Recent reviews by Cooptimus Prime

It's a solid 7/10 for me. Lots of fun, though I regularly say "I hate this game" when I die to clunky controls, weird physics, or just straight up bugs (finding the DLC missions to not progress steps and then time runs out and you lose). Ranged weapons are a massive pain in the ass to use with a controller, and most of the skills you unlock have weird button combos so you'll probably end up memorizing one or two and sticking with them. The Halloween 2024 event was where all 3 of those issues were glaringly obvious, even though again, the gameplay, when it actually works, is great.

Still, the story is better than the first, there's a loooooot of content and you replace the grapple hook with a glider (and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ but more realistic grapple hook). There's also a lot of verticality in this one once you get to the second area, which was a breath of fresh air.

It's a good game, but my god I would like us to move away from clunky controls and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ aim in horror games and whatever genre this would be called. I played it on Hardcore and I can't tell you how many times I would have an incredibly frustrating death and be like "I hate this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game". It was good enough that I kept playing though. There's just two major things you're gonna want to be aware of before playing this:

Leon, while not a full tank in this remake, is still partially a tank. There was noticeable lag time between when I started and ended input and when the game would register that. On top of that, Leon doesn't move that fast and has ramp up time, especially after shooting (even with a pistol), so I struggled to reliably melee enemies, even if they were quite close when I stunned them. If you've played the other remakes, this one is way clunkier. If you played Resistance, this one is not as bad but is closer to that than the other remakes on the clunkiness scale.

As for the gunplay, I get it, a bunch of factors affect accuracy and recoil, but the number of times I would miss point-blank while stationary with a pistol or the bolt thrower was astounding. Want to use an SMG reliably? Good luck with that. You can't aim while crouching either for some reason.

All in all, I still liked it and will play more. I just think purposeful ♥♥♥♥♥♥ design choices that seem to be there just to force you to use the new knife parrying system really hold it back from its full potential.

It's generic and way too easy. I had literally zero struggle and didn't have to use any cover, actively dodge anything, or even use my skills or any guns other than the assault rifle for my entire playtime. I would have liked to jump right into hard mode and see what it's like, but they lock that behind story completion and there's no way in hell I'm playing through the entire game on easy mode to get to that point.

I played From the Ashes a lot and I think it's a great sequel. Highly recommend this and From the Ashes if you haven't played it. One of the only games I've ever pre-ordered. What really shines in this game is the sheer number of options you have. 4 rings instead of 2, a mod and mutator on each gun, plus a mutator on your melee weapon, different relics, and classes that actually do things. You get to choose from quite a few even if you're just starting out, and can mix and match 2 of them at a time. And each one has 3 skills to choose from as well.

I was also really happy to find out that the medic archetype is actually strong. Handler kinda sucks though ngl. The other 8 in the base game are also quite good though and several of them have amazing synergy.

Map traversal has been massively improved so you can spend less time running around and more time shooting. Humans have also learned the lost art of jumping since the first game, so you can get a little parkour in here and there.

There's also a lot of randomization and secrets mixed into the level design, so much so that it may take you a fair number of playthroughs to experience everything..........if you even manage to find them when they're there.

There are some flaws we need to talk about though:

Performance, performance, performance. You'll see this echoed in a lot of other reviews. I'm especially noticing my pc struggling with the DLC.

To me, the difficulty is a bit of a letdown. Friend of mine played the first with me and we struggled on Nightmare for hours until we got the hang of it. But that didn't mean our struggle was over. Normal map traversal became mostly fine, but bosses would challenge us to take new approaches and we often separated ourselves into distinct roles to handle them. This time around, she wanted to start on a lower difficulty but decided it was too easy after only an hour, so we went with Nightmare from scratch. Switched to Apocalypse once we got it and it's kinda rare for us to really struggle like we ever did in the first one. I think this largely stems from the bosses not being so dependent on minions, so it's far less chaotic and all you really need to do is learn the patterns. And as the person who used to run the Aggressor's Bane to draw the aggro from everything except the boss, I'm really missing the chaos in this one.

I also miss armour being way more meaningful. In Remnant 2, armour really isn't actually a part of your build in most cases. I've been wearing the same ♥♥♥♥ for probably 150 of those 155 hours since I just found whatever combo gets me as close to the limit of the medium weight class and kept it that way.

With so many equipment slots and options, there's one thing that was bound to happen. And that's a lack of variety within each category. For me this shows up the most in perks, mods, and melee weapons. Perk points are limited, so why waste them on incredibly minor buffs to things like traversal speed and ADS movement speed? I don't feel like there's as many good mod options as compared to the first game either. And melee weapons..............I don't see any reason to use anything other than the Krell Axe. You can throw it, and it applies overloading. A big sword is cool, but it's also basic as ♥♥♥♥ and there's like 10 of them to choose from but only one other melee weapon you can throw (that to me is inferior to the axe in every way).

If you've played Scott Pilgrim, you might remember how clunky and kind of repetitive it was. Tunche is very similar, except managed to be worse. And it's sad, because I really did want to like it.

Here's what's holding it back:

• Unlike Scott Pilgrim, you don't upgrade your move set by simply levelling up while playing. Instead, you must wait until after the run to upgrade your character, so get used to mashing the ♥♥♥♥ out of your X button
  
• You also have to do that for the other 4 characters. Massive grind, no thanks
  
• Because of the grind and roguelike structure, you're gonna see the first zone or two a looooooot. Same bosses each time with really basic but also grindy mechanics, and zone 1 has incredibly boring animals. The environment also lacks variety in each zone
  
• You can't revive players during a run unless you happen to have the resources for it if you also happen to come across the room that lets you do that.
  
• To make the above problem worse, potions aren't automatically consumed to save your life. They're also weak.
  
• I've only fought the first two bosses, but both were rather boring. Learn the pattern, get a few hits in, dodge the attacks, repeat........eventually you break the armour and then you get a few seconds to actually do damage before the armour recovers and you have to do it all over again
  
• Combat didn't really flow for me. You can hit enemies into the air and then follow up, but I found it hard to time it properly, or enemies would fly out of my range, so I'd only get a few hits of the combo in

Honestly, the inability to revive players like Scott Pilgrim and other beat em ups was a major flaw for me. The grind just makes it that much worse

Pretty amazing 9/10 game for me.

We went into it blind on Nightmare difficulty and got our asses handed to us so many times. It's definitely one of those games that will require a lot of trial and error to get right, but it feels so good when you pull it off. Most of the weapons have their place, and there's enough variety in all of the equipment and mods to have 3 players with wildly different playstyles. And chances are, you won't even actually experience all the content this game has to offer. There were still several traits, weapons, rings, and amulets that I didn't get by the time I had 100% it.

Very much looking forward to Remnant 2.

I really wish Steam had a neutral option or an "It Depends" option. Like 5 or 6 out of 10.

Playing it alone is fine since you won't have any downtime. Playing it with other people is far less enjoyable than what I was hoping. My roommates really liked the dungeons, but weren't really fans of the main world, and I get it. They play D&D, so I figured this would be their jam, but it was not so haha.

My main gripes with it are:

-the size of the map and movement being limited and based on chance makes getting around quite a chore
-enemies consistently rolled perfect rolls even when they have around 5 checks, but the odds of me doing that were much, much slimmer
-the tutorial wasn't the best, and I was still figuring out a lot of controls and core mechanics on my second run (I still don't even know what chaos does, maybe because I just know it's bad and have been removing it before it gets close on the timeline)
-you can't use items on other players both during battle and on the map, and I don't think you can give them to other players during battle, none of which makes any sense
-part of their thing is that you can choose if you want to stay together or go alone, but going it alone in most fights is a very good way to get your ass handed to you

I actually lost my first game because I was a little bored and entered a dungeon that warned me I probably wasn't ready.

And I definitely wasn't, but my one character actually made it through a few rooms on his own while drunk. Just make sure drunk characters don't have extra weapons, because they often wasted their turns by swapping weapons instead of doing literally anything else.

It's okay. Like 6/10. Would I ever pay anywhere near full price for it? ♥♥♥♥ no. It was better than I remember from the beta though, so I'll give them that.

I played through it only with bots on Veteran, mainly swinging a machete or bat around (not a fan of the other melee weapons that swing overhead, dealing more damage per swing but only hitting one, maybe 2 targets and using way more stamina and being far less efficient). The gun attachments, cards, and upgrades were cool concepts. I liked those. And the mutations were cool too. Most ♥♥♥♥♥♥ with my melee build, but I still got by by just tanking.

But the specials were.........rather forgettable. As was most of the game. The thing that was so great about Left 4 Dead 2 were the specials. The Charger, Smoker, Hunter, and Jockey can each pin one survivor in a unique way, while the Spitter will definitely ♥♥♥♥ your team up, and the Boomer is there to create chaos. Each were designed to counter the strategies for dealing with the others. And then the Witch will instakill you on Realism and often be placed right in the way, and the Tank required the whole team banding together to bring down in most cases. They all had their own music too, not just sound effects.

The specials in Back4Blood barely follow this. Most won't pin a survivor and most of the time they barely posed a threat because they're slow as ♥♥♥♥. A couple Ogres gave me a run for my money, but that was it.

Act 4 was a major letdown for me. The boss fight is very generic and reminded me of boss fights in the early 2000s. Simple pattern, hit weak points. Repeat until you win. I was randomly instakilled as 2 of my survivors, while the other 2 got blasted out of the map. Fun.

The end of Act 3 was way closer to what I was expecting. Actually, the finale of each Act before 4 felt like a real finale. And I hate it when the end of the game is lacklustre.

Overall it was just generic. Can it still be good fun? Yeah, sure. is it $80cad fun though? Definitely not loooooooooool

The real final boss was the terrible colouring of the ROYGBIV puzzle, falling through that room and dying, losing all our stuff, and also another boss (the Butcher) that couldn't be killed until I turned the difficulty down one notch.

And yeah, I'm not joking about the final boss. There wasn't one. It's a very disappointing cutscene.

This game had potential, but so many of the items were useless junk, the combat was literally just walk at enemy swinging for the most part, and getting from point A to B on the map was almost always something you had to do exclusively on foot.

Oh yeah, and it was incredibly easy (aside from the bugs) once you get past the first bit.

I actually really like it, but there are a few hoops you have to jump through to get to that point:

-the controls are pretty clunky and take some time getting used to
-the community is small, so matchmaking can take a while depending on when you're playing and if people leave or not
-sometimes it gets stuck on the loading screen at 0%
-because the community is small, you're more likely to be matched with players who are rank 100+, so if you're a survivor, they're either gonna basically play the game for you if they're a survivor, or demolish you if they're the mastermind

Once you get some real games under your belt, you can actually unlock stuff and be more useful, at which point it becomes a lot more enjoyable.