Recent reviews by Daishi

Deep Rock is a fantastically realized game. In my 1100 hours at time of review, I have played it consistently since picking it up, and it has been both a comfortable game to return to, a place to challenge myself to do better, and somewhere I let my creativity go in the form of mods and certain gamemodes.

The core loop is dropping into a randomly-generated cave, with varied biome themes or mission types, then searching for minerals to collect from the walls while fighting off the local wildlife. Eventually you collect the minerals you need, or repair the machines you came back to recover, or destroyed a boss-like enemy containing a cache of data you're there to recover, resulting in a dash to the escape pod and a (hopefully) triumphant return.

What keeps me coming back to DRG is the sheer sense of exploration, the never-seen-it-twice wonder of "wow, what on earth is this" that some caves elicit, and the excellent combination of team-oriented equipment each of the four classes carries with it.

When my friends play for twenty hours and say "Well I've seen it all, haven't I?", the answer is a resounding !NO!, you have not. The game has barely begun to open up to you, and the true depth of customization doesn't reveal itself until you promote your first character at level 25. Once that happens, a slew of new options opens up, and the rabbit hole that is weapon overclocks (additional mods which change the basic functionality of a weapon), Deep Dives / Elite Deep Dives (multi-mission campaigns which reward overclocks & cosmetics), and extra difficulty options which push your skills to the limit (and beyond, if you want to use difficulty mods).

Each class has three primary weapons, three secondary weapons, and three grenade options as of the April 28th, 2022 patch, and now the game has DLSS / FSR compatibility as well, meaning higher framerates and sharper images than the previous TAA implementation allowed for. Did I mention you can customize your pickaxe? or your little robot friend that follows you around in 'solo' missions? No? Because there's even more out there to mess around with, and I haven't even gotten to talking about all the depth of buildcrafting possible with the various weapon mods and how they interact with one another.

Deep Rock is, to me, the perfect game to play when I just want something to do, with whatever kind of stakes I feel I need at the time, and it asks only as much as I want to give it of me. I can sweat in an EDD with pubbies or solo and chill at hazard 2, where death is such a far-flung possibility that falling off a ledge is more lethal.

The game world is positively dripping with character, and every time my dorf waltzes up to the bar and rings the bell for the robotic bartender, I snicker a little inside at the absurdity of it, while loving the simple joy of this alternate space. The environment is so consistent within itself, between the post-industrial horror of a space station mining sentient life from a dangerous planetoid, to the bored-yet-frustrated handler who speaks to you throughout your missions, and back to the station where your dwarves relax in the interminable time between drops, everything works together and just feels like it could be real, despite the ridiculous nature of it.

Coffee Stain has a reputation for good coop games, and if you haven't played Deep Rock yet, you owe it to yourself to hop on with a few friends (or alone, and join some public games!) and let the caves of hoxxes guide you to a memorable experience.

Rock and Stone!

This game has a limited target audience. If you like wave-based, horde-mode, progression-backed shooters, then I would say this is one of, if not *the* best form of that. If, on the other hand, you're tired of zombies, or wave-based shooting, or don't want to feel tied to a progression system, well probably give this a pass.

The game is very much about playing the same basic 'shoot zombies, earn money to shoot zombies better' loop, and this happens in every round of every game you play. If that ain't it for ya, look elsewhere. That said, the gunplay feels fantastic, animations are excellent and still fun to watch the thousandth time you see them, and there's enough depth to the class selection that you can undoubtedly find a niche for yourself while playing.

I continue to play KF2 not because it has done any sort of massive overhaul or anything, but because it's an excellent arcade shooter that lets me focus on the guns, and the act of shooting at stuff, in a way that modern shooters tend to place movement penalties on. Sitting back and poppin' some heads for a few hours is great fun, partially because it feels good to do so, but also partially because I can interact with people or listen to videos over top of without losing much.