Recent reviews by アンズド

Overall, the game follows a relatively similar format to previous well-known titles such as the Left 4 Dead franchise, with four survivors working together to fight against hordes of aliens (instead of zombies).

To start off, we'll be talking about the gameplay.

Gameplay:

Generally, there are three primary types of weapon that you can use (Shotgun, Assault Rifle, SMG), and a special weapon that has its own additional slot (to which you can find later in a map). Additionally, you have a pistol which has an unlimited amount of ammo, as well as a couple of grenade variations that you can pick up within the maps. In its current state, I can understand the lack of variations of weapons that are available for the players to choose from, but from what I've seen within Discord and communication with the community, they are still planning to add more to the player's arsenal.

In regards to the weapon's responses, it's no doubt that it still feels rather "rigid" at times, where aliens don't feel like they've been affected by your weapons that much even if you're using a Blaster (Shotgun variant weapon) up close.

As for the aliens, I have to say the design on some of the specials does give me more of a Timesplitters 2 feeling to it, like the Grabbers and Goopers, while ones like Brute has a Halo-esque Hunter appearance. It does fit well for the art style as a whole (keeping it futuristic-retro themed), and speaking of design wise, the current silhouettes on the survivors may seem a little hard to distinguish at first, but the hair styles tend to set them apart from one another.

Reading from other reviews, I can see how some players get confused between distinguishing a common alien than a survivor, but from my experience it's fairly noticible due to those headcrab-esque infested "humans". I would say that barely less than ten minutes of playing I am able to separate them.

In regards to survivors, their lines seemed lacking, and feels rather robotic at times. While they do have some conversations occuring from time to time, it mostly happens within saferoom, which is understandable but sometimes feeling rather empty while traversing through a map. I understand that for more lines to happen at specific spots of a certain map, it would need to be recorded and possibly be tedious to get them feel right, but it would definitely make them feel more human.

As of typing this review, there were only three episodes available for users to play, but not shying away from adding in community created maps, which roughly makes up to five maps in total (two community created maps were available at the time of this). So far, the episodes themselves; the maps are fairly large and rarely restricts players of movement, but occasionally there were parts of the maps which seemed relatively confusing as there's no indication of where to go. Comparing to Left 4 Dead's method of guiding players, they generally have lights which naturally attracts a player's attention for them to move to said spot, and small but linear enough to understand the path towards the saferoom.

For Episode one, you will roughly be playing for an hour's worth, but this also depends on your team's performance. It's also the longest one so far out of the other episodes.

I am unable to say for Episode two, as I have not been able to get into a match with that.

For Episode three, it takes about 25 - 30 minutes to complete entirely. I would say this is the most acceptable and less exhausting gameplay compared to the first episode, as it doesn't feel overly stretched out and fits perfectly fine.

As for the maps themselves, it allows for an almost full freedom of where the players are able to climb on objects or props, rather than having invisible walls that outright block you (although for areas which are inaccessible, they are still blocked nonetheless which is self-explanatory).

Graphics:

I would have to say, that personally graphics are a second thing to consider as gameplay would more often than not be the thing that's worth considering at first, but so far it looks pretty decent. Aesthetically, they seemed to fit fine and I had no qualms with them.

Audio:

Whenever there's a random horde about to appear, you will hear a music which builds up rapidly. For starters it does seem pretty frantic to then see a mob of aliens headed towards your way, but for those who had known prior, it'll allow them to hunker down at a spot to easily take them out. However, there isn't any subtitles to indicate if a horde's about to appear, so a player not having audio enabled will be caught off-guard.

If you're pinned down by a special alien, there doesn't seem to have any music to accompany them, other than the growling of other aliens.

In terms of identifying a special via their noise, the only recognisable so far from my experience was the Flasher. Asides from the glaring brightness that it shines, they would normally let out a blood-curdling screech.

Difficulty:

If you had played a previous horde based co-op shooter game, I would say that it's quite a cakewalk. Nothing too hard, but yet relatively simple enough to understand the fundamentals of the game. Even if you haven't, I would say that it would roughly take 30 minutes, at best, to fully grasp of the controls and how the game plays out as a whole.

Game Time:

While it is still in an early access stage, and in current condition, it would get stale somewhat quickly, but the season passes ingame helps to offset that by providing players numerous cosmetics upon completing quests. In this case, I would say that it would heavily benefit if you're into these types of genres (horde based co-op shooter) as you'll enjoy every few seconds of it, but because of its limitations, it might not last too long. Replay value is certainly there, but the lack of players hurts the factor of randomness you get while in a quick-play match.

Price:

In its full price? I might not recommend it, but if it's half price or at a higher discounted rate, I would go for it. However, do note that this review is still within early access time, and things change overtime. There might not be enough content related to what it's worth for now, but as the game develops from time to time, it'll be rather promising by then. Still, I would advice you to watch some gameplay footage of it; there are notable changes from when it was first released to the public, but it would give you a better insight of how the game is like (such as the AI's responsiveness).

Bugs:

Surprisingly, I have yet to encounter one during my playthrough. Mabye minor ones where some common aliens tend to not respond to our guns and are still in an idle state even when there's a massive horde happening, but otherwise it felt relatively complete.

Rating:

In its state, I would give it a 6.5 out of 10. Still plenty of rooms to be improved, but it has sucked me in for a few hours straight.

I spent too much time decorating my character instead.

As much as the program tends to crash at times because of high memory usage (particularly 4k texture models), it's still an easy software for both newer and experienced users to create content with, mostly because of its UI being less intrusive than others- and even with its limitations, you can experiment various ways to overcome its issues (some being SSS lighting, reflections, etc.) and overall, definitely worth a try.

As old as the game is, it's still challenging. Nostalgic-wise, it's worth too.
Play normal on all of the campaigns before going through Nightmare, as that'll unlock maps one by one (Skirmish isn't affected) and giving you chance to explore the map as the bots are less likely to target you.

A game that holds and redeems itself after each year passes by. Even though some updates are quite bad and whatnot, it still managed to convince me to play, even after five years.