Recent reviews by The Dashing Hooligan

the core concept is good fun. early game is wicked but once you breach the refund threshold of ~2hrs into a campaign, it starts throwing all sorts of gotchas at you, and if you roll badly you can literally do nothign to stop them. we've not lost our campaign but we've had lots of frustrating things occur; seeing what's ahead, we've just stopped playing.

they fixed the region lock issues but now the balance team has mental issues

A super fun co-op experience, even 3 days into early access. Lots of tension and chaos, with plenty of talking over one another.

The only flaw it has is a great one to have in EA: we love everything there is, but want more depth to the existing systems (more mission types, different structures, more enemy fighters, new ship systems, A less numbers-focused gene tree)

Reminds me of being in early access for DRG. Fellow dwarves looking to support another great 4-player co-op game should drop some gold on this!

they made JSR even better.

Changed from negative to positive!
As the review previously mentioned, it holds true:
NEVER buy a FatShark game until 6 months (or in this case, a full year) has elapsed.

As was expected. A year elapsed, and fatshark delivered. Darktide delivers incredible depth in its' weapons, classes, builds, even difficulty. Those experienced with horde shooters will have a lot to look forward to, if they can handle the moderate-length trudge through the low levels, but it's worth the wait.

Overall, fatshark's patches for darktide have hit more than they miss (unlike Overkill's). Perhaps play this while you wait for them to fix Payday 3?

This game is, to older RPG fans, what Undertale is to impressionable teenagers. I mean this in the best way possible.

If you ever wanted to see just how good the kool aid is, play this.

Fun game, but the asking price to have a full party is ridiculous considering the relatively limited content and how the game is significantly worse if you can't round up four players.

The game's aesthetic looks great, the gunplay is super satisfying, too. The core issue my playgroup had is what could be a really fun horde shooter is crushed beneath poor gameplay design choices.

The game tells you functionally nothing, besides your next objective. It's not the worst, by the end of a couple missions gone awry we understood it.

The maps are initially fun to clear out, but shooting quickly becomes a chore as the enemies functionally don't vary, are relentless in their spawning, and kill you almost instantly. Spawns on your head are possible from enemy spawn points that can't be closed in any regard.

There's zero safety in areas you clear out - We made it most of our way through a map and then I died, but when I entered the respawn room, enemies had crowded the other side of the door - I couldn't shoot through it, and it would only remain open if I was adjacent to it, eventually all our team got stuck in there and died.

Even if you manage to respawn, solo respawns must either hail mary through the entire map without a team, or wait for someone else to die to regroup with. Map resources are limited but aliens are not - If ammo has scarcely spawned, good luck meeting your team again!

With a few tweaks to the pacing and spawning of enemies and a better introduction, this game would be leaps and bounds ahead! Slap some meta progression in there and our playgroup would have been sold.

e

prepare for a miserable free to play progression model and terrible feeling gunplay. the few interesting things this game brings to the table are massively overshadowed by the vast number of things it gets wrong.

the progression utilises several systems to make sure you don't enjoy it, bear in mind these are ALL active:
- resources are loot box based, these loot boxes obtained when you survive the round with a special item
- crafting new things is locked behind 'crafting level' requirements...
- ... which is based upon number of things you've crafted
- a timer befitting a mobile game provides you 'energy' every minute, which need to craft.
- 'energy' has a maximum value, which starts at 100 + your player level.
- many crafting recipes require more than 100 energy. increasing the time & level requirements appropriately.
- in case you were somehow planning to grind and rush it. you can't craft multiple items at once til' later
- after grinding the resources, waiting for the energy, crafting all the things you didn't want and waiting for them to finish in sequence, you may now craft your item.

...it will only take a few hours. Feel free to 'rush' this for just a bit of currency :)