Recent reviews by 0xfef

The gun gameplay is well executed and the movement is responsive. I like the random weapon system which makes the endless killing endurable. Thats all good I can say.While the FPS part is fun, I have to say that this game suffers from bad core gameplay progression. You get character/weapon upgrades by playing minigames that are like standalone games next to the "main" game so you play 2D versions of a spaceshooter, pokemon and platformer to earn increased HP, ammo etc. for when you return to the FPS levels. While moving and shooting is fun, the levels themselves are not. Every time you start a level it gets procedurally generated so if you die and start the level you get a different seed. Sadly this is another case where procedural level generation is complete garbage. Every level has the same building blocks with different textures, everything is very crammed and bad to navigate. It doesnt look good and it plays worse. Enemy mobs have arbitrary density and spawn points, additionally there aren't that many and they are pretty much all the same between level sections (same enemies in caves, woods, towns). While the main goal is just to get to the end of the level, there are "secret areas" where you earn currency to spend on your minigames. Because its procedurally generated these areas are not cleverly hidden but you have to find random walls with cracks in it so have to run around and look everywhere (they at least make a sound if you are close). Often all three secrets per level are clustered together in one spot.Going from level to level is just no sense of progression in this game. Level 1-30 that I played are all completely the same gameplaywise, you cant keep weapons between levels and most of the time the character upgrades are pointless. After every level you land in the asylum hub to read another 3 sentences of stretched out lore. The minigames feel like a chore very fast but the game keeps giving you new minigames where almost all of the upgrades are pointless because they give something like +1 HP or 1% weapon quality. Every meaningful upgrade is gated behind 20 filler upgrades. The same goes for guns, why even have 5 weapon slots if you end up using the one good gun you find for the rest of the level anyway? Its just stretching game time. After the 8 hours I played I felt like there is just nothing interesting coming, if you played one level you played them all. There once was a boss that I killed in literally 3 seconds and I havent seen another one since. This game for me is another case of failed procedural level/gameplay generation to create dozens of hours of dull and soulless content when you could have just manually created 5 good maps for 10h of great gameplay instead.

Issues that have to be addressed before I can call this a good game.
Level design:

• Levels are mostly unused spaced or crammed labyrinths
  
• There are no distinct features or landmarks in the levels to help you navigate, everything looks the same
  
• It's obvious that the levels are the initial blockout that was filled with the same assets just to get a playable version
  
• You can clip outside practically every level and break sequence just by trying to find the next objective
  
• Most fun I had was going out of bounds in every level

Gameplay

• Combat is rivaling Amid Evil in boringness, there are like the same 6 enemies in every level
  
• The guns are ok but the enemies and arenas aren't versatile enough
  
• Overuse of spawning enemies behind you, you know its coming every time
  
• You rarely run out of ammo and all weapons are good enough for any enemy even on harder settings
  
• At some patch they introduced a bug that randomly screws your mouse movement where you start skipping pixels and your vertical movement gets faster, this only happens every 2 minutes but it made me stop playing completely

Other

• There is no music and the lack of distinctive level elements makes it pretty much just ambient noise
  
• Save system makes no sense, you can either collect save slots as an item you spend at any point or at fixed checkpoints. The issue is that you never know if its worth spending your save item because you never know if you even made any progress. Just remove the save item or make quicksaving possible.

This game is not worth its money for now.

This is either a very unfinished game or lacking proper game designers.

Just as a preface: I will be ignoring all the technical issues like bugs and queue times because those exist at every release.
At the same time its a bit different as AWS is one of the biggest server providers worldwide and they still are unable to provide enough resources.
I will also not talk about the combat system as this is just personal taste.

They tried to implement varying level content in the same zones, which means you can run 200m in one direction and face level 5, level 15 and level 25 mobs because one quest area is right next to the other one. There are no boundaries between those areas at all, you will only recognize it when the >10 Level higher mob two shots you.
I think they tried to mix up the zone content so higher level players have a reason to travel between zones but it is just stupid. It screws both under- and overleveled players because you either get killed when questing near a zone that is 15 levels higher OR you have to run through dozens of pointless objectives and enemies to get to your quests.

In a good MMORPG like WoW you have small quest hubs that send you to a corresponding quest zone to do a couple of quests that can be done in parallel, then afterwards you get the next quest step and it leads up to some final quest(s).
If you are done at that hub most of the time they send you to the next quest hub somewhere else. This is why its called a Quest chain and you know exactly where you are standing, what has to be done and what's the goal.

New World has nothing of that. Almost every quest you get has no followup and you will just pile up quests that are all over the place.
Easily you can amass 30+ single quests that come from the quest markers in town, from the town board itself and from your faction and whatever.
Now you have 30 quests in your quest log and they all reward the same useless stuff and maybe 2 or 3 quests are left that are worth completing.
You get quests for Level 5 that send you in a completely different area and at the same time you get quests for Level 15 that are in the opposite direction.
Every quest seems as pointless as the next one: Is this "Kill 5 boars" quest as important as the "Collect 5 chests" quest?
Often you will ask yourself whether you should complete all the quests you currently have left or go to the next part of the "main quest" and (again) accept 20 stock quests that you maybe finish 5 of before you leave again.
You never the feeling of "getting something done" because quests are just infinitely generated from the same 3 presets.


Well, you should because that's what you will do most of the time. There is no flight point system, no ships, no blimps or train or whatever and afaik there are no mounts.
There is a teleport system that is close to being useless because it only teleports between the cities of each bigger area (one per zone) and a couple of randomly placed one throughout the world.
On top of that you have to pay in Azoth which as a newer player is not that easy to get, is capped pretty low and is used for crafting as well so you can not just waste it how you want.
Pair that marathon experience with the mixed level zones and you will roll you eyes every time you get a new quest and AGAIN its in a completely different area.
Yes, there is an auto-walk key but don't forget you may run through zones that are >10 level above you.
The final kick in the balls is that you can not swim. You just walk on the ground of the sea and drown so don't think about autowalking for anything more than 100m.

The opening is great! You will strand and find your posessed captain, slay him and meet the first inhabitant of the new world. After that: Nothing.
I played up to Level 20 and I still have no idea what my place in this world is, who I'm even fighting (mostly boars) or who all those people in the cities are. This island really doesn't seem any more special than the regular world.
You may ask yourself what all that red stuff is and where it came from and how you fight back. But no one else on that island seems to care.
As I said, I only played up to level 20 so I can't say if it gets better when you hit max-level but for now it mostly goes like:
"Hey, there are posessed on this island." "Yeah, that sucks, just kill them."
And now they are just as boring and uncreative as all the other enemies and inhabitants of the New World.
You will kill boars, wolves, rabbits, turkeys and differently colored posessed that sometimes carry funny weapons but that's it. For a game with this budget it's just sad.

So you are on your way to your next "Kill $amount of $enemy" 1500m away. What can you do? Yes, CRAFTING! Do you remember how you collect stuff in WoW?
You click on some resource node, wait for the yellow cast bar to finish and you got your materials. Now, New World does the same only that the progress bar is multiplied by 10.
Click on an ore deposit - wait for 10 second animation. continue. Click on some plant - watch spinner complete for 5 seconds, continue. You can speed it up with better tools but still, what you effectively do is press E and wait for 10 seconds. That does not include fishing which surprisingly is very interactive and I find the best feature in the game.
Crafting items is about as exciting as leveling blacksmithing in Skyrim, you will craft 100 of some boots that go straight in the trash just to level up or get lucky from the random enchantments.

The devolopers must have never played an MMORPG. Otherwise I can't explain why they actively try to keep the players from playing together.
If you create a new character, you start in a random zone and you get tied to that zone unless you do a very specific quest skip that no new player will ever know about.
Otherwise you are stuck with that quest chain and you can't play with your friends until a couple of hours in. Even after that there is no incentive to do anything with other players.
You won't unlock dungeons until Level 25(!), there are no quests that need multiple players, there is no point in doing World PvP because you get stomped thanks to the dumb mixed-level system.
Why even make this a MMORPG? It just feels like a castrated version of the Witcher III. Auction houses are not even world wide but tied to the city, most people you meet while questing are too high- or low-level to quest with you and guilds are glorified chat rooms.
The lackluster combat system doesn't help because there is no interaction between "classes" anyway. There is barely any content that needs you to socialize.

So this is New World:
Walking as a faceless no-name character in an empty, boring world, occasionally looking at spinner animations and killing boars for some dude on the market - Oh yeah sometimes there are red glowing zombies but they aren't really important.[/b]
All in all I can just say that I am speechless how hyped this game is and how shallow and empty it actually is.

If you played WoW, you will just get disappointed. If you never played a MMORPG or liked something like Rift you may find yourself entertained for a week.
The game is still young and now the developers have to prove themselves but as it stands its not better than any run-of-the-mill asian P2W MMORPG. (Hey, at least its not P2W!)

Graphics and sound are great, atmosphere also amazing.

Could be a great game but it is really weak on the game play.
The difficulty of this game is about positioning and ammo management, nothing else. With positioning I mean just being on the move which is fine but it doesn't really feel rewarding killing things when most attacks require close to no accuracy.

You always spam attacks while jumping in circles until your enemies die, there isn't really a lot of skill involved.
Sometimes the maps are built for fast-paced, movement heavy combat but most of the time they are not. You either are in a shallow corridor (which makes aiming even less necessary) or in a gigantic space that just seems empty. The game wants to be fast but I never felt under pressure, there are no decisions to be made, you just hold LMB and bunnyhop around. Some enemies do have either physical or linear projectiles but they are not hard to dodge unless you are standing still, which again is not necessary because guns are either area damage or homing. The soul mode feature is kinda cool but I never felt like it was necessary.

I don't say you need hit scan to be a good FPS, for example Devil Daggers has just one projectile attack but the enemies and mechanics force you to make quick decisions, have precise movement make you stay on the edge.

At first I started looking for the secrets and they are kinda cool but after about 45 minutes I just found myself rushing through the levels because there is lots of dead space and not really any point in exploring.
I played on hard, maybe I should have started on the highest one but sadly it became kind of a cookie clicker.

I would say I am good at shooters and I like a challenge but this one is not for me.
If you like fast-paced shooters: This is absolutely not one although it looks like it on the store page. even though I like challenging games and have no issues with quick loading and saving multiple times like while playing Ultra-Nightmare Doom etc. this one makes it completely unavoidable. You will more often use your quick load button than left mouse button. It's complete trial and error, you walk around the corner: Boom, youre dead, no time to react. This game has no focus on gun play, you will try to avoid having fun with your weapons because you are always out of ammo and aiming is Doom 1.0 hitscan so you don't really need to aim anyway. Most of the time you are very low HP so consider this game a one-hit-death type of game. Gameplay consists of: Taking 10 steps, try to use your 3 shots you have left get onehit, quick load. Repeat ten times and get 10m further.

If you like very time consuming trial and error games this may be for you.
If you look for a fun fast-paced old school shooter absolutely do not try it, play Ion Fury instead, its way better.

Controls are very sluggish, you keep walking even if you stop pressing forward. The settings do not save so you can't turn down the volume, which is very annoying. For some reason you can unlock the camera by hitting L and look around. The graphics are really lackluster, I am pretty positive none of the assets are made on their own and they are placed really effortlessly, it does not look pleasant at all. It is obvious that the person that made this lacks the required skills to make what they want to do which does not justify releasing games in this state.