Recent reviews by Unpainted Marine

Gotta say lads, this is pretty great so far.

Overall, I would describe the game as immensely satisfying. Ultimately the game is trying to set you up to do and experience some cool ♥♥♥♥ and it succeeds. Everything you do feels like it has a satisfying amount of weight. you can parry or perfect dodge dangerous attacks that set you up for a critical hit which is immensely satisfying. Each big story beat has a huge impactful payoff.

The cutscenes are incredible quality.

The campaign takes the model of basically zero filler - focus on high quality. It's not an extremely long campaign by any stretch. But it is completely solid fun every mission from start to finish.

There are two other modes aside from the campaign. A co-op mission based mode and pvp matches.

The co op missions have you play out a different perspective on story beats that happen in the main story campaign. They have a lot of voice acting and feel very well tied into the campaign. The missions here are also more well suited to replay, which makes sense for the gamemode.

The PVP is about what you would expect if you have played the first game and finished the campaign of this one. I do feel like I miss the storm bolter and las cannon, but there are alternatives now.

There is a ton of voice acting and its all good.

They nailed the lore and feel of the game. The views during a mission are incredible. There's also an absurd number of enemies on screen at once somtimes and its awesome. Super impressed with that.

At the end of the day, this is basically a golden era oldschool shooter (but obviously with some modern tech). If you like that sort of thing, this is going to be a huge hit. I will say the levels are a bit on the linear side, but that's pretty common for this niche of game. And it handles it well and uses that to keep or adjust the pacing. There are still hidden nooks and areas.

I have very few complaints, but here they are:

I think the melta weapons should be a sustained beam attack and we should have a different weapon to fill the "turbo shotgun" role. Its a really fun weapon, but the way meltas have generally been portrayed was different till space marine and I like the beam thing more for them. Obviously this is a fairly minor complaint.

Leaving Aim Down Sights mode is annoying. If you want to play the heavy class, and especially with the heavy bolter, you *need* to use ADS otherwise the weapon isn't braced and you can't use its full rate of fire. However the game also keeps you on your toes and you have to quickly react to your surroundings. But you can't just hit shift and start sprinting, you cannot melee out of it, nor can you just hit space and dodge out of it. You are locked in till you take a heavy hit or you manually toggle ADS off.

sometimes I feel like I am pressing the parry or the dodge button appropriately but I still get clobbered. I assume its just that its not super clear exactly when and I am miss timing it as a result, but its a persistent enough issue that I feel like it bears mentioning. Maybe the hit stun is overtuned or something can cancel your dodges that shouldn't IDK, but it makes combat feel less fluid than it should.

My armor cosmetic loadout doesn't save. I can make whatever I want, but next time I boot up the game its back to ultramarine.

I don't mind that the levels are on the linear side, as I said before that's pretty reasonable for the type of game that this is and they handle it well. But I would have really liked to see maybe two levels that were expansive and felt a bit like some of those from Halo Combat Evolved with more open paths of attacking an area and nothing preventing you from retracing your steps. This is less a complaint and more a "what could have been"

Some of the invisible walls/map edges are kind of noticeable. Pretty minor complaint, but I think they could have chosen different assets to preserve suspension of disbelief better in a lot of areas. For one example they throw these large brambles around to stop you from going in that area, but you are a space marine that's kicking cement walls in and is borderline impervious to small arms fire. Some brambles should at most make you move a little slower. Very minor complaint

EDIT: Continue to love the game after much play. You can change the settings to make the ADS better - I have mine set to right click and hold (instead of toggle). My cosmetics are saving now, but I will say some of the cosmetics that really aught to be customizable are not. You should at least be able to wear individual parts.

EDIT: Their support took so long to not do anything that now steam doesn't want to refund me and I am just trying to get a human to look at it, I keep getting automated responses. I hate this. If a human looked at this for two seconds they could understand, but no, I am subjected to even more automated support hell. I continue to give steam money because they provide a good service. They are currently jeopardizing that relationship over a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ $5 game.

Game crashes on launch, currently support is shuffling me around several different emails. Everything about the support is extremely hostile, right down to the fact that they won't even reply to your email, they'll make an entirely separate one so its hard to keep track of the email chain.

I'm sick of modern support BS, I have zero patience for that anymore.

this is a great expansion. but it's not without flaws. as I see it there are 3 main issues with the DLC (and to some extent these apply to the main game too).

• the camera is really struggling to keep up, and frankly a lot of the time its failing. we have almost an identical camera going back to like demons souls now. but a lot of these new bosses do some crazy spinny flying stuff and throw magic/fire/lighting etc all over the place. I have no history of motion sickness from video games, but I was starting to feel it a couple times here. the camera also does not zoom out enough, and sometimes it fails to look on, doesn't angle up high enough, the list goes on. there's some serious unspoken development debt in the camera. it's not like its a bad camera design baseline, but compared to what it needs to be for this game and especially this dlc, it just isn't up to the task all the time. it's really hard to read when an enemy is attacking. not like in a fun the enemy is sneaky way, but in a wow the game failed to communicate way. there's some bosses that are way worse for this than others...
  
  
• the enemy tuning could be improved. even going in with really high health and heavy armor you just take absurd damage from regular attacks. if you invest heavily into health, you should be able to trade hits once in a while and not immediately need to chug estus because you are half dead after. there are no light attacks that chip you health. even the lightest smallest thing is going to chunk away a massive amount and enemies will spam them like crazy. I actually really like the fact that enemies keep the pressure on and don't just let you heal for free - but I don't like that those quick pressuring attacks deal like a third of your hp even with high vigor. I don't feel like I invested 60 points into vigor, I feel like I have 25 vigor. and the other half of this is the hit stun on some attacks being really strong. like I think it's good on big powerful attacks, but I feel like even with 80 poise which is a huge number of poise I still don't have enough because random stuff is staggering me at goofy times
  
• the connectivity issues for online play remain inexcusably bad. I didn't really expect this to be fixed here, but it's so problematic for online play that in just going to keep shouting into the void about it till something happens.

Now that is out of the way, here are the good parts.

the dlc has amazing art design.

the dlc is huge. it could be a whole game on its own.

the new weapons are awesome.

the characters and their interactions are interesting.

exploring is fun, and dungeons are great as we have come to expect from from.

the shadow of the erdtree scaling thing is working for me. it encourages exploration, and means you don't feel under or overlevelled. the one thing is just what I mentioned about damage being universally overturned. but that was getting to be an issue already in the base game and either way, I think of it as a separate concern from the shadow lands progression.

overall the expansion is truly epic. easily worth the money and more. not without flaws, but still an amazing experience. already looking forwards to playing through it again to make different voices etc.

non-spoiler tips for the dlc:

try picking up a good shield, and strategically slapping them with a guard counter. a lot of attacks that are obnoxious to dodge, especially with a group coming at you, just bounce off a good shield. guard counters also do a ton of stance damage so doing them say twice for example can really power through enemies that would otherwise be really difficult.

the bosses are clearly made with summons in mind. use them. it's not "easy mode" it's playing the game.

certain large enemies may stay locked on to you from very far away despite being too slow to immediately catch up. don't forget if you might be pursued...

some enemies that would otherwise be very difficult can be staggered by heavier attacks - like a jumping heavy from a greatsword.

PSN account requirement rescinded, bad review rescinded

Game is good.

One of my favorite games! Feels like a lovechild of slay the spire and world of Warcraft.

both a strength of the game and the biggest hurdle to overcome starting out is that this game has a heavy focus on meta progression. Playing one run unlocks a lot more cards, starting money, relics/equipment, and some very impactful percs/talents. This adds a lot of depth to the game. But it does make your first couple runs feel like a grind to unlock the meta progression before you can play the “real” game - you will be crushed eventually simply for not having enough percs unlocked to do enough damage/healing/block/status effects.

But if you do stick with it, it really doesn’t take long at all to get past that and if you like the general deckbuilder concept, it is super worth it. There’s a lot of depth, and you can really choose where you want to build your deck into as opposed to other deck builders where you kind of just have to roll with the luck of the draw. There isn’t a right or wring way to approach that from a game design perspective, but I really like how this game does it.

There’s tons of interesting things to find and unlock within the world. Definitely check it out, at $20 its a steal.

Synopsis: I love the game but cannot recommend it in good conscience. Awesome core game though.

Darktide is a four player co-op where you and a team of three other expendable press ganged recruits are thrown a mission way above your paygrade. There will be hordes of zombies, elite enemies, monsters, not enough ammunition, and always someone sneaking up behind you. You will have to rely on your team - there will be challenges and predicaments you simply cannot solve on your own. Assuming you complete your mission, its then a mad dash to the extraction point before you are overrun by the horde.

The Good:
-That core concept outlined above is executed beautifully.
-The soundtrack is an absolute banger. Takes a lot of cues from mechanicus, which is a very good thing, and puts them into something that works for a chaotic FPS. Seriously, even if you don't get the game go look up the OST because it slaps
-The gameplay has enough depth to stay interesting, and there is a high skill ceiling
-Fantastic voicelines and wonderfully 40k details. For example the Ogryn doesn't know how to pull the pin out of a grenade, so he just lobs the entire box as hard as he can as a high damage *single target* attack

The Bad:
-The game launched in an unfinished state, most notably missing crafting. Which is a fairly necessary component to actually get good gear
-The more I play the more I notice some real bugs. Hit registration is iffy, enemies spawn in really bizarre ways, cannot rebind certain keybinds.
-There is a draconian RNG grind if you want really high end gear. The gear shop refreshes hourly (in real time) and has only a few slots which could have any weapon your class could use. The issue is you need RNG in your favor for good base stats for the weapon, good perks (for example bonus damage against certain target types), and good blessings (for example hit x enemies gain y health)
-There is a (cosmetic only) cash shop despite being a normal full price game
-If you want to make a bug report etc the main way I have found is to open the launcher, click on the official discord (there's no "help" in the launcher afaik) and then try to click on their bug report channel which are a fakeout that sends you to a third place where you have to make an account, search for related topics etc and then make your report. I am aware that this isn't unheard of in gaming, but man I am so not on board with that at every step of the way.

Neutral things to note:
-first person only
-That core gameplay loop is the entire game. Its done beautifully, but if you wanted a single player option or PVP or something, unfortunately that's just not something the game sets out to do
-you do not have to be a 40k fan to enjoy the game - though there will definitely be some things that aren't explained

What would it take to flip this into a recommendation:
-Fix keybinds ASAP
-finish the "coming soon" options in the crafting menus
-Give me an actually easy way to make bug reports etc - I am not going to be your IT intern for you

FROMSOFT FIX YOUR ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ NETCODE

The game is pretty much what it says on the tin - which is a really good thing, since thats pretty dang rad. Dark souls does breath of the wild. And its great. There's so much good to say about this game I would be here all night. Since everyone else has already done that ad infinatum, I will list a few drawbacks. Just because I am specifically listing them, do not assuming I am speaking poorly of this game. Rather the opposite, since these are the only flaws I have encountered. That said, some of them are really bad.

It basically get a wholehearted rec from me... except there are a few classic souls brand flaws.
-The camera and lock on is great... for about 10 years ago. There's tons of times you end up not locking on when you expected to, or staring at a brick wall unable to fix the camera while you are ratpacked.
-The netcode is absolutely atrocious and genuinely ruins PVP for me. About 70% of the time there's egregious desync or similar. There's only so many times you can watch an enemy slam their weapon into the ground 10 feet away from you and take damage before you go literally insane. Not to mention status effects still build up even if you dodge them which is absurd

Those were all problems literally everyone who's familiar with From saw coming. Yes, even the borderline unplayable PC port at launch. No wait - especially that part. But that doesn't make them okay, in fact it makes it worse.

On the bright side, the open world part works perfectly. They do a *much* better job explaining things this time around, too. The encounters are still top tier, I think we've got world interconnectivity to rival DS1, mounted combat is a blast. There's tons of new types of secrets to discover, and lots to explore. Really great.

Its really nice, has good shortcuts for things and general utility. You actually can simulate just about any board game effectively with this! And actually well, not hard to work with at all.

It is a very solid platform that surprisingly is not buggy, despite being a very open sandbox physics type thing.

There are some drawbacks though:
-It's built in normal map thing is god awful and basically impossible to work with.
-You aught to be able to edit the attributes of all objects the same, and give them attributes like "bag" and/or "mini", however depending on how the object was made you will have access to fewer or none of these options
-its very hard to work with objects that intersect one another, and there's no way to hide objects
-you really should be able to turn off collision (except with the table) but can't.
-being able to measure distances out in a whole circle at once from an object in inches is a feature I was expecting to see
-I was also expecting to be able to make multiple measures at once, especially for things like a model moving in a zig zag
-no built in way to add lights to objects or the game, despite having a surprisingly good lighting engine
-The default Go set though is aggressively bad, definitely use a workshop option instead. It is straight up cursed.

The biggest drawback to me for tabletop simulator where the selling point is to be able to make you're own simulations, is that there's no code block logic editor. So if you want anything outside of the basics you have to know actual coding. If this were a AAA priced game, I'd consider it seriously not living up to what it should - but its affordably priced at $20 (often less on sale), so with that in mind I don't consider this such a big deal

These are all relatively minor complaints, and this is well worth your money. Honestly, everyone should have this during lockdown.

This game is insanely fun, looks amazing, and has one of the best sound tracks I have ever heard.

Don't feel like you need to already be into warhammer 40k to try it out, its not "good for a 40k game" Its just really good

I thought I would play a bit after dinner. It's 5:50 am at the time of review.