Recent reviews by Ehtacs

Excellent shooter, especially F2P. Feels full-featured, though there are a lot of customization things to unlock and it's all RNG. Games are smooth, and teams seem wonderful so far. Haven't played ranked so that may all change. Missions are varied, and 10+ game modes keep things interesting. It feels like a Battlefield level of gameplay/accuracy, with the combat style of Division though not based on level and not quite as spongy. No airsoft parts, an lots of milsim loadouts. Havent seen a Santa or Beyonce so that's good!

Graphics are fantastic. Each operator has a few guns, and each gun can have different parts (optics are selectable, other accessories are more like skins but change skin to skin). Camos look good. Graphics and animations are fantastic.

Pings have been great as far as I can tell. I do not use in-game voice so that could be a mess, but the ping system, emotes, and command wheel are more than enough to effectively communicate as a team.

Progress slows dramatically after first few hours. Without paying for Premium ($$$) you advance at about 25% the pace of the first few hours. Fortunately, all the in-game items are too expensive, and the RNG delivers too much interesting content, to want to throw real money at the title. Well worth the free experience for sure! Especially with friends.

Fantastic game for 20-40 hours of play until the loop starts circling back on itself. Does a good job satisfying the lizard brain reward centers while also allowing for some strategy, though the RNG can be a bit brutal at times. Most of the characters are fun, and the two bad ones have pretty useless perks that aren't worth unlocking anyways.

Love:
Can use traits from multiple characters after you win with them
Variety of stuff, without too much stuff
Transmorg everything

Would love to see:
Deck building using coins
Coins for skipping items
Additional item levels (currently have theoretical level cap based on the few power items)
Buffs to eliminate fluff, and something to avoid spikes

IMO CarX is the gift that keeps on giving so I bought this DLC entirely to support the developers. As far as I can tell, there's nothing in this DLC that isn't included in the base game - the six new cars appear to have dropped in the main game for everyone with update 1.20.

Owners of this DLC will have three of the original cars (S15/RX7/S18), upgraded, tuned (C3/C4/C5 respectively), and smothered in decals ready to grab from the car dealer without the need to plunk down (increasingly available) credits. While I'm not much of a fan of drifting, I like what they put together here. I'm partial to cars with grip and fast corners, so I'm happy to have some to reference for the total opposite. The RX7 has been fun for the C4 Drift United... My original drift build/tune was traaaaaaaash.

Fun game with non-linear stories and infinite gameplay. Lots of interesting details and nuances. 4 years of strong support from the developers polished it into once of the best titles of all time as far as I'm concerned. It launched in a good state, and they were able to refine even more.

I hope to see mods as part of the SoD3 roadmap. As a single-player and co-op game, a strong modding community and workshop support is the only thing missing from this title. The Nexus has a good start, but mods make games like SoD and Valheim even more replayable.

2 years later and you still can't hide or disable notes/toasts on the screen. Trying to get out of a truck while it's barely moving and you get a note for 10 seconds that says you cant do it. Tap the key a few times and they queue for 50 seconds of on-screen reminders. Still not really sure the developers have played their game.

Lots of new DLC, but it seems very little enhancement from launch.

Hard to recommend in its current state, though this is another instance where I wish Steam had a neutral "meh" feedback.

While I don't really need progression per se, getting out of the early game is very slow. This is not a game I would put 50-100 hours into which seems to be the current requirement for getting into the middle and late game vehicles and customization. I was frustrated with a little wagon that couldn't drive a 10 degree grade in grass to get from one highway to another. I was really hoping I could get to the SUV inside the refund window but I would need like 50 more refund windows to get those points. Part of me wishes these were simply all unlocked at the beginning, and were balanced with stats instead of points. Bigger trucks may be more sensitive to wind, armor could slow you down, etc. Also the A-pillars in the starting sedan are HUGE and block anything you're not driving straight into. You also pretty much always have to stay on the road.

One way you get points is through photography, and, for some reason, it's capped at 25 photos per game. You better make them count, but also you don't know what's worth anything until you risk the film. Would be much better if you could either refresh your file, or get feedback for what you're seeing before you snap the shot. I imagine this gets easier as you learn the game more and start to get familiar with the scenarios, but alas that is not in the cards for early game (hint hint hint). To that end, while the developers write dismissively about other games using procedural events instead of real weather data, it's worth noting that there are currently 20-40 scenarios that seemingly play out the same way when you encounter those seeds again. It's neat that it's real weather data, but way less neat that it's repeated.

I like what they've tried to create, but the environment appears very dated, even maxed out on my 4090. The car interiors are pretty awful and the UI is clunky. Attempting to rebind the quick action wheel would kill the UI until I alt-f4 the whole game.

I'm only an hour into Storm Chasers and it's way more fun across the board, albeit with a smaller map. Hopefully Outbreak can one day get everything squared away.

Update: Game has been tweaked too much and everything is nerfed. It went from a fun bug shooter to just tedious. Pretty much all the DLCs are the base guns in different colors with useless changes.

Stop making guns worse. Stop making it less fun. If it's too easy, add MORE enemies. Stop making them tankier.

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Update: It look a lot of pressure from the community, but Sony has reversed the requirement to link to PSN. Back to being an all time great!

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I don't have a PlayStation. I don't want a PlayStation account. Dumb to break the game months after release over something so stupid.

I can't tell if they're trying to be Fortnite, Rainbow 6: Siege, or For Honor. It's sorta the worst elements of all three, now. No idea what they're trying to make?

11/11/2023 -

DLCs are not optional downloads. Uninstalled MW2 because I don't have any interest in MW3 and now they're the same garbage app.

Everything I wanted it to be and more. Have hundreds of hours between Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen and I don't miss either game when I'm in Starfield. Atmospheric flight or a ground vehicle would make exploring more fun but I don't miss it! All the flight I want is in the game and you can skip a lot of the fast travelling.

Starfield is excellent out of the gate. It keeps getting better as you figure things out and unlock more of the game with skills, research, relationships, and credits.

My handful of criticisms are limited to gameplay decisions, subjective, and able to be fixed with the console. Outpost storage is lame and needed significant boost - now they're 10x bigger (but I still need multiple). Enemies were too spongy - now they're not. Stealing and selling ships was worth less than the beer on them until I changed the ship registration cost. Basically: lots of flexibility here!

Runs great on my box at 4k 60fps. Load screens are quick on my NVMe.

Didn't have high expectations. Somehow played this more than all my other 2023 AAA titles combined.