I have over 1,500 hours in this game, and have played at every MMR. When I was new, I struggled not to go down to 2 star, and for a while there, I was consistently five star and even played with some six star acquaintances as a five star so I played at that level.

The game is not fun at higher MMRs. I was consistently more skilled than most of the people I ran into at those MMRs, with a few exceptions. Playing on US servers, going into five star or six star lobbies means that you are fodder for people who can't shoot you unless you are standing completely still. They will refuse to shoot unless you present a stationary target, sitting in a bush the entire game. I have learned how to bait out shots from them without getting hit, and the moment they are forced to fight you they lose. It's not common for me to find someone who will actually play the objective, grab clues, fight the boss, and try to extract with a bounty when I end up in the upper ends of MMR. When I do, I have some of the most adrenaline pumping fights I experience in any game, ever, and it's always a great time to find someone else who wants to push the limits of their skills. Sadly, most people at that bracket are cowards or cheaters.

The game is a lot more fun when you are playing at lower MMRs. Consistently you will find people playing the objective at two and three star lobbies. I know several people who got sick of the cheaters and cowards who fill out five and six star lobbies, and will purposefully lower their own MMR by going into quickplay and shooting at PvE until someone finds them and kills them. They do this just so they can have fun pushing objectives and getting into team fights with other players that go beyond "I got headshot by a Cain or a Reptilian with a mosin sniper with spitzer ammo from 70 meters away somewhere in a bush." Close enough that most people can land shots with iron sights without spitzer, but these people are cowards and bad at video games to the point that this is the only way they can win "fights".

And to be honest, this is a result of the developers constantly pushing the long ammo meta, despite the majority of the playerbase complaining about it. The game needs more inertia in the movement. The fact that we can jump crouch A D A D A D A D jump A D A D A D crouch stand A D jump A D at 30 or so meters away and make people miss dead on center mass shots with anything that isn't a long ammo bolt action rifle or a winfield centennial causes people to naturally gravitate towards higher velocity guns just so they can land shots against these spaz outs. Crouching takes about two or three frames to go from standing to crouched, so you can just duck underneath a shotgun blast like you're Neo from the Matrix. The people who claim realism and realistic behavior for the bush wookie sniper spitzer camping always conveniently forget to explain how being able to jump and then magically shift direction mid jump is in any way grounded in realism, then go and point at games like Apex which have high octane movement tech and claim the game isn't supposed to play that way. Yet that's how people play this game anyways.

The developers are also allergic to criticism. A streamer in their official creator program was watching a Crytek stream, and watched the crytek devs die to a kill trade, caused by the 800ms kill trade window baked into the game's netcode. The creator asked about it, and was curious to know if they had anything planned to address it. The creator was not toxic in his asking. He asked very politely, and wasn't in any way heckling or taunting them. Crytek responded by removing this creator from their official creators program. They punished him for asking a question, politely at that, about a problem that no one in the community likes dealing with. This is the company that is updating the game. They create new problems with each patch and hotfix, and when people offer criticism, even constructive and helpful criticism, they always assume it's someone out to get them, and they refuse to listen to anyone.

As if this isn't enough, as they actively ignore 90% of constructive and helpful community feedback, and refuse to tell anyone what they're doing or that they're even doing anything at all outside of some vague, canned, copy pasted corpo speak passed through a million layers of PR and then given to some poor, overworked community manager and told to calm everyone down with just that, they then go back selling you a new pay to win legendary hunter for bloodbonds or as DLC, more long ammo guns, and more mosin skins.

I want to like this game, but it's impossible for me to recommend it in its current state. Save your money. This isn't worth your time. You deserve better than this. Go play a better game, with devs who actually care about the player experience and aren't only out to milk your wallet dry.

Update to my Review:

TL;DR: Most countries in the world cannot buy and play this game anymore, because Sony is throwing a temper tantrum and wants you to know how much they despise having had to backtrack on mandatory PSN accounts.

While the requirement for the PSN account has been lifted, the game is still no longer able to be sold in the countries that PSN is not available in.

This is Sony throwing a tantrum over having lost to PC gamers yet again, and trying to punish people for making them play nice with consumers. In my opinion, it is even worse, because while we don't need to make a PSN account, they are reminding you that they really, really want to force you to do it by not letting people who don't live in PSN supported countries buy the game anymore.

The game was gifted to me, and I checked the box allowing for the friend who gifted it to refund it. He and I both wanted to refund the game, but we were refused several times. I might just hide the game in my library, or even outright have it removed from my account without a refund.

For a moment there, I thought maybe gaming was gonna be alright, and we could have nice things again. I guess it's too much to ask for a game to just be a video game, and to let us have a fun game without being constantly told how much game publishers -- and even some developers -- hate you and wish they could just treat you like an ATM.

Oh well.


Original Review:

I will never make a PSN account to play a game on Steam.

What is the point of releasing a game onto a PC based platform, only to force people to make an account for a console that you don't even own?

This violates the GDPR in the EU, as well as several different countries' data security rights laws.

PSN is also notoriously low security, and has more frequent data breaches than any other gaming platform out there. They aren't just frequent, they're often huge, and don't get addressed for years on end.

The game is brilliant. I put over a hundred hours into it. I've made friends online over this game. I've managed to deepen existing friendships both online and offline over this game. Yet now I am forced to make a console account for a scummy, censorious company that doesn't seem to care about keeping your data private or secure, just to play it at all, on a PC platform. ♥♥♥♥ Sony.