Recent reviews by Code'ster

While playing through this I thought about what I'd write in a review. At one point I had quite a lot to say. But after that last fight? ...I'm just too tired.

It's excellent. Play it.

My Game of the Year, 2024.

As expected, Gearbox has killed Risk of Rain 2.

I wish...

Very fun and fast paced shooter with shallow rogue-lite elements and a lot of meta progression. Also a lot of fun to play in co-op. Very challenging at times. You may frequently find yourself muttering the words "What just hit me?"

BEWARE! The surface of this game is deceptive. It's LOOKS like a cute Zelda style adventure game. In reality it's a brain bending puzzle game wrapped around a core of punishing souls-like combat. The pretty stylized graphics hide a frustration machine.

And for all that it's still one of the most unique and clever games you may ever play.

I give up. Devs don't seem to know what they're doing. The game is still a buggy mess. They "fix" one thing and break two more. But the last straw is that I can't play the game without this growing feeling of dread whenever I start having fun. Because if you have any fun it is guaranteed that the Devs will break all your toys, spit in your face and insist THEY know better than you do what fun is. It's not worth it anymore.

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So it seems Sony wisely changed their minds on the account linking. But don't get too excited. We won this battle but the war is far from over. They WILL try again. Like a crooked politician trying to pass bad legislation, they'll just wait a little while, change a few words, give it a flowery name and try again. Don't rest on your laurels and NEVER give these people an INCH.

Of course this only happened due to an impressive joint backlash by the gaming community. This is how it should be. This is how we make corporations work for US. We TERRIFY them with what could happen if they don't give us what we want.

Now we just need Arrowhead to stop being two-faced and get a handle on their incredibly toxic community managers and moderators and we'll finally be approaching something resembling sanity.

This thumbs down will remain as a reminder for the future.
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Three months after launch and we got bait and switched. They now want us to sell our personal details to Sony in order to continue playing a product we already bought and continued supporting. A PSN account is something that the game very clearly does not need and is something PC players very clearly do not want to deal with.

They say its for "protection and safety" which is an out right lie. What they want is for you to submit to their mass surveillance and allow them to force you to comply with their morality. I am an adult. I am perfectly capable of seeing to my own online safety and do no need a soulless, ideologically possessed, multi million dollar corporation to do it for me.

If you must play this do NOT use the chat feature. Either voice or text. It's all being recorded. It's not worth it to call someone a "doodoo head", no matter how much they deserved it, only to get banned by an AI that's probably frying itself trying to grasp the increasingly ambiguous modern definition of "hate speech".

Cute, short and very sweet

Came back to this recently to see whats changed. Good news is the enemy AI is much more tolerable now. Enemy actions more sense with random street thugs being more hesitant to instantly start shooting and far fewer cases of getting gunned down through a solid wall. No AI mod needed anymore. But the game still has many more issues. Bugs, optimization and crashes are still a persistent problem.
The game was ported from Unreal 4 to Unreal 5, which means folks on older hardware are more likely to have issues running the game. Even on my 4060 Ti I get random frame drops I can't connect to anything.
AI squad behavior still likes to break. Enemies have a habit of throwing their weapons into another dimension when surrendering which means lost points for the mission if they can't be found. Multiplayer has a lot of problems such as character equipment not displaying correctly, miss matched head and body skin colors, and enemy weapons being invisible for clients.
I also feel like all the guns perform the exact same. There are no stat blocks or anything to indicate how one weapon my function compared to another. Just a small unhelpful description. It doesn't even indicate which shotguns are pump action and which are semi auto. Aside from the revolver all the pistol feel the exact same. Maybe that's just a me thing.
Game still needs quite a bit of work but it's making progress. Maybe worth it on a sale but certainly not at full price.
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It's so close to being a solid successor to SWAT 4. The mechanics are mostly solid but there's some serious issues.
The biggest problem is the enemy AI. They don't act like people, they act like machines. Enemies have insane reaction time, perfect aim, and and can track and shoot you through walls. Cover becomes meaningless. They'll also no sell bullets and grenades and continue to gun you down no matter what. It really feels like the TF2 bot crisis is following me into other games.
Your own AI teammates also constantly have issue following orders. You can tell them repeatedly to stack up on doors or deploy equipment and they'll just stand there doing nothing. The teammate AI also makes getting perfect scores on long missions impossible. To get a perfect score you have to take everyone alive but even if you load up the team with less lethal weapons you can't take away their lethal sidearm. So you can spend 30+ minutes crawling through a mission, get close to the end, tell your team to clear a room, only to have one of them pull their sidearm and kill a suspect, ruining the whole thing.
If you play I HIGHLY recommend the AI re-balance mod available through the Mod.io option in game.

Such a waste...

A very unique game. If you happened to like Outer Wilds this has a similar kind of cerebral mystery to solve, though it lacks the same emotional punch.
If I had to pick something I disliked it would be how the clues dry up about half way through. This leaves you with little option but to make a lot of wild guesses or brute force some solutions. Paying attention to little details is very important.
Took me about 8 hours to finish but I'm also on the low end of the "Stupid Curve" so results will vary depending on how well the player can process information.
Recommend grabbing it on a sale if possible.