Recent reviews by Tormey

Update edit: I am returning my review to a positive one now that Sony has, seemingly, stepped back from enforcing a PSN link to play the game. I do this as a show of support for Arrowhead, and as a small nod to Sony for respecting the desires of the community here on steam and elsewhere on PC.

I WANT TO MAKE IT ABSOLUTELY CLEAR, HOWEVER... I will revert it to negative should Sony not hold to their word on this subject. I do not condone the action Sony took, and they have proven unreliable and untrustworthy. While I am but one person, I will endeavor to keep from purchasing any Sony related product. This is a difficult venture, as Sony is responsible for more than just gaming. They are a tech company responsible for creating televisions/entertainment centers, and have also been behind the production of various cinematic releases.

I will maintain this stance, until Sony ceases to act with hostile intent towards consumers and their right to privacy, their right to solid customer support, and their right to sturdy security that is less prone to information breaches of any kind (this includes security for their own employees). I encourage others to do the same if they truly desire to make a difference.

I also encourage that we, as a community, begin to push for legislation within our respective governments and countries to enforce that Publishers respect us, as well as the hardworking developers such as Arrowhead. As a creator myself, I understand the need and desire to make sure your IP is handled how you desire it to be handled. I get that publishers wish to protect their IPs (Sony owns the IP to Helldivers). I support that a Publisher should be able to determine what is done with their IP creatively. However I don't support the fact that the power to control your IP can be abused to result in the exact situation that occurred with Helldivers 2.

I do not have the answers in terms of how something can be established that will be beneficial for consumers, developers, and publishers. I just know that the current state of affairs is continuing to cause various franchises across PC and Console to suffer. (Halo, Call of Duty, Overwatch 2, Pokemon, Legend of Zelda, The Sims, etc.)

A tangent to this, I don't know what Steam's response to Sony's actions will be. While our fellow Divers in countries not covered by PSN no longer have to worry about being cut off, I don't know if Steam will put Helldivers 2 back on store fronts in those areas. I can't blame Steam for their actions as it protects them as well as their consumer base. I imagine they are skeptical of returning the game to store listings.

That aside, we achieved something to be celebrated, and I hope that reversing my review and encouraging others to do the same will push arrowhead back up to where they deserve to be when this all started.

The Good:
I never would have guessed the survival style could be mixed with DRG but here we are. The mechanics are essentially all there and it makes me want to go play actual DRG.

The Dwarf:
Rock and Stone, for Carl.

The Unfortunate:
I thought I would have loved a single player DRG experience, unfortunately due to how good this feels as a DRG style game with super close feeling to the original... it makes me feel alone without my dwarf brothers (and possibly sisters, you can't tell through the beards...). The lack of multiplayer is a double edged sword in that regard. So, plus: single player. Negative: it's single player.

The bad: the camera gets a bit twitchy for some reason, not sure why and it can be a distracting/immersion breaking for me. Seems to get better when you stand still for a second, but often returns when things get intense. Hopefully they fix it down the line.

I'm going to keep this as spoiler free as possible. I will attempt to talk about my own gripes as vaguely as possible when it comes to story based aspects of the game.

First off, waiting for release to play this has been worth it. I will ignore the present issues in the game as Larian themselves have already recognized them and plan on addressing them. That being said, I'll try to split up my commentary into sections.

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The Good: Overall I've found myself feeling as if I'm a part of a D&D campaign. The way the first two acts build up to showing you're dealing with something far bigger than just trying to remove the parasite in your head is fantastic. It reminds me of the story building of all adventure books, or even the games of D&D I've managed to play with friends.

It all starts out simple and straightforward. You're just a weak fledgling adventurer trying to solve a simple issue related to yourself and then you get swept up into a world affecting scenario you didn't ask for. Larian does a good job in evading the 'Chosen One' trope to a decent extent, which makes me pretty happy.

For most of the game, your actions and decisions have impact. You get so many opportunities to perform checks, convince people of something or just fight. You can even attempt to be, without saying exactly how or in what direction, a double agent of sorts. This flexibility and fluidity holds strong through two thirds of the game. More on that later.

Outside of that last third, my opinion on some narrative delivery in the first two thirds went from, "This feels like I'm being railroaded," to "Well, I suppose if this were an actual table game, it'd make sense for the DM to be strict, or else it'd just be a scenario you end up murdering your entire party on the spot."

There are a couple moments where you actually get to force the 'DM' to say "rocks fall and everybody dies" and those moments gave me a bit of a chuckle.

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The Mid: The world starts to feel more rigid and immovable once you hit Act 3. The only satisfying narrative segments are when you're dealing with character quests. A lot of act 3 feels as if they stuffed everything they could into one act and trimmed as much as they could without making it too broken. The result is a bit lackluster (But still impressive).

Endings of big epic stories are tricky. My wife has attested to as much and she's a published author. I trust her experience. So the fact that Larian managed to get a fairly solid ending out of the gargantuan 100+ hour game is impressive. Unfortunately the ending is a bit dissatisfying. I can understand why people are frustrated. Without giving away too much: the ending is very akin to what happened with Bioware back when Mass Effect 3 was released. Elden Ring also suffered from this as well. By that I mean: you get "multiple endings" but really you only get ONE that feels right. The rest just feel tacked on and have a color filter thrown over them to make them 'different'.

I think given time Larian can add, change, tweak things if they desire to do so. Fact is it may be difficult to do it right what with the sheer amount of decisions you can make, then determining exactly how those decisions play out.

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The Bad: Here I express my personal frustrations. These are opinions, not bashing or slandering. I love this game and I have no regrets. HOWEVER...

1. Romance/Sexual Content: I am more than happy to see that you can pursue relationships in this game. I did so in other games with that option with similar scope to BG3, Mass Effect and Dragon Age being the best examples I have of such things. I am supportive of the fact that they don't shy away from LGBTQ+ identities and relationships. In my experience so far, romance in this game is flexible. The NPC party members will get with you no matter what is in your pants. So not having any restrictions there is nice.

My issue with it comes in just how AGGRESSIVE the sexual part of this game can be. There's been no capacity to just be friends with people as far as I can tell. Almost every npc is after your pants. Just offering someone a hug seems to create sexual tension. This bugs me. I also wish there was more to the relationships. As far as I've experienced you get the one major scene with your interest, after which you can cutely kiss them, but that's about it beyond some small moments sprinkled around in Act 3.

I wish there was more. Even if it was just small repeatable cut-scenes like the kiss you can do. Dinner together around the camp-fire. Watching the stars. Cuddling even. I would love more ways to express affection, to really nail the fact that you have this relationship with someone. As it stands right now, you don't get much other than repeatable conversation topics and the option to dump your chosen partner.

2. Inflexibility: Once Act 3 hits, most of your agency is taken from you. In Act 1 + 2, there's a lot of checks and stuff you can do to influence people (as stated in The Good part of this review). However there's A LOT of moments in Act 3 where you don't get any choice in what you do. The best example I have of this is going to be marked with spoilers below:

---SPOILER---: I'm talking mainly about Yenna. After act 3, you run into this side character. It makes sense to not be suspicious but you only get so many options. There's no quest to help them. Speaking to her Cat gets you no information. Most encounters like this in Act 1 + 2 allow you to go back and forth to perform checks and root out an issue or get a quest that has some impact.

This segment of the game is made more annoying by how once you run into Orin and find out that there's shape shifters about, you don't get the opportunity to Insight check Yenna or Detect Thoughts on her. This is an odd choice as when you do a small part related to the High Harper you can insight check and detect thoughts on a doppelganger to see if something is off. If we can do that there, why not in our camp? Why not against Yenna? It just seems odd and feels incredibly restrictive.

My feelings on restrictiveness extend to the ending as well. I could do another spoiler but I think this review has gone on quite long enough as is.

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The Sad (and comedic... to an extent...): PETS! Larian, let us have PETS! We get the best boy Scratch. I love him to bits. Yet we aren't allowed to have A CAT?! The personality of the cats in this game are varied and perfect. Yet you torment me with not being able to PET A CAT. YOU ALSO DIDN'T ALLOW ME TO ADOPT THE CAT IN BALDUR'S GATE THAT THINKS I AM ITS PARENT!!! HOW COULD YOU!!! I CRIED ACTUAL TEARS!!! Not to mention poor Grub, if you manage to save him, you can't console the poor boy like you can Scratch. No pets for cats. Only our best dog boy. Let us have a best cat! Please!

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All that being said: I love this game a lot and I will be doing multiple playthroughs, no doubt. The class system and spell list is sizable. Should Larian expand on the endings and choices you can make to make them different, it'll become even more of a gem than it already is. Well done Larian. I look forward to what you do in updating and tweaking what you've gifted us.

Note: I recommend this game to those who understand the true meaning of the words 'early access'. If you are someone that buys this expecting a finished and polished product than you will be extremely disappointed. I don't want this game gaining a slew of negative reviews before they are warranted. I care that much about it.

To scare off those potential players that will get upset at bugs or performance issues when the game is incomplete only just sticking it's toe in the proverbial waters, here is everything negative I have to say FIRST: I'm only 1 hour in and already have hit performance issues in areas where the original Everspace didn't even make my computer break a sweat. I'm having framerate drops even though my indicator reads the max 60 I can achieve (monitor I'm using). I can just see the lag happening.

When I played the original everspace it's settings were basically at max the entire time and I only ever hit around 60~70 degrees centigrade. This game? I have to drop the settings to medium to keep my rig at my preferred temperature (yes I am well aware that GPUs are meant to run pretty steadily for long periods at around 80~90, just personal preference).

These are the main things I got after just an hour.

Are the shoot-first-ask-later nay sayers gone now? In that case on to my GOOD comments: This game, apart from what I ran into so far, is as beautiful as the first game. I think they did something to the ship controls because it feels like the ship is more sensitive to input than the original game. Feels very fluid and tight, a bit too fast for me personally but I know it'll likely be welcome to others. Granted I'm also using a controller so that might be part of it (I'm lazy okay?).

I see a lot of promise for this game as it has already captured my sense of wonder and awe with JUST the tutorial. I'm working on lessening the impact the game's current build has on my system so I can actually play more without feeling a bit lagged out but ultimately I think this is a good buy. But that's only if you're the kind of person willing to accept that you're paying for a game before it is actually done.

Overall/TLDR: I like this game, it's fun even though I am not that good at it, and I hope that it grows a strong community and perhaps does well enough to warrant additional content in the future. I don't regret my purchase, and I recommend it to anyone seeking a fast fast/fun/challenging experience (and believe me, the practice fleet battles against AI are challenging in my honest opinion). There is a longer part of this review below, which I hope will be helpful to anyone curious about whether this game is for them or not.

----------vv(In Depth Review)vv----------

Pros: Carries a nice blend of arcade and flight sim vibes and really embraces the fast paced feel of the cinematic battle over Scariff from the Rogue One film. The controls feel pretty solid on my Xbox One controller. An advantage this game has over other games with controller layouts is you can actively go in and reassign buttons however you want. You aren't restricted to just default, southpaw, etc.

The story mode is all right in my opinion, and does well to teach you how the game controls. It feels a bit cardboard with the interactions between characters, and it feels simply like they are talking at you. At the same time I found what they had to say interesting and got mildly invested in what was going on. It captured some elements of the politics of the Empire, while also showing that the New Republic isn't 'all powerful'. It's got it's cheesy moments and there's a bit of a cop-out at the very end that I have issues with (I won't spoil it though), but other than that I have no complaints.

Cons: To purists of the x-wing and tie fighter classics of the 90s, this might not be the game for you. It has similar elements that link back to those classics but at the same time it's simpler (which I appreciate, personally). In other words, this is not a complex flight sim style game. It is, as I said in Pros, very arcade in design and that is something I really do enjoy. So, as expected, this game is not for everyone.

I ran into a small issue with with FPS when I started multiplayer. I'm the kind of person that wants to keep my temperatures fairly low in my rig so I tend to use V-sync at 60Hz (the refresh rate of my current monitor). The option to limit this and turn it on is available however it only seemed to work with single player. The only way I could force the multiplayer to obey the restriction was to go into my NVidia control panel and tell it to perform the v-sync as a general graphics setting. Relying on something inherent to my system to achieve what I wanted is a small issue, but it's an issue nevertheless. Not worth refunding for, but worth noting. It might be patched later but who knows.

Pro/Con: There is a learning curve to this game, so multiplayer will very clearly divide the experienced from the inexperienced. Teamwork and squad composition is pretty crucial, this means communication, which could be difficult to find. While getting a lot of kills can certainly go a decent way to winning in a simple game mode such as Dogfight, when it comes to Fleet Battle you actually really need to pay attention to your team.

Essentially, if you and everyone else decide to go lone wolf in search of glory and a high K/D at the same time, you're likely to lose given you aren't working on objectives. I'd liken the Fleet Battle mode to something like a MOBA, to those who know the genre I can break down the roles of each star fighter. Standard Star fighter = Bruiser, Bomber = Tank/Bruiser/Heavy hitter, Interceptor = ADC/Assassin, and Support = obviously support. Some players hopefully will realize that there is value in playing the bait. Drawing in opposing players towards them so their allies can pick off pursuers.

Despite how much I love this element, if you find yourself in a team that doesn't have good communication versus a team that does, you're going to likely lose and lose hard. So work with each other and you should do well enough. Best of luck out there pilots.

I got this game because it looked beautiful and had elements I was entranced by. The game delivered a very atmospheric experience where you could feel the loneliness of an alien world. It felt tense with dangers, and overall it was everything I expected it to be. Unfortunately I've followed this game for a long time and the lack of any update apart from the usual yearly news that one is coming is starting to make it obvious to me that this game will likely never be finished.

It hurts me a great deal to give it a bad review but the facts are there, this game has essentially become clickbait, grabbing easy money from bright eyed and hopeful customers. Perhaps one day, this game might actually get finished but given that it's been four years in development and nothing has happened I have my doubts. I still have a fond place in my heart for it, because it was an ambitious idea. Unfortunately it seems the developers do not love their product as much as I do.

I don't recommend this game to anyone any more, not unless you don't mind the fact that it is likely permanently incomplete. I don't like the idea of supporting a company that has abandoned their creation, but maybe its worth the money to you. Here's hoping my review will perhaps become a positive one some day.

I have over 800 hours in this game, and that time just keeps increasing. This is a testament to the game and how engrossing it is to play. My only critique is the drop in performance at around the in-game 100 year mark. You can look this up as it is a common issue, and Paradox has said they will be working on it. Otherwise, this is a solid game and the DLC is all worth purchasing to create a richer experience. There's also plenty of mods to keep you happy for quite some time.