Recent reviews by CHENɠ

Roughly speaking, Helldivers 2 primarily aims to bring players together as a team to complete certain missions (separated into main missions and side missions) in combination with sci-fi elements within a certain time limit (extraction only available after completing the main missions).

It is also worth mentioning at this point that this game can also be played alone, but due to the given game factors (such as the combination between difficulty level and reward, taking into account the aforementioned time limit of the respective missions), you will realize that it will be very difficult to progress in the game if you are a solo player.

---

If you, reader, cannot see yourself playing this game until this point, especially considering the previously described aspects of the game, I would therefore not recommend you to buy the game.

In the opposite case, please read on. For my part, I will try to give you a better overview of what you (potentially) can expect after purchasing the game.

---

In terms of content, the game can be explained simply as follows:

You are a Helldiver (almost like a Stormtrooper from Star Wars) who, ideally with other Helldivers, is sent to certain planets to bring (back) order by eliminating the enemies located on these planets and completing specific missions.

You are equipped accordingly (outfit, weapons, grenades, etc.) and supported by your accompanying battleship from above. Equipment and reinforcements can be unlocked via progression (through currencies, medals, samples). There is also "premium content" for outfits, weapons and player customization options such as card background or titles which can be obtained by exchanging money, but these do not necessarily have to be unlocked.

The missions can vary in regards to the planets, their weather conditions and their level of difficulty. To unlock further planets or difficulty levels, certain requirements must be met in order to be able to play them. Additionally, the missions (ideally both: main missions and side missions) must be completed in a given time. The faster, the better (more rewards). After unlocking the planets or difficulty levels, you are always flexible and can adjust them as desired before the actual game starts.

About the current state of the game, well... let's say Helldivers 2 is currently in a sensitive spot.

On the one hand, the game brings something that has been missing for some time, at least from my point of view: a tactical co-op with a captivating sci-fi environment and an interesting progression system.

On the other hand, the game experience of exactly this co-op is plagued by matchmaking problems, errors and bugs.

Yes, the game has potential, it's also fun when it works smoothly, but it can't be that they advertise this game as a co-op game and the most important feature for it, the matchmaking, doesn't work properly.

On release day, you could only play the game alone for the first few hours. The developers then responded with an initial update, which improved the matchmaking so that you could at least play with someone. However, errors such as "Failed to join lobby", "Failed due to network connections" or similar were not fixed, but their frequency was only reduced. One day after the release, the next update followed, which, according to the developers, will not solve the matchmaking problems mentioned earlier, but should reduce them even further.

Today, the first Sunday after the release, with an increased number of players just via Steam from approx. 60,000 to approx. 120,000, the servers are so busy that certain content such as outfits, battleship supports, etc. are partially loaded or even not loaded at all. If you're lucky enough to be able to connect to the server successfully, you have to mess then around and find a lobby where you don't get an error message or get kicked out. And that's not enough, no, there are also bugs such as crashing under certain circumstances (e.g. when changing key bindings that you have actually already changed, but have been changed without manual intervention and you want to change them back to the desired key assignment and the game crashes when you try to do so).

I've currently played for 14 hours, but I have to say that many of those hours were spent on such unnecessary things.

---

The release price can be accepted after the currently pending improvements, especially because the game is already running smoothly apart from the problems mentioned (no microstutters, no spontaneous FPS drops or similar) and because of the fact that the developers are currently engaged to fix these issues, but it is definitely not mandatory. You can also wait for the game to be discounted.

In my opinion, Fort Solis is a psychological thriller, whereby the climax is approached slowly. This slow approach is due on the one hand to the strict walking and on the other to the interaction with certain objects (e-mails, audio and video recordings, etc.). In other words, the events relating to Fort Solis and its crew are explored at a walking pace.

---

If you don't like this type of exploration, you can stop reading this review at this point and not consider this game for purchase.

---

The atmosphere and the environment can seem creepy in certain situations, but nothing more. The characters (especially the playable ones) definitely seem realistic and the interactions between the characters can sometimes be funny even in these circumstances. However, there are moments where the verbal exchanges don't necessarily come in handy because you're focused on something else at that time, but that was personally fine for me.

What I didn't like at all were the current performance problems: visual artifacts, spontaneous FPS drops, random stuttering and the like. These problems drastically affect how the game is perceived, especially because everything is explored slowly. Due to the fact that certain Unreal Engine games are known to come with such problems, I also tried certain fixes that didn't help at all with this game. Therefore, I would like to point out that you should not waste time with such things. It's up to the developers to fix it!

I think it's good that the developers have included a simple photo mode or Steam achievements in the game, for example, but they should have given priority to optimizing the game, even if the development team behind the game is not that big.

For those who want to know a little more about the photo mode and the achievements mentioned, I would like to provide a quick overview:

Photomode:

• simple/intuitive for both beginners and experienced players
  
• you can take artistic pictures if you have ideas
  
• you are somewhat limited by the locations/characters (not many picture variations possible)
  
• in comparison to other games, the quality of the pictures taken with F12 is really bad, so I recommend activating uncompressed screenshots in the Steam settings before taking screenshots

Achievements:

• the largest part can already be covered by simply playing the game
  
• to reach 100%, you have to be a little careful when investigating, as you may overlook certain items (no manual level selections, only fixed checkpoints)

---

Nevertheless, I only recommend the game if you can fully relate to the style of play explained above and if the current performance issues have been resolved. Given the shortness of the game, I would also recommend buying it at a corresponding discount.

At the beginning you get the feeling that the game is weird. You don't quite understand what's going on and some of the things that happen during the game can seem strange. But once you get into the universe of this game, you're curious and excited to see what happens next.

I was so blown away by this game that when I finished it became one of my favorite games I've ever played.

By the way, for the creative ones, this game also features a photo mode, which allows you to get creative and capture beautiful scenes, locations, and more.

---

Nonetheless, it's that time again where the Ultimate Edition of this game is back on sale. For 9.99 or less I personally think you can't go wrong, especially if you know Remedy and their game universe.

---

PS: You may experience a black screen (menu still available) while playing regardless of the DirectX version selected or settings made. This occurs sporadically and looks like someone is injecting black paint into your monitor. To my knowledge there is no solution from the developers (yet).

If you are also experiencing this problem, it is not because of your PC. After quitting and restarting the game, this problem should be fixed (eventually for the time being).

Please note that it can happen that the described error condition occurs again afterwards.
In such a case, you will have to quit the game again and restart it.

As mentioned earlier, this issue occurs sporadically, which means that if you are lucky enough you might not experience this kind of issue during your gaming session at all, but in the worst case it might occur several times while you are playing. So it can go either way.

What you can expect while playing this game:

• to be in a short story with a deep message
  
• to interact in certain ways while the story is being illustrated or described
  
• to perhaps enjoy the soundtrack (I've personally enjoyed it)
  
• to potentially think about certain things you've done/you haven't done (yet) in your life

---

To be honest I would be happy if everybody would play this game but I am pretty sure not everybody would try to enjoy and understand the moral from the story.

For those who are open-minded, you need to invest just one hour of your life to complete the game and most importantly you are spending one hour from your life to eventually get another view regarding your lifestyle.

This game can be played as a break, if you feel the need for a game containing logic operations during the day.

---

From a personal point of view, I found it to be suitable for the aforementioned needs.

Extraction... a co-op game that had/has real potential, but had/has the misfortune of being run by Ubisoft...

As a quick side note to better understand my review, the origin of this game was an event, called Outbreak, in Rainbow Six Siege. This event received a lot of positive feedback, which made Ubisoft decide to develop a full game around it (despite community criticism that this would be more fitting as a mode in Rainbow Six Siege). This marketing strategy, which was not well thought out, has therefore already turned away many players before the initial release.

Accordingly, I was also skeptical at first. At some point I decided to buy this game. A co-op game with the Rainbow Six Siege characters fighting an alien threat tactically should be fun, especially if you have the people to enjoy it.

So I got to the point where I played this game before the Steam release and admittedly had so much fun with it that I almost reached 600 hours of playtime on Ubisoft's launcher.

---

To conclude, if you are into co-op games and have at least one friend, then I can recommend this game with the current Steam release price tag (10 bucks). It is really important to be aware that there is no further work on this game (developments on the part of Ubisoft have been stopped according to a statement from a Ubisoft worker via Discord) and thus money investments (e.g. for outfits, weapon skins or similar) should be well considered.

After finishing the game, I can say on one hand that it was really a great experience to play the game on PC. On the other hand, this experience could have been much better if the game would have run smoothly (above recommended requirements). The story, the scenes, the conversations, the ambience, even the interactions all go in the direction of a masterpiece .

And it's exactly this masterpiece that is significantly hurt by technical issues : occasional stutters, spontaneous and inexplicable FPS drops, visual artifacts... all this although some things have been improved after the last update (May 25, 2023).

Please don't get me wrong, the game has become definitely more pleasurable. Yet I think a game like this should run without such annoyances.

---

Since for me this game has become one of my favorites, I will recommend it accordingly.

Still, I think it wouldn't be wrong to be patient a bit longer to hopefully get a gaming experience from the developers that matches this masterpiece.

I also hope that Naughty Dog won't make the same mistakes with possible further PC ports.

To be honest, Returnal is perhaps not the best PC port at the moment. As some people have already pointed out, there are definitely some issues that should be fixed via update, e.g. blackscreen after starting a new coop cycle (after dying), improvements in coop connectivity or microstutters.

For me personally (PC specs are above the recommended requirements), the stutters are actually in the micro range and don't pop up regularly during gameplay. That's why I can't understand most of the comments and have to say that many negative reviews are over exaggerated. There have been significantly worse releases recently, e.g. The Callisto Protocol, Forspoken, etc.

Apart from the minor technical issues, which the developers will surely fix with the upcoming patches, the game is a real eye-catcher. Graphically, there are significant improvements compared to the PS5 version.

The fact that you can play with mouse and keyboard gives the player a different feeling (personal view after several sessions on PS5): better flexibility and handling possibilities, which of course take some time to get used to when switching from PS5 to PC.

Co-op sessions are also possible (either with randoms or with Steam friends), so you don't have to fight through the game alone. That makes it all the more interesting, of course.

Nevertheless, this game should get much more attention in my opinion.
An absolute recommendation from my side!

Short version:
...
Don't buy this game until it's not confirmed that it is REALLY playable!!!
In its current state it is not even close, trust me!
And if you still don't want to trust me, I recommend you to go on the Propnight Discord Server and look for the chat from the section called "#feedback".
...

Edit:
- There are still plenty of already known and older bugs which still have been not fixed to date!
- The game is still stuttering and has fps drops (even with different settings) since the release of this game tbh!
- FNTASTIC said you will get 1.500 Propcoins (in-game currency) for free by just joining while the free weekend event is active. No propcoins to date!
- In-game unlocked special skins for some killer characters (in my case for "Granny" and "Akasha") got locked by just switching menus in the "new" UI which forces you to unlock those skins by buying them with 1.000 Propcoins each again!
- Untrustworthy and toxic staff members (for example a guy called [FN]Levitate) who are abusing their roles as a staff member to mute/ban you just for addressing certain issues which after all leads you to his response that the ban is justified by just being sarcastic while commenting in Discord channels
- and so on...

From my personal view, this company should go bankrupt and I hope that one day this will become true!

So obviously, no recommendation for this game!

Please don't support anything around FNTASTIC (especially the maybe upcoming "The Day Before") you will regret your invested time for it, trust me!

I gave this game several chances and I must say that I agree with the majority. The game ruins all fun of gaming and makes no sense. Every map (multiplayer) is perfect for camping, head glitches, etc. No matter if you aim well, move well, or you are good, you just don't feel rewarded for it. On the other hand, if you camp in a corner the entire time during a game, you'll get better games. And that just doesn't fit together. You just have to look in every corner to see if someone is hiding, lying on the ground or whatever, and even when you do spot people out like that, the game gives you all kinds of pains by not registering the hits correctly or just not doing as much damage.

If you weren't toxic, you will be when you play, it's that simple.

However, you have to let Activision and their developers stand out from the crowd. The tactics to make you like the game somehow succeed: good rounds every now and then, free gifts, good looking skins, etc. Especially after you put money into it, you have significantly more better rounds than usual, even though you play exactly the same way as usual. They're just trying to talk you into it, hoping you'll invest more money...

Weirdly enough, they are not able to focus on technical issues like to not get kicked out after every/every other round (most of time because of "datacenter connection timeout"). This happens since this game has been launched and there is still no proper fix for this. However, they are just prioritizing the stuff where they can grab your cash: for example the so called BLACKCELL DLCs.

If you don't buy at least the battle pass or some bundles for the pro tuned weapons, you already have a disadvantage and the game sucks even more. Everybody you will encounter uses those type of weapons, even the campers.

Well, apart from the multiplayer part, the campaign was entertaining from a personal point of view. Other positive exceptions are co-op missions, but that's only if people actually make the effort to play those missions as they are intended. I didn't even try Warzone and DMZ because they were already criticized anyway.

---

That said, if you would like to play the campaign after COD MW 2019 or you have a friend and you would like to play the co-op/raid missions together then the best thing would be to wait for a proper sale.