Recent reviews by Bird_Dog

A fun game with its weaknesses. [edit: update at the bottom]

It's a co-op horde shooter. Nothing more, nothing less.
If that's not enough for you, you won't be happy with this game.
If you are looking for a survival-horror game, play Alien Isolation. This game isn't horror.

Biggest negatives atm are:
-No in-game means of communication for the PC version.
The fact that the console version has this feature makes ths even more egregious.
The only explanation I can come up with is that the devs were just too F-ing bone lazy to put it in for their PC port.
-Matchmaking is very basic and some of the devs' descisions just don't make sense.
For example: when you start a mission, MM gives you like 40 seconds to be paired with other players looking for a team for the same level and difficulty before saddeling you with bots. There is no way to just wait for someone to show up. you have to exit the MM and start again if you don't want bots.
For some dumb reason there's also no lobby. So you can't just open a game and gatther players until you have them or see a list of games gattering players to join like even some very smal dev team indie games have.
-The Doc class is in an awkward place. The mechanic for rechargin its aid station is so needlessly convoluted, complicated and clunky that I'm not sure I even want to know what kind of thought process the devs went through to come to the conclusion that this is the best way to do it...

There are minor issues like the fact that characters in the base don't move their lips AT ALL when they are talking to you, putting them right at the deepest point of the uncanny valley.
Or the fact the the PC version is a minimum effort console port with the usual "we just ctrl+C ctrl+V the console UI and remapped the keys. lel" user interface I so hate.
I did come across some minor clipping issues or the game playing the wrong sounds at some places but nothing too bad.

The game runs stable and I encounterd no mayor bugs - exept for the ones that are supposed to be there ofc. harhar...

Storytelling seems to be good enough for a horde shooter but it's not going to win any prices.

Gunplay feels a bit clunky at times and there seems to be an issue that pressing RMB to get the rifle to your shoulder sometimes doesn't do anything and you have to try a second time. There also seems to be a weird delay for any imputs to work after doing any action like dodging or using an ability that's just a fraction of a second longer than my Destiny2 trained muscle memory tells me it shoudl be.

Overall the game has its flaws. Some of them kinda boggle the mind. Especialy with the aforementioed matchmaking.
But it works fine, the gameplay works, the guns feel and sound satisfactory. It does convey the general idea of the Aliens universe that a single Alien is only a threat to poorly armed civilians and against properly trained and tooled-up soldiers, they have to swarm you to be any threat at all.

If you are looking for a simple, meaty horde shooter to play with two friends, this game is worth checking out.
If you are looking for a single-player horror-shooter with scary atmosphere and an engaging story, keep looking.

Update:
After checking out the state of the game after a long break from it, I eventually decided to change my oppinion form recomended to not recommended.
At this point I can only recommend the game if you have two buddies to play with. Then it can be a ton of fun.

While matchmaking has been improved, it is a case of "too little too late".
"too late" because any improvement they did should have been present from the word go, and "too little" because it is still not enough.
There's still no true lobby. Unless you count queueing for a specific mission a lobby. I don't. There's no list to see who's gathering players for what mission so you could join in directly.

There's still no means of in-game communications, so you still can't even give the 'tard/troll (is there even a difference?) who's running past all the eggs to trigger them a finger.

The devs overall seem to be willfully ignorant of the poor state of the game and all the potential for a realy good game they are yeeting into the trash can.
The last content drop was generally disliked and communication between the devs and the player base - at least on steam - can most charitably be described as "non-existent".

A fun little helicopter game in the spirit of F2P arcade shooters like world of tanks but with none of the associated F2P bullshittery like throttled progression up the tech tree or compromised gameplay and balance for the sake of agressive monetisation.
You buy the game and then all there is are a few purely cosmetic optional purchases. Mostly skins.

The game is certainly not without flaws and weaknesses, and is somewhat limited in scope, but overall fun to play.
The big selling point for me is the PvE Co-op mode where you do what a helicopter would acutally do in a combat zone: Recon, close air support, ground interdiction, air cavalry and search and resque.
Always changing mission objectives will keep you buisy and force you to constantly adapt your playstile.
One moment you take out enemy tanks on the ground in a fast attack chopper, the next you need to switch to a lumbering transport helicopter to evacuate a dozzen casualties form a forward base or save a recon team from an ambush by landing in the middle of nowhere under fire.

Having played for 16 hours without anyone trying to sell me a loot box made me question if this realy is an EA game...

While my overall impression of the game is quite positive, there are a number of issues with it and this review will mostly focus on them.

Graphics:
Ok, let's get this one out of the way first.
The graphics are not great. They come across as inconsistent in quality. While some parts of the game look realy good, others look like they were originaly designed for the previous console generation.
At one point, the ship's pilot was standing next to a wookiee rebel and they looked like they belonged to two different games. Notably the Wookiee seem to have invaded the game from a PS3...
There is this hostile creature that looks like a giant horned snail and its design screamed "last-minute crunch time panic" at me...
So I give the graphics overall an "ok".

Gameplay:
Some people have compared the game to Dark Souls, while others forcefully deny such blasphemous accusations.
I never played a Dark Souls game, so I wouldn't know...
The controlls took some getting used to, and even after playing through it once, I still haven't gotten the hang on the combat. Whenever I was forced to fight a larger number of enemies at once, the fight allmost inevitably turned into a big mess clearly lacking any of the stylishness I hoped for, but that might just be me sucking at it.

The game also has the stupid habit off insisting on doing things "its way". When I start an attack or block and suddenly the enemy starts glowing red, I can mash the dodge button as much as I want, Cal will insist on completing the previous action to its full length before acepting any new imput.
"No, Herr Player, here in ze empire ve do sings in ze propper order. Ve are not some rebel anarchists who skipp half an animation to dodge quicker. Here everysing is neat und tidy."

In other situations it gets realy stupidly boring. When there is a ranged enemy on a platform you cant easily reach, and you just stand there waiting for him to shoot, so you can deflect the blaster bolt back at him, you will sometimes wait for what feels like half an hour before the AI kicks back in and remembers to actually shoot you...

There is a large amount of jumping and climbing that reminds me a lot of Reboot Raider, but RR does it a lot better. Controlls just feel more awkward than say Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
Speaking of jumping: Some guy in the dev team realy does like water slides. I wish he liked them a little less.
Slidng down an ice canal or mudy slope with jumps and such inbetween gets old pretty quickly.
And some levels go on a little too long and turn into a slog. Yes Dathomir, I am looking at you.
A level in a game shouldn't cause the player to go "are we finaly done now?"
And despite the frequent shortcuts, there is still an annoying amount of backtracking that makes me wish for a fast travel system.

Story and characters:
The story isn't bad, but it's a bit too predictable.
For example: Without wishing to spoiler too much, your character is looking for a plot device that's stored at a place the empire suposedly doesn't know about. But right at the moment you find said plot device, the main villain shows up out of nowhere and yoinks it from you. And if you couldn't have seen that one coming, you probably need help dressing in the morning.
The story lacks any surprising or clever twists.

I also have to say, the "I got amnesia/damaged my connection to the force/cutt myself off from the force" schtick this game like many others use to justify having to re-learn some of the most basic skills any jedi should posess is getting a bit old by now...
All in all, the story is the equivalent of a big plate of pasta. Quite edible, and it will quench your hunger for a while, but nothing worth writing home about.

The characters are sympathetic enough to keep you from hating them, but also a bit too cliched.
The main villain especialy leaks clichés out of every orifice...
They also lack some room to grow. One character who joins your little party later has just enough funny and insightfull dialogue to tease me, but then gets demoted to walking plot device for the final mission.


Bugs, glitches and other annoyances:
I fell through the level geometry once but didnt die. And since the game lacks a "reload last checkpoint" function, I had to go to the title screen and reload the last meditation point. Annyoing but not game breaking. Could have ben done better.
As previously mentioned, the backtracking padds out the gameplay a bit too much but it wasn't unbareable.


Overall, the game is better than I feared, but not as great as it could have ben.
Give it a go if you are hungry for a SW game that doesn't suck, but if you aren't a Starwars fan, you might want to wait until it's on sale.

Let me get this out first: The game isn't bad. I had a reasonable amount of fun playing it and there are some nicely designed levels in there.
The gameplay works, the controlls work and the voice acting... well, I've seen or heard worse...

But...
(Spoilers ahead!)
So, Lara goes on an expedition, suffers an acident and ends up allone in a hostile wildernes so she has to aquire a weapon to hunt and defend herself.
Soon she comes accross a cult of pepole who seem hell-bent ond killing everyone that's not them and she has to stealth-slaughter her way through them.
At one point she gets captured and brutalised by said cult, and she also gets betrayed by someone she had good reasons to think was on her team.
Also, she has to resque someone close to her from captivity.
At the end of the game, Lara has to assault a stronghold held by ancient undead warriors while the stronghold is under attack by the cult.
In the climactic fight, Lara has to scale a slowly collapsing tower by ice-climbing around its outer wall while the undead warriors and the cult have an all-out battle around her.
In the finale, Lara destroys a magic McGuffin that is connected to the undead warriors and sought by the cult.

Now, tell me, wich game did I just describe? Rise of The Tomb Raider or Tomb Raider 2013?
Exactly.

So, do I recomend this game?
I honestly don't know.
But since steam forces me to give a binary like or dislike without any middleground, because reasons I guess, I give it a cautious recomendation. Because yes, I had fun playing it.

Cliche'd charakters and story, grafic bugs and glitches, buggy controlls that refuse to obey you whenever they feel like it, a combat mechanic that - considering the focus on sniper rifles - coud have been a lot better, enemys with inexplicable laser accuracy and too short.

For a game that is all about snipers and sniping, the shooting mechanics are a joke.
You get bullet drop and wind drift all right, but you get a little red circle, that will pop up after an arbitrary amount of time of stearing at an enemy through the scope on medium and easy, that tells you where the shot will go.
On hard you have to guess.
And there lies the problem with the mechanic: When I was taught basic marksmanship, they told me: "don't compensate by eye. Compensate with the adjustable sights."
If the game would have done away with the red circle and instead would have let me adjust for bullet drop and wind drift by hand via those two screws right and on top of the scope, that would have added a whole aditional layer of depth to the game play mechanik. But no.
If the game at least had a descent tutorial where a drill instructor talks you through the basics of shooting, that would have been great. Even if mostly for atmosphere.

Terminal ballistics too seem to have ben programed by someone who never saw a rifle up close.
A 7.62 NATO round can go through two bodys and retain enough power to take out a third? And keeps flying in a perfectly straight line after the second body? Riiiiiight...
But at the same time it wont go through a single layer of brick...

Controlls are in general functional, but as mentioned above, tempramental.
There is for example a button for going prone, but when you are croutching, it doesn't work. You have to hit it, then hit the button you normaly use for switching between crutching and standing to lay down. And sometimes even that doesn't work and instead of htting the dirt to avoyd bullets or detection, your character stands up.
Because reasons...


Do I recomend this game?
Well, if you are desperate to kill 5 to 6 hours and have 20 bucks you don't know what else to do with, then go for it.
Otherwise, no.