Recent reviews by ADaVVg

Man, the part where they made me press X not to die was so stressful!

10/10

I mean, the game is easily mid. Boring as hell, not fluid or satisfying, ok graphics but they look like plastic, and the animations are janky. I looked all over in game and online and the ONLY way I could find to get other characters was to buy them.. with REAL MONEY and you cant test them out and a normal character was $10 and ultimate ones are $110 after tax. Literally insane. Horny cash grab with no original or interesting mechanics and the gameplay was NOWHERE near challenging or engaging. Sorry to see you commit company suicide like this Nexon. I liked Vindictus a lot but man, I cant imagine what made you guys think releasing this hot garbage dumpster fire of a game was a good idea after a decade of being irrelevant.

Bunny was pretty hot tho lmao

Well, I haven't been this excited to write a review for a game in a long time. I'm gonna go very in depth because I really like the idea, I see the vision, and I really want this project to succeed. I'm really hoping to see this game evolve as I have seen other games do before.

First of all, let's talk about WHAT this game is and what it NEEDS to become to be good and stay relevant and then, at the end, I will offer some of my personal suggestions that may help paint a picture for skeptical players and hopefully even help the devs steer this game in a positive direction.

To start, this game really scratches an itch for me. I never knew it but I've always wanted a PvE Tarkov and the second my friend asked me if I had heard about this game I was really interested in seeing what it would be like. From the look and feel of the title screen and the hideout I was EXTREMELY excited to play and ready to see what content the game had in store, but my first impressions were sadly not good. I was immediately disappointed when I loaded into a match for the first time. The amazing ambience, polish, and relatively good FPS all disappeared as soon as the loading screen from hideout to in-game went away. My FPS went from about 100-110 on ultra settings to about 45-50, the lighting was staggeringly different and much harsher/simple, and a lot of textures seemed really low quality/janky/less polished than the ones that had obviously received a lot more work and care in the hideout. AND.. that's when they were working because multiplayer models seem to be really bugged and often become a bland, gray texture with gray squares and the gear that the co-op player is wearing will separate from the body model and float in really distracting ways. Once I had fiddled with the settings (I'll talk about that more in just a second) I actually got it looking pretty much no different than ultra settings with a LOT more FPS (about 90).

One thing that I can congratulate them on is the fact the controls were almost all intuitive. I was really impressed that I only had to look in the settings to find one or two keys, the rest all came to me naturally and or were remembered from other games and there are quite a bit of important/functional buttons. I will say, though, not having the option to prone does suck a bit and I wish it was there but for now it's honestly not a big deal. I do really wish there were just a few more options for keybindings like the option to change key combos like shift click and ctrl click. I would like those swapped, BUT I would like the option the swap them myself.

Now, as for the look and feel there definitely needs to be some work done. The game feels really amazing, actually. It controls very well and satisfyingly. There might be a tiny bit of jank with the aiming like scope visibility and bullets maybe landing a tad too high or low, but overall I think it's among the smoothest/most satisfying FPS shooters I've played. The Ak's iron sights need some work done because when ADSing the front sight is not even close to centered but all of the guns feel nice and solid and the on screen movement effects like how your character reacts to looking around is really nice.

As a lot of reviews have mentioned (and rightfully so) the audio kinda sucks lol. It's mostly in how the sound travels and not so much the quality. I don't hate the actual sound effects for walking but I do wish they were a little more diverse, balanced, and polished but FOR THE LOVE OF GOD please work on how sound travels. Footsteps and Ai speech isn't audible when at a certain range and then all of a sudden they sound like they're RIGHT NEXT TO YOU buuut they're actually about 50 meters or more ish away (even through walls or above/below you). Honestly though, that seems like something that will obviously be fixed and was just thrown together real quick to get the idea/project up and playable (which is a seemingly common theme in this Early Access/idea demo). What my REAL problem with the audio is... is the gun sounds. If you've played SCP 5k, Tarkov, Squad, or even Body Cam you'd know that guns in games can sound "good" but truly immersive and amazing gun sound design is on a whole other level and it adds this weight to the game that others just don't have. The sound of a gun, right next to its actual performance on the field, is what gives it its personality, identity, and satisfying feel and at the moment the gun sounds in Incursion are much less than desirable. I would liken them to earlier CoD game sounds (a little better than that but not too far off).

Now, as for the big one that a lot of review writers have absolutely LATCHED onto.

Performance...

I saw a lot of people absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on the game for having low FPS and, while it is justified and the performance is definitely subject to change and needing to be optimized, I think a lot of people complaining about FPS just expect their PCs to run games at max settings and get hundreds of frames because they only really play optimized games and this game is not optimized YET. I've also found that this is one of those games where just one setting is holding the performance back for whatever reason.

So, my PC is running a:

RTX 2070 Super
AMD Ryzen 5 3600X 6-core
64 gigs of 3600 MHz DDR4 Dominator ram
and multiple Crucial SSDs

After sitting down and fiddling with the settings and monitoring how the FPS changed and how the visual quality changed I've found a really good setting values that barely change the visuals but give about 50 ish FPS about just slamming the game to ultra.

These settings are:

Post Process [MED]
Shadows [HIGH]
Foliage [EPIC]
Shading [EPIC]
View Distance [EPIC]
Visual Effects [Doesn't really matter but I have it on low]
Anti-Aliasing [DLSS HIGH]
Motion Blur [OFF] (of course)
Volumetric Fog [ON]
Virtual Shadows [OFF]
Illumination Method [LUMEN]
Lumen Scalability [HIGH]
Reflection Method [Lumen]

Most of those are pretty straight forward and are set that way because when changed that setting, what I have it on now was the setting that looked MOST like EPIC without a huge loss of FPS. The biggest culprit was shadows and Post Process. Although most of them are straight forward there are just a few that are kinda give and take and could be up to you. For example, Anti-Aliasing Method. I have it set to DLSS because I found that it gave me the most FPS of the options available and the highest visual fidelity but it was very straight forward. I was actually using good ol TAA for a while until I realized I was having trouble with my sights not being so clear and then I switched over to DLSS and found that quality went a fair bit up and the fuzziness/pixelation went away and my FPS was give or take 2 FPS higher or lower. DLSS did slightly increase the ghosting of objects like the edge of your gun and most notably the sights and lasers but for the most part it is giving me the most enjoyable experience at the moment. FSR is expectedly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, even giving me LESS FPS than when I had the game at all ultra settings and it gave me high pixelation. TSR, surprisingly, put up a really good fight. The visual fidelity was really good and smooth but the FPS was just about 10 lower than either DLSS or TAA. Another pretty big setting was Volumetric fog. It took away about 5 or so FPS but the effect that it had on visuals was pretty drastic and even though it's name would suggest otherwise it seemed to control more of the ambient lighting than anything to do with fog.

Sadly, It seems that I'm about to hit the word limit for a Steam review but I think I'm going to make a simple video and basically use this as a script to talk more about these things and also include my proposed solutions instead of just critiques so if any of you care then I'll have the link to that posted in my Steam bio when it's up.

Overall the game is in a rough state but it has a lot of potential to be among the best of co-op, tactical, looter shoote

Short but amazing. Such a good game <3
It's pretty well made and the mechanics work smoothly :D something I've been craving in games lately.

Great job!

Initially I preordered the most expensive version of the game and played the beta. Immediately I was like wtfisthis but thought it would grow on me as I played some, but after 2 hours of playing my opinion of it only got worse and I just uninstalled and refunded it. I could write a comprehensive review that details everything actually wrong with the game but the what's the point. The reviews are already mostly negative anyway and the true problem is that pretty much everything about the game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. None of it feels good, none of it is satisfying, and the only fun bit is the wing suit in which the controls for said wing suit are just about the most clunky and least satisfying flying controls I've ever experienced in a game.

Really good for a simple concept playtest. Can't wait to see what this is gonna be. Please add a first person mode <3

Edit after release of the August 15th update:

In all fairness, they did make the bullet drop "better" than what was shown in the trailers. I'm almost into it with the way it has been officially implemented, however... with this update came things that I didn't expect were gonna be implemented poorly. TO START, the new map is beautiful and I hope to play it one day but with the game in its current state I did actually uninstall it. The laggy, EXTRA buggy mess that the game has become with extra steps to perform every action in the UI is just frustrating, unappealing, and unsatisfying. It's been a whole since the update dropped and when I played it was the laggiest, most unplayable experience that I've ever had in Hunt. Performance wise I saw a reduction of about 25% FPS on all low settings WITH DLSS on balanced... absolutely abysmal. The stuttering was unbearable and when the FPS was at 90 looking in different directions would result in regular drops to 40 FPS and not to mention using darksight or turning quickly resulted in huge, half second drops to 10 FPS. As for the UI, I think SOME of it is actually really nice. The new trait screen is great and should have been that way or similar for a long time.. but that's about it. The very first menu is pretty nice looking but it's confusing and annoying and all of the rest of the UI changes are unintuitive and maze-like. I'd go on and talk about other things but honestly I'm VERY sad to say that my favorite shooter is no longer worth playing.

Also, the name change to Hunt: Showdown 1896 is just tacky and lame. Change it back.

Original review before the update:

My review was positive for years. This has been, hands down, my favorite shooter for years with my absolute favorite style choice for guns, characters, Ai, maps, etc. but... the game has been almost unplayable for a while now. Still fun but the base line ping for me is around 60 on a good day which is really rough since it used to be 30. 60 ping is ok but it does end up being high enough for dead corpses to still shoot a bullet while they're dead on the ground for a second which means that you can just straight up die even if you played your situation correctly, hit your shot, and won your fight. It's also enough to make bullet travel time drastically different so it can be really hard to hit moving shots at a distance NOT TO MENTION I have way too many clips from the last month alone that show a person standing still, my bullet flying through their chest or head, and no hit marker at all is given. That paired with the CONSTANT "server maintenance" throughout the last month (and last 3 days) rendering the game literally unplayable for hours at a time and then the servers always need a few hours to settle again after has made it almost impossible to play recently. They also reset ranks and changed how it works. After the maintenance today I could NOT find a game and the red bar fill has been extended because I sat in quickplay queue for over 5 minutes and then gave up only to sit in duo queue for 7 minutes before saying screw it and going to play something else. All of this frustration paired with the promise of that AWFUL implementation of bullet drop coming next month has me wanting to actually uninstall and say "it's been a good run".

Now.
All that aside, let's focus on some of the positives.

90% of the features and changes coming in the August update are actually AMAZING and super exciting for me and my friends. The traps are cool and will make games feel more weighty and spooky when trying push a building, the FPS optimizations are an awesome thing that I've been waiting a LONG time for, the new UI is stellar and so are missions, the sounds are fantastic, and the trait reworks are gonna be really really nice.

The addition of bullet drop, however, has been one thing I've been iffy about for a few years now but honestly when I heard it was officially being added I was kind of excited. I thought it would be a really interesting addition to the game and it would ultimately make the game feel more weighty, serious, and immersive. But... turning the guns into nerf guns is NOT the way to go about it. I will TRY the new update but as it stands from the footage I've seen I will likely be uninstalling and not playing the game for the first time since it's alpha release until it is AT LEAST changed to be much much more realistic. At this point it isn't even close to passable as artistic licence or balancing, it is just ridiculous. The footage of the snipers is really frustrating, even though I rarely use them, but the real thing that is driving me off the wall was the footage of a dev using a pistol at shotgun range and having to aim with the cylinder in order to hit the dummy's chest. With drop ranges like this of 10-15 meters you can expect bullets to hit the floor INSIDE OF SMALL OR MEDIUM SIZED BUILDINGS. This paired with the infinite ammo caches and first aid kit changes is a very bad wombo combo that results in the removal of some of the random nature that makes the game different every time you play.

By this I mean:
say that you've had a rough but good fight where you and your team came out on top, the other bounty is almost done banishing but they're catchable, and you're almost out of ammo but you and your team think you've got this and can make it work. You go to the nearest caravan and see that it's mostly looted but there is one or so lootables that were able to get you back in the fight, albeit you aren't sitting pretty but this is often the exact thing that makes the game intense and stressful where you have to prove your skill. You and your team are now faced with a choice. Do you risk it all and go in as the underdogs to try and win it all, or do you take the little dub you've secured with a few kills and your hunters being alive and extract safely? The infinite uses change removes that from the game and from now on it will always be, "Okay let's go fully restock at a caravan and wipe the lobby". This also removes a fair portion of the ability and skill of tracking enemy players and knowing when someone has passed through an area or even if they're still around.

Overall, I think the August update will be amazing and chocked full of a lot of features and changes I've been begging for for years, however, just a few bad actors in the list of features and changes are going to make the game highly unenjoyable and frustrating to play. I do NOT want to see this game die but with it's already small and finicky/fluctuating playerbase I fear these changes might actually be the end.

PLEASE Crytek, use your brains and think of a better implementation of bullet drop and do not let this kill your game.

Good

Good game that is on its deathbed :(

Good