Recent reviews by Crime McDog

The game is decent, but until they remove the stupid bot games they hide as players my review will be not recommended.

Highly recommend if you like seeing large space battles between tons of ships.
I thought going into this that there would be performance hits with the larger scale battles, but it runs quite smoothly. It's awesome to watch hundreds of ships shoot each other through each mission. I do think some of the ships require more balancing, but overall it's a fun experience.
The campaign is currently limited, but what is there offers unique levels and different objectives. I hope that the full game adds character voices, or at the very least some additional sounds as text is typing (e.g. I'm thinking of old school RTS games that would have "typewriter" or similar sounds as text is placed on screen). Would help with some of the silent mission intros where it's just scrolling text with static pictures.
The story is somewhat generic with multiple factions fighting each other with a mysterious stranger mentioning "others" in the universe. Hopefully they can expand upon it and throw in some twists to the story.
Some additional changes are required here and there. For instance there's not a great way to tell how many units you're producing of each kind. For a macro-style game like this, unit statistics are needed to figure out what weaknesses exist in the current fleet composition. But overall, I can't wait for additional updates.

Times like this I really wish steam had a "mixed" option. While the voice acting is kind of lackluster (i believe due to AI), there are some neat gameplay mechanics here through dynamic turret placement and hero combinations. It's also offers a lot of customization through the station as you can upgrade different components as you see fit.
However, I think my biggest issue is that in each mission you essentially get random loot boxes to help survive. This can be very frustrating depending on what you receive, and essentially results in restarting missions a bunch to hopefully get better boxes at the start of the level to help your chances of victory.
I think it would have been better to implement a lot of the loot box choices as "buy" options in each level with the epli money received, with additional turrets not in your loadout being potential loot box options. This would have allowed a lot more player choice depending on the turrets/heroes/supports brought in through loadout selection for each map, while still adding some variety through a little randomness.
I think if there are additional patches to smooth out some of these rough edges, it could be a great way to spend a few hours a day defending against the alien horde.

Edit: Seeing that the developer is responding to comments and willing to consider feedback, I believe they truly do care about this game, and it will improve in the future. While I do think at this time it is still "mixed", it is on the "Yes" side for recommendation.

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."

The enemy cannot push the downvote button if you disable its hand!

A game that had enormous potential that has been squandered away by developers looking to squeeze every penny out of customers through RNG game mechanics.

Player choice is basically non-existent: You cannot choose the game level, you cannot choose the map difficulty, you cannot choose the modifiers, you cannot craft weapons, and you don't share character inventories. Heck, there are critical features that still say "coming soon" in a game that claims to be "fully released". Everything is designed to entice players to come back another day to check if the RNG mechanics gave them the items they want. A new map drops? Better hope it shows up in the map rotation or you're waiting another 50 minutes for maps to rotate to play the new map at the difficulty you want to play at.You are not allowed to choose how to have fun in this game, you are only provided the "chance" to find it.

This game also has no story, even though they promoted it before launch. "Hey, you suck. Go kill bad guys and we think you might suck a little less" is the basic gist. During the tutorial you'll see a named villain escape another cell, teasing at the idea that this is a major enemy that you'll deal with later in the game. You'll never see that villain again.

Also be be prepared to have the game crash. Like a lot. I'm convinced at this point the most seen feature of this game is the crash feedback window.

Also, cosmetics in this game are awful. Each class only gets a few free cosmetics that take hours to grind, and barely change between each version (oh boy my red prison garbs now changed to red and include shoes, hurray! /s). All of the actually decent cosmetics are locked behind the in-game cosmetic store that requires you to shell out even more money. They were too greedy to bother including some decent cosmetics for each class to unlock through playing the game. Also, the in-game cosmetic store looks to be the only thing in this game that's fully implemented. Absolutely boggles my mind they would even release with an in-game store with how many issues this game has to even justify the release price.

I tried to give this game a chance, I really did. I've got hundreds of hours in Vermintide 2 and thought this would be the evolution of that game in next gen settings. But after spending DAYS waiting for certain weapons to show up in the store, to constant crashes happening, to the lack of player choice, I've had enough. Do not give this company your money.

Installing this caused my save data to be lost. 135 hours down the drain and now I have to start from scratch.

I normally don't leave reviews for games, but the new campaign update has left me completely disappointed. I'm not going to cover every issue with the campaign in this review. Just the ones I found to be the most poorly designed.

To start with, survival mode has been and will continue to be a great game mode in this game.

However, I feel as if the devs have never played an RTS campaign before. Instead of introducing units through each mission that lets new players understand the mechanics of the game, the player must unlock everything through the tech tree. This can result in the campaign being "soft locked" because new players may not understand the vital items that should be unlocked first (e.g soldiers, farms, cottages, etc.). The player then cannot beat any of the campaign missions, and must start a new campaign to unlock the correct items.

It is also not possible to save during a mission. This means that if you are playing a level for over an hour, and mistakenly let one zombie slip by that infects your base, you'll have to start over from the beginning. This would maybe not be as big of an issue if each campaign level was randomized to add some variety, but each level is FIXED. This means that in each replay you'll be making essentially the same base. And the idea of maps requiring a minimum population before the last day is mind boggling. You may be over the minimum population requirement, but then the final wave comes and infect a few houses that put you back under the minimum population requirement. If you do not get back above that requirement before the last day, you lose. Even though you beat the final wave of the level. And then you have to replay the same level again since you can't save.

Also, there seems to be no larger story at work other than expanding and talking to the emperor about overcoming the zombies. Where are the secondary characters that embark on this journey with me to help expand the lore and add depth to each mission?

The special ops missions are also frustratingly boring. The heroes do not have unique abilities, other than the weapon that they shoot (they can also pick up grenades to throw). Instead of solving unique puzzles or beating challenging enemies with the heroes, it is a room clearing expedition where you aggro a few enemies, back up, and wait for your hero to shoot them. Rinse and repeat. Also, after you complete the main objective, you have to walk all the way back through the level to the starting area to leave the mission.

After spending a year or more developing the campaign, I feel as if they devs either did not understand or chose to ignore the large issues present in the campaign. Most of these issues should have been found in play testing, and fixed before the update was released. Feedback during the early stages of development could have helped shaped the campaign to be a lot better than it currently is.

Each level of the campaign is just a large time sink that does not offer an enjoyable experience. I cannot recommend this game in it's current state.

It's like Mr. Torgue made a video game. EXPLOSIONS!!!