Recent reviews by Anonymoogle

This is, without hyperbole, the single greatest narrative and video game ever made. I will knife fight anyone who says otherwise.

This is the game Undertale could have been, if it had just gone a little harder, and had a good ending. This is a game all narrative RPGs should aspire to learn from. Not to copy, but to learn from.

I will never be the same again.

I've kinda gotta congratulate Turtle Rock on making a game that finally wore down my optimism and made me put in an honest, negative review.

I want to like this game. I really do. L4D2 is still one of my favorite games out there, but Back 4 Blood just isn't a good successor to it. And that's why at the end of the day, the comparisons need to be made:

The game is more complex and has a lot more depth in things like card builds, weapons, and unlocks... but the end result is that it completely loses the identity and charm that L4D had, as well as the simple fun of picking up and playing it. Most of the Valve core titles are master classes in minimalistic game design, and Back 4 Blood feels like a focus-tested mess of an attempt to "update" L4D2 with modern game design and mechanics, without any care for how those mechanics fundamentally change the game.

The characters are all unique but by covering them with alternate skins, they lose out on any recognizability, since most of their actual characters just arent as interesting or consistent as either of the quartets of survivors back in L4D2. I will admit that the skins and character designs are well done, but all of them fail that crucial silhouette test that TF2 and L4D2 nail perfectly. They each have their own personalities and quips, but they all blend together into "sarcastic panicked teenager", "sarcastic military dude", "sarcastic aggro teenager", "sarcastic prepper", "sarcastic country mom", and so on. Half the time I can't tell Karlee and Ashley apart, or even remember if those are actually their names. And it sucks, because the voice acting is actually top notch. The characters are all delivering their lines perfectly, but there's just not enough to work with here, especially considering the levels have virtually zero events that get actual, specific narrative lines, because of the necessity of having so damn many long levels and needing to reuse those lines.

The enemy design is, in my opinion, the biggest failing point. All of the Special Infected in L4D had unique and noticable designs, music cues that signaled their appearances, and required specific teamwork tactics to deal with them. What does Back 4 Blood have? Multiple special infected categories, with no real cues about their appearance, and essentially 3-4 skins for each that have slightly different tactics, some of which arent even a unique threat, just an annoyance. It's yet another lesson in overcomplicating a perfect work of minimalism.
The Swarm game mode highlights this to the most pathetic degree. A L4D2 style Versus mode would be impossible because of the sheer chaos having 20-ish Specials to throw in would be, on top of the fact that few of the specials in this version have the actual capability to be a situational threat considering the mechanics bloat available to the players. Instead, there's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ deathmatch mode with a battle royale shrinking death circle, that was almost immediately abandoned by the developers despite many good suggestions on how to fix it, and now is completely unplayed.

To put it simply... Back 4 Blood is what happens when a team tries to replicate their past success without the slightest understanding of why the last thing was successful in the first place.

I can only hope that some day we get a real successor to L4D2, but alas, Valve just can't count to three.

Only just got it and immediately hooked. Had one major technical glitch - the game has some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ISSUES if you try to run it on your second monitor, mouse stops working and other crap - so I can only play the game using Big Picture mode.

That aside, Once Human is a solid postapocalyptic survival/crafting shooter with very basic but solid gunplay and a variety of guns on par with the average Far Cry game. The sound design of the guns is particularly satisfying. Enemy variety is pretty limited though, there's functionally only five main types with a dozen different palette swaps of each - zombies, fast zombies, flying bugs that shoot you, crawling bugs that explode, and humans with various guns. There's a fair amount of minibosses though, with very different tactics for dealing with each. I LOVE the art design in this game, the characters are all quirky and strange, and the actual visual design of the various enemies is very consistent and recognizable. The bosses are particularly gruesome and cool to look at.

One of the game's big unique mechanics are the Deviations - basically capturable cryptid familiars you can assign to help at your base or be a combat summon. Outside of guns and throwables you craft, this is your only other combat option I've discovered thus far, but I'm always down for a good pet class.

The base building is extremely solid and satisfying, and not nearly as obnoxious as in most survival games. Resources are plentiful and, while you need to do a lot of crafting, its streamlined and well organized so it's never too much of a chore, especially since you can drop your base anywhere you like. However, it currently suffers from the slight problem of most of the major areas being saturated with dozens of the same basic ♥♥♥♥♥ wooden houses, which is annoying to see.

The story is nothing to write home about, lots of typical postapocalyptic fetch quests and kill quests and the usual flair, but a lot of the quests involving the Deviations are really fun, and the quests at least do a good job of expanding the world and lore.

The only thing I'm not yet sure about is the Season system. Essentially the game runs on 6-week play cycles with the world and events changing each week, and then a full world reset after that, where you can only carry a limited amount of stuff over to the new world. It changes up two of your three skill trees each cycle, so you may have a different game experience each cycle. This incentivizes you to play with friends and each pick different abilities so you can reap the benefits of all of them as a group. Unfortunately, none of my friends currently have jumped in yet.

Monetization in the game is handled exceptionally well, on par with the really good F2P games like Warframe, possibly even better. Nothing is currently pay to win, it's almost exclusively its the usual set of cosmetics, and they dont even seem to have the typical "boosters" that most of these games do, which is nice! Its a good show of faith that the devs didnt try to sell you a fix for a problem they made. Even the battle pass is a solid investment, and while battle pass itself and its progress isnt shared across characters, all the paid items obtained from it are account bound.

All in all, just an excellent free to play shooter that's absolutely worth playing and, most importantly for the games of this type, respects your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ time. Aside from your food spoiling while you're offline, it's very easy to just drop in, explore around and loot, and keep playing casually as much as really diving in. Highly recommend to both casual players of these genres as well as vets!

So this is functionally "What if Warframe was made by Nexon" but with a better version of Destiny's looter shooter guns. Like, the similarities are so blatant to the point where I'm 100% Nexon is intentionally copying it. Like, several aspects of the UI and all of the character abilities are lifted 1-for-1 from equivalents in Warframe.

Nothing bad about it, though, all the character designs are unique and cool, as long as you don't mind that they're all the most Korean RPG Character Designs ever - all the women are hot babes in catsuits or bikini armor, and all the guys are either bishonen military nerds or jacked dudes in power armor.

The gameplay is a standard no frills third person shooter with the single unique addition of Titanfall's grappling hook. It's implemented well and adds a fun dynamic to the game, but it's not implemented as well as Titanfall's grappling hook or the Strand grappling hook in Destiny. The real draw here is the sound design. This game knows how to make a firefight sound good. All of the guns have satisfying impact and pop, and even the bullet hoses feel like they're hitting enemies. Combine with an endless stream of little colored drops and hp/mp pickups flying out of enemies, and it has a nice satisfying dopamine rush from the first mission onwards. Most of the game is essentially a series of Destiny overworlds where story quests are functionally Public Events with the occasional Strike.

A lot of people are criticizing the grind, but to be honest, it's roughly comparable to Warframe, just less consistent - characters will take a LOT more time to grind for than in Warframe due to requiring more parts, but weapons and gear are much easier to get.

Aside from simply being a bit repetitive and homogenous, the game's only true failing comes in the form of its Cash Shop. Even by free to play game standards, hell, even by Nexon's terrible standards, the prices on everything are RIDICULOUS. You will eventually need to shell out real money way down the line to buy more character slots (you get 10, there's 14/20 characters currently), but nothing else is worth buying. Having the various armor paints and weapon skins all locked behind the cash shop, and all single use, means that they will literally never have Fashion Frame as a part of the game, which is honestly sad and probably a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ business choice on their end.

Ultimately, it's deserving of a Mixed rating. It's a solid core game that does nothing that hasn't been done better by other games, but for an **ACTUALLY** Free To Play game with the combination of those parts, it's definitely a fun ride.

I look forward to seeing this game take #1 on Yahtzee's Blandest Of The Year. And there's a good chance I'll still be playing it then!

The game is a blast, total improvement on the original in every way... with one exception. The story.

I was holding off on that until all the planned DLC was released, and now that it is, it's time to be clear here. BEWARE: VAGUE SPOILERS AHEAD.








This game's story is unfinished, to the point that if I didn't know any better and didn't specifically wait until they had a chance to fix it, I'd assume they just ran out of time on it. But no, it's just... intentionally unfinished.
The gameplay is solid, but the story is minimal and just barely serves as enough to get between the worlds and string together the randomized level design. And then the ending... just happens. With no explanation, the game just kinda ends, giving no conclusion to a single plot thread from this game, let alone some of the ones left hanging from the first.

I want to like this game. I really do. And if it were going on just gameplay alone, this would be a slam dunk. But if you actually invested in the story of these games, you're going to be let down because the developers clearly just don't consider the story a priority. Instead, we have an incredibly competent third person shooter, with a ton of build depth and all the Gun Souls you could want. But there's virtually no reason to play this game outside of the gameplay. It's clear where Gunfire's priorities are, and it's a damn shame that having any kind of cohesive narrative or worldbuilding isn't one of them.

But on the other hand, you can be a gun wizard with an exploding frisbee cannon and a cuddly attack dog that heals you. So perhaps, it's still worth it.

You know a company is good when a cosmetic DLC gets a consistent Overwhelmingly Positive review. Bravo Ghost Ship for showing people how to make a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ video game correctly. Just make a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fun game with no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, and what do you know, people will respect you and shower you with money.

HEY GAME INDUSTRY.
HEY.
DO THIS.
DO MORE OF THIS.
THIS IS HOW YOU DO THINGS.
DO YOU GET IT YET?!

I recommend this game only because of mods, but at this point that's basically Bethesda Game Rule #1 - Skyrim is the last mainline product they put out that even remotely holds up without mods. And without mods, this game is just a boring and buggy port of vanilla skyrim, but that's still better than the unplayable mess that is Fallout 4 VR.

But with the right mods - namely VRIK, HIGGS, PLANCK, and some basic graphics upgrades - this honestly becomes one of the best VR experiences out there. The modding community is amazing for Skyrim, and a lot of the SE mods are still compatible out of the box in VR, or have patches.

As old as this game is, there's still something special and wondrous about wandering around a Falmer cave or a Dwemer ruin in VR. Skyrim itself is still a magnificent relic, and seeing it up close and personal is a genuinely immersive experience. Give it a shot, it's worth the stress of getting the mods to work, I promise.

This game had a rocky start, and for a long time it's been a solid "good but not great". As of the 2.0 update though, 2077 finally feels like the game it was supposed to be, and worth it even at full price. It was a long road but it's good to see it finally get there.

Literally the best VR game ever made.

Solid shooter, fun characters, good atmosphere, great combat. There's the occasional bugs, but nothing serious I've seen besides an occasional funny T-pose or an enemy AI freezing.

I don't know what the ♥♥♥♥ happened to this game on launch, but it's fun for me so far. I got it on sale, and I do agree with some of the reviews, this game feels a little bit out of date, but... Dead Island was a AAA game on launch too. 70 is overpriced for any game currently on the market, but this game would be a solid 30-40 easily.

Give it a shot, and if you go solo, be careful, this isn't a Borderlands type guns blazing deal unless you bring friends.