Análises recentes de Pan

Overwatch switching to the 5v5 format and team fights being heavily reliant on tanks is awful. Tank feels bad to play, they're the main focus for all the crowd control abilities. It's the most important role, and they can't play the game half the time. Antied, slept, stunned, booped, hindered, hacked. You want to play your favourite hero but there's always several heroes that counter yours, so if you don't switch heroes you're putting your team at a disadvantage. Oh and for some reason Kiriko, Illari and Baptiste are stronger than most DPS heroes.

Blizzard is currently looking for ways to make tank more tankier than it currently is. Tanks currently have ~600 hp (a portion of that being armour), 25% less damage taken from critical hits, stronger life regeneration, knockback resistance, and some way to defend themselves via barriers and damage reduction. There are other avenues they can go to balance the game, but instead they want to make tanks these huge, massive, colossal, mega, ultra, giant, indestructible raid bosses.

The promising PvE was scrapped in favour of PvP, which was the reason for the "2" in Overwatch 2. Three or so years of development for what looked like an amazing PvE experience gone to waste. However, they tried pushing a shallow version of PvE which failed spectacularly, so they scrapped it. It failed because they decided to add a $5 price tag, not for PvE as a whole, but for each mission, and a mission lasts around 15 minutes. $20 for an hour of gameplay, no talant tree, no replayability.

Skins went from earnable to only purchasable. Instead of being able to earn almost every skin, you now only earn one per season. Those legendary skins you could earn in Overwatch 1 now have a $19 price tag. If you watch any seasonal reveal video, more than half of the content they reveal are all about the amazing, beautiful, stunning, gorgeous, breathtaking skins you can buy, except for the current season where 90% of them are just recolours of older skins.

They removed the levelling system, then brought it back in another form. They removed the "on fire" feature, then brought it back. They removed a bunch of things which are slowly creeping their way back into the game, and sometimes they'll market it as a brand new feature.

I have no doubt that someday, eventually, sooner or later, over time, ultimately, in the end, at long last, and in due time, they will bring back the second tank role. And end-of-match cards. And level borders.

The only thing I'm interested in is the hero ban system preview coming in season 12, having the ability to prevent problematic heroes from being playable might be a partial saving grace.

Edit: https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/news/patch-notes/live/2024/07/ ohhh nooo

Dungeon Defenders Awakened is a more casual approach to the series. This review will be specifically catered to hardcore DD nerds, so I'm just going to be making comparisons to DD1.

• Progression is less grindy with gear being more focused for specific attributes, such as Weapons and Pets for Hero-specific stats, Body Armour for Tower, and Accessories for both.
  
  
• Difficulty is exactly what you get. In DD1, Nightmare difficulty just meant you get all the special mob spawns, but the actual health and damage values varied on the map you played which was confusing (and rightfully frustrating) for most players. In DDA, it's nothing like that, which is good.
  
  
• Speaking of difficulty, there's an additional difficulty (Massacre) which is one up from Nightmare difficulty, and an optional map toggle "Rift mode" which alters mobs in a new and challenging way. Rift mode also enables Rift-themed items to drop which can impact gameplay in an interesting way, as well as changing what element-type the tower can deal. Mix Mode was also moved into its own category. Hardcore remains.
  
  
• There's significantly less content, but the maps and features are more impactful. Can't say the same for challenges, though. I'm hoping we get more of everything in future updates at a faster pace.
  
  
• Then there's a bunch of small quality of life changes that make the game a little more enjoyable to play, such as automatically receiving build mana instead of running around the map for chests, levelling up to 6 heroes at a time, and autoloot with filters. However, some quality of life features present in DD1 does not exist in DDA, such as cycling through stacked towers to upgrade/repair, cannot customise hotkeys for towers and abilities for specific characters, no birds-eye view for placing towers, cannot drop items on the ground, no trading, mini map doesn't show tower life or which tower is being attacked. Surely most of these things will make their way into the game eventually.
  
  
• Playing with other players seriously ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sucks, loading times can take an insane amount of time (upwards of like 60 seconds or Alt+F4), and depending on latency you'll experience desync with players and enemies in strange ways with incorrect UI values. It's a bad experience all around in my opinion, and there's a dumb achievement to complete every map with four active players that I don't think I'll ever get. This absolutely needs to be fixed. I swear it wasn't this bad in the beta three years ago.

Overall, the game is in an okay state with some promising future updates, despite Chromatic Games taking almost three years to include most of the important features they promised before launch on their Kickstarter. Ever since CG had their studio restructured there seems to be a gear shift in content production, hell even their older titles are getting some new content.

Skinwalker Hunt is a gloomy, semi-open world FPS with a strong focus on exploration and atmosphere. The goal is simple: hunt down and kill the Skinwalker.

You spawn with a hunting rifle, a melee weapon, a map and some supplies, and although map geometry is always the same, your spawn point, NPCs, interactables and pickups are randomised. During your journey you will be met with deadly wildlife, phantasms, several best friends, and the most annoying enemy in the game: Worshippers. Exploration, traversing the map, strategy and utilising resources is key in order to take down the Skinwalker. The graphics are mediocre, but the audio is pleasant.

Several things I enjoyed was the pace. It's not too slow, it's not too fast. At no point did my exploration and setting up totems feel like a total drag. There's also some strategy to placing totems/traps which tickled my brain for the time of exploration. I also enjoyed the atmosphere and the sounds that any living thing makes in the distance, and not only can you feel how far away something is, but also the direction. I will say, though, that there are two things you can hear that doesn't actually exist, and I'm not sure why that occurs: one sound being some sort of Primate, and the other sounding like a comical Chris O'Neal shriek.

Things I didn't like were mainly the enemies. Not only are they ♥♥♥♥♥ up on adderall, but there are also a limited variety. Most enemies will be wandering around you, and if you make too much noise or get too close, they will notice and charge directly at you faster than Usain Bolt. You don't even need to steady your aim or predict their movement, it's all reactional. I really hope this gets addressed. I would like to see more enemy behaviour like the Worshipper, they move slightly slower than your sprint speed, they have unpredictable leaping, and they don't run directly at you for an easy shot.

Stuff I would like to see in the future is weapon variety, and so much so that not every weapon can spawn within the same area. A map with a day/night cycle, and/or dark areas (caves, forests) where the head lamp is necessary. Speaking of, an improvement to the head lamp would be nice, such as batteries, reveal invisible enemies, and more stealth while it's turned off. I'd like to see the difficulty levels get a revamp over the simple damage bonus for enemies. Perhaps new/additional objectives?

I'm a huge fan of Witch Hunt, and an even bigger fan of Skinwalker Hunt. Excited to see where this game will go and can't wait for the full version. Great concept, immersed, fun. I recommend playing this game in a dimly lit room with your audio on high for the best immersion.

Great concept, challenging, and fun. Speed Swing is a physics game where you use your momentum to swing from one object to another with a grappling hook to reach the goal. Movement is minimal as your air control is dependant on the angle of your swings, there is no air strafing or any form of air control with the WASD keys. There are 20 levels that increase in difficulty with complex swinging requirements and online leaderboards for the fastest level clear. Graphically the game isn't appealing and the menu can do with updated graphics and animations.

I would like to see a game like this in the future adopt certain elements such as surfing off ramps and air strafing similar to Source Engine.

Pros:
1. Amazing open world experience, alone (to a degree) or with friends.
2. Huge areas to explore, with many planets to visit, meaning lots and lots of quests and content.
3. Large variety of weapons and armour to use.
4. Quality of the game as a whole is polished from top to bottom.

Cons:
1. No in-game tutorials or guides, you're basically thrown into the game without an idea of what to do next.
2. Unbalanced PvP, disliked by many (however, Gambit is fun af). No guarantee you'll find a server near your area either.
3. Certain quests (mostly Exotic) may require PvP tasks.
4. No matchmaking for end game content.
5. No in-game chat by default (unless you enable local chat every time you join a server, which no one does.)

Can be a near perfect game if these issues didn't exist. I gave this game a negative result initially, but in retrospect didn't think the downsides justified the recommendation. It takes quite a while to reach end game anyway. Unfortunately, you can't make friends in-game without the ability of talking to them first. The lack of chat and commands make the multiplayer experience mute.

2024 Edit: Last time I played they cut some exploreable areas out of the game, the new content to explore is behind a paywall, some weapons I enjoyed using have (or had? I don't even know anymore) a power cap so they're unusable, and a lack of effort in newer content from what I've seen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtuFEGKkq5U

If you and your friends are looking for a Hack & Slash/Tower Defense game that's fun, full of content, diverse, the ability to host your own server, local multiplayer, doesn't have towers that feel like ass, good graphics, loads of large maps, DLC that doesn't cost $20+ for a single hero, decent end-game, awesome boss fights, barely any bugs, doesn't feel like a mobile game, and isn't a cash grab... I recommend playing Dungeon Defenders 1 before this.

It's a sequel riddled with micro-transactions and bugs the developers wont bother fixing. Boring end-game, can't unlock DLC heroes on the get-go without having to grind for the medallions to unlock them, but they also give you the option to spend money to unlock these DLC heroes. How much? Too much. I've been playing this game on and off since 2014, and there's not a whole lot that's been changed or updated since. It honestly still feels like an early access game.

Enemies defy the rules of Tower Defense.
I can't tell you how many times I lost a game because a Lady Orc decides to walk around or OVER my defenses. You will always get ♥♥♥♥♥♥ in the ass by these lesbian dildo-wielding Orcs if you don't place your towers in very specific ways. You also can't place towers directly behind a crystal because a jevelin thrower can penetrate every tower, which will allow them to damage your crystal.

Towers suck ass.
They begin incredibly slow and short ranged. Your towers feel like they're struggling to take stuff out, and it will continue to be this way until you start your Chaos Trials, which is a huge grind. During Chaos Trials, you are awarded shards for every map completion, and shards power up your heroes and towers. Every 10 games, you'll find MAYBE 2 shards out of 20 that are actually useful. The other 18 shards will remain in your inventory taking up space. Each game can take around 15 - 20 minutes to complete. Your average hero will have the ability to build 4 towers. Yeah, 4. As opposed to Dungeon Defender 1's 5.

The engine is inferior to its predecessor.
In Dungeon Defenders 1, there's a tower the Squire can build called the Cannonball Tower. This tower was amazing because it fired cannonballs that bounced and rolled off every surface. When it makes contact with an enemy, it will knock them back and bounce away in a random direction. Very cool interaction. In Dungeon Defenders 2, the squire has a Cannonball Tower that doesn't shoot actual rolling cannonballs. Instead, it fires a "cannonball" that deals physical damage to one enemy. But, there's a shard you can equip that allows your Cannonball Tower to sometimes fire a real cannonball. You'd think it will act exactly like the Cannonball Tower from Dungeon Defenders 1. Nope. This little cannonball rolls straight. Straight through enemies. Straight up hills. Straight up inclines. Straight. Up. Walls. There's no physics applied to the cannonball. Then you realise there's pretty much no physical interactions in this game. Feels static.

A lot of things about this game is disappointing. And yet somehow, these guys crafted Dungeon Defenders 1. It's really baffling.

I can't think of a single good thing to say about this game. I remember enjoying the beta a lot where certain towers had synergy, like shocking (stunning) enemies by dealing lightning damage to drenched enemies, and shattering enemies by dealing physical damage to frozen enemies, but those interactions were removed when it left early access. I think you can still ignite enemies with oil, unsure.

Overwhelming amount of cheaters and exploiters, casual matchmaking is simply unplayable in most regions including Australia.

Competitive matchmaking was dead on arrival with its graphical restrictions, no incentives and bad ruleset.

Lack of community servers that run traditional TF2 settings. Also, most popular groups use "fake ping" to make it seem like their servers are based in your location when they're in fact not. Because of this, it makes it difficult to differentiate regional servers from the fakes.

TF2 receives three content updates a year with no gameplay, weapon, or class changes, just random maps and cosmetics picked from the workshop that wouldn't take no more than a day to compile.

The last major update was back in 2017, last gameplay update was 2018, and the bot problem has been around since late 2019, which is a tumour that continues to grow each day. This tumour is so big you can't even play this game anymore. The lack of support is disappointing and in Valve's eyes it's likely not worth the time and money to fix.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YVFHVKOUy0

[Reviewed a few hours after release, some things may have changed since then]


Even if you own the original game and every DLC, you still have to pay for Dungeon Defenders Eternity (which already has the DLC unlocked and usable whether you own all the DLC for the original or not.) I highly recommend NOT buying this game if you weren't deeply into the first Dungeon Defenders game.

Dungeon Defenders Eternity has a lot of new added content, but the game is in a pretty bad state. You can not start your own private sessions with friends or play solo, no splitscreen or local multiplayer, you have to create an account on PlayVerse, you need to stay online to play, downgraded UI, and lots of microtransactions.


Edit: Development for this game ended. Totally abandoned. No servers. This is a full priced unplayable game.


2024 Edit: I tried playing this game again a few years ago and it actually worked, it seems Trendy Entertainment added an offline mode some time after the end of development. Didn't put that much time in but did make it far, it was fun for what it was. The four abilities you can equip are nice but they are definitely over-tuned. I think the abilities I ended up leaning toward was 3x tower heal and something else. Tower Heal is basically the summoners minion heal ability but better and on multiple buttons.

I still recommend against this game, as the original game has more content, online functionality, and continues to get updates.

I think this game was meant to be one of the first cross-platform online multiplayer games that can be played on any system or device together, being PCs, consoles, and mobiles. I'm unsure why they discontinued a week later after all the time spent developing the game and service, maybe the technology wasn't ready yet, or they were biting more than they could chew. I'm sure there's an article somewhere about it. Could have been interesting but the issues on launch were too problematic.

If you want the traditional CoD Zombies experience, Black Ops 1, 2 and 3 are the games you want to play. You may not find the desired players (or players for that matter) with the in-game search function, so you can head over to this discussion to find people who are looking to play ideally in your area.

The biggest downside is the price of the game and DLC, so if you're a little sceptical I'd recommend waiting for it to go on sale.

No comment on multiplayer, but I assume there's only a few US servers left.