The world is completely fleshed out, and every region you explore feels accurate to the lore pages you read or the dialogue you have with NPCs. There's a complete narrative, and I found myself enjoying the interactions with every major character.

It is very graphics-intensive. I suffered a small frame rate drop during large combat scenes, and one section where my framerate dropped to the single digits for a bit as my PC fought to load up the area as I explored. Otherwise, it's a very solid single-player experience and I wouldn't have objected to paying full price for my console. on PC, however, I'd wait for a sale.

I'll preface this by saying I've been a fan of Bethesda Games since Morrowind came out. With the exception of the DnD games of recent years, no other game is as open and freeform as their Elder Scrolls and Fallout series games to me.

Starfield takes that philosophy to a new tier.

Instead of a large open area to wander around in, you're given a LOT of open areas. You can land at any spot on any planet and start walking. Most of these zones are procedural, save specific landmarks which you can land nearby. While the size and scope of this is astounding, I find myself feeling rather 'meh' about it. The reason being that in previous Bethesda games, traveling to a new destination is part of the experience. You can see some landmark in the distance while travelling and decide to check it out. Sometimes it's just a random house, sometimes you stumble upon a completely new side quest. At just about 80 hours in to the game, all of my wanderings have let me explore many empty houses, but every side quest I have discovered came from the more mundane route of talking to bartenders or stumbling on them in cities. The inclusion of a No Man's Sky style research mode which lets you scan a planets plants, animals and minerals does help feed the desire to explore, but it gets tedious.

The quests, or missions, themselves are very familiar-feeling if you've ever played Elder Scrolls or Fallout. There's usually more than one way to complete them, and having high skill in certain trees can unlock entirely different routes. The main storyline is something of a comfort. Without going into spoilers, the mission is more of exploration and discovery than the typical 'save the world' types.

But the real shining star of this game is ship customization. You start the game with a small, but functional starship that does everything you need it to. At some point, however, you'll stumble into the rabbit hole that is the ship customization system. Every single part of your ship is modular and, following a small list of requirements, you can craft the ship of your dreams. It does get pricey, but exploration and missions throw money at you to a point that by mid-game it's not that painful. I highly suspect that many players went down the ship engineering and piloting skills solely for this freedom.

While I recommend this game. I have to include the caveat that you must get it with the understanding that time must be put into it. While exploration is open and free, you will get destroyed if you begin to explore too far outside the 'safe' bubble of space you land in the beginning. Past that, Have a blast!

Raft in the sky. That's the easiest way to sum up this game. And that is not a bad thing in the slightest. The base mechanics are all very similar, with an obvious sci-fi twist. Crafting is done entirely with a 3D printer instead of with your hands. You have hunger and thirst, and can craft your airship to be bigger, and personalized, as you explore the skies.

And that's where the similarities begin to drift apart. The mechanic for upgrading your ship is basically the same, but with far more depth. Upgrading the airship balloon, or even adding a second one, increases your maximum weight load and allows you to build more. And everything has weight. From the essentials to decorations and even stronger walls and floors. As it gets larger, it becomes a bit more difficult to navigate it and land at a location; something that sounds familiar to raft vets, but in a world where the Z axis is a concern, it can get tricky.

The full game isn't out yet, but what I have seen thus far has made me excited to hop in every update. There's a definite narrative to your explorations: Something I was not expecting with an early access game. Already I am hyped to learn more about the events that led to us flying airships.

It's a Farcry game; If you don't know what you're getting from it already, you will fast.

Gameplay is exactly like previous entries into the series. Big Bad Guy is doing evil things and you, as the plucky young newcomer to the fight, have to shoot, stab, and explode your way up to him. This usually comes in three flavors. Story missions, which progress the main narrative of the game, Side missions, and point control missions.

Keeping up with the quality since FarCry 4, the side missions almost always include some unique characters and involve you doing actions which are often mechanics you might regularly never try. The rewards for doing them this time are different than previous entries, which I'll go into later. The point control missions are cut and paste from the FarCry basic gameplay loop. Capture an enemy base, bonus rewards for doing it stealthily. The inclusion of road checkpoints and anti-air cannon emplacements are a welcome breath of fresh air; but they're so easy and numerous that it becomes a chore to clear them all.

Unlike previous FarCry games, the rewards do not come in Experience points with which to improve your characters abilities. Instead you start the game with all of those skills pretty much unlocked. Added benefits and skills come from what clothing you have on. These range from carrying more ammo to being able to tag enemy troops through walls. Upgrading your weapons with mods and attachments further adds to your ability. With the option to have up to four loadouts, the game strongly emphasizes being prepared for whatever you're going to do.

This is a new and unique way to do FarCry missions, and I applaud the developers for trying something new. However, the ability to swap loadouts on the fly by pausing the game makes it trivial. I'm about 60% of the way through the game as of writing this review, and I've kept roughly the same loadout for long range sniping and stealth. I have one other slot prepped for the occasional moments stealth is not an option (or fails), which is all about loud and hard attacks, but by this point in playing FarCry, breaking stealth rarely happens for me.

The world itself is wonderful. Vibrant, beautiful and full of colorful characters while at the same time grounded and real, with obvious signs of the distress the main bad guy is causing all over. Giancarlo Esposito is the first celebrity to take this role, and given his acting history, his performance is solid. Though the overall narrative is a tad thin.

Overall, buying this on sale was not a bad purchase. I have always had fun playing the FarCry series, and 6 is just another addition to that.

The premise of the game is simple enough; mine resources, spend them on upgrades to yourself or your dome, keep digging. The challenge comes in just how finely-tuned the game is.

You start out with little more than your drill and a defensive laser. Start digging under your dome to find resources for upgrading. Occasionally, you'll find Nodes that let you pick another gadget to add to your arsenal. frequently you'll get attacked my alien creatures on the surface, which you'll have to fend off. Surviving a wave gives you some breathing room to start digging again. The games base mode, Relic Hunt, has you trying to find a large alien relic and carting it to the surface. With multiple options for map sizes, this can be a quick run or a several-hour long dig.

As you progress, however, the scaling forces you to make hard decisions. Do you upgrade your laser in order to kill the creatures faster? or do you upgrade your drill so you can find more resources in the limited window? Maybe you decide to upgrade one of your gadgets this time. The deeper you are, the more crucial these decisions become. not only does it take you longer to race back into your dome from the depths of your mine, but the enemy waves progressively increase in size and damage dealing capability. Since they can attack while you're still in your mine, you can easily suffer heavy damage before you can get back.

The game does balance this out with resource spawns growing in size as you dig, making it easier to get more and better upgrades the deeper you go. There are also randomly generated world items like a free teleportation portal which can give you a leg up if you're struggling.

The Relic itself is not a cakewalk either. Once you find and unlock it (something that can take a while as you have to find a number of special unlock nodes surrounding it), you have to cart it back to your dome. Once there, a final wave will attack you. Either kill every creature, or survive long enough for the Relic to activate, and you win.

Unlockable modes increase the replayability. From a survival-type mode where you earn prestige the more waves you go through, to making the map a maze of unbreakable rock you need to navigate. There are also individual modifiers to change things up each time. You also earn different dome abilities to try, a different defensive weapon, and even different miners with completely new drilling mechanics.

This is one of those rare gem games that is short enough to be casual, but complex enough that you're not ever just mindlessly clicking on things to progress.