Recent reviews by Bruxy

Glad I only paid two quid for this, as it's garbage. So slow, you spend more time in terribly-written cut scenes than you do in the boring, poorly-controlled battles. Frontier are definitely no Relic or Slitherine.

Possibly the most beta-ish beta I've ever played. Thoroughly unstable and utterly frustrating. I'll give it another go in a few months, see if anything's improved.

Update time, because PCF and Sqenix are now officially on my lipstick list:

Steer well clear of this game. I cannot stress this highly enough. Circle back around in a month or two, probably when it's on sale in an attempt to salvage a bottom line and some PCF exec's job. If it worked and cost £20 I would say fill your boots, but it is broken - literally unplayable for (so far) its first three days post-release - and they're scamming people out of £50. I've tried to refund but, through a combination of server queues counting against play time and the fact I managed a few hours before the wheels fell off, I sadly no longer qualify. So here I am, reinstalling a game I may actually despise in the vague hope of seeing some value. Safe to say I am unlikely to buy any PCF title again.

To the detail:

Always online, servers powered by dead hamsters, code mismatches between console and PC crippling crossplay... the technical issues with this game are well-publicised and every bit as serious as they sound. Currently you would get more value from £50-worth of Warzone skins as at least you'd see them in a game.

What about when it does work? Well, the gameplay is bland. It's not terrible and it certainly has its moments, but generally speaking it's a poor-man's Division. Jump from cover to cover (badly, because the cover system is gash), shoot some mobs, spam some skills... probably die when you go up a World Tier in time for the latest mini-boss so upgrade your gear and go again. If I wasn't such a sucker for a progression system I'd be too bored to care, but while it worked there was enough there to keep me pushing through. It looks pretty, providing you don't turn on HDR (you know, that thing that supposed to improve graphics) and your character's voiced lines are actually pretty good - but then it needs to be because you'll see SO MUCH of it. All the cut scenes. So many cut scenes.

It's also full of those irritating ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that exist purely to annoy players while adding zero value. Unskippable opening scene? Check. Obscure, unnatural button mapping for menu navigation? Check. Load to a screen that only exists to have you press a button so it can continue loading? Double check. Just load into the game FFS. This last one is particularly precious when the servers inevitably fail, as it essentially places you in an infinite loop of failing to connect and returning to the connection screen. There's no route through to a menu with an exit option - you have to Ctrl-Alt-Del to turn the thing off.

It's all classic console-focused design and a pet peeve of mine. Just throw the port at PC and hope it sticks. Strangely, despite the sticky brown nature of this title, it hasn't. And thus I sign off my update with my original comment still entirely valid:

Enjoy my fifty quid you useless, thieving *****.

Absolute joke of a game. Riddled with bugs and basic, boring gameplay that poses no challenge. The sandbox mode is alright for a couple of days, but quickly becomes repetitive while the campaign... well, I've been unable to complete it due to utterly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ shocking coding on display.

That they had the cheek to push out a paid DLC before patching even basic issues is frankly disgusting, and I'm a moron for buying it. This is the purest, most cynical example of a Games Workshop cash grab I think I've ever seen and, let's be honest, there are countless examples out there.

Necromunda has always been my favourite GW IP and I waited decades for this game to come out. It was an open goal, and Focus have ballooned it into the stands. They're making EA look like Elon Musk.

Steer clear.

A simple concept, but very well-executed. It's funny and engaging, managing to churn out epic moments on a regular basis.

Over 60 hours into my first character now, and I'm only just starting to think I might be approaching the end of the main story. That's exactly what you want from an RPG so I can't recommend Underrail highly enough.

It's deep and varied, with plenty of character and crafting options. There are a few annoyances (minimal fast travel, no map and a quick-to-hit level cap that can make progression feel like you've just pulled up short) but for the most part these are understandable and intentionally-frustrating design features that don't detract from the overall positives.

Finally, it's unbelievably well-coded for a game of its scale. Aside from a few dialogue typos I haven't encountered a single genuine bug.

I got this game at release, without the DLC. Inititally I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's beautiful, which is saying a lot considering it's set in a grimy, snow-covered, post-disaster city, at the gameplay is fluid. As I hit the end-game, though, it simply got boring. Hackers, the grind... you've heard it all already and it was true. So I put it down for a good 4-5 months.

Then came the 1.4 patch. I've been playing it again for a week now, just to see how it improved. Happily, it really has. There is fresh - and, crucially, scaled - challenge, a significant reduction in technical problems and, thankfully, much less grind.

The one annoying thing I've encountered since rejoining is the new mission that popped up on log-in. It was presented as a daily challenge (though I could have simply misinterpreted it) that ultimately led me back to the home base to hand in. Sadly, the hand-in area was DLC-only. I was not particularly impressed at what felt like a pretty underhand sales pitch but, given the experiences I've had since, I can probably say it worked as I'm tempted to invest.