Recent reviews by Kell Aset

Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak previously called Hardware: Shipbreakers, a prequel to Homeworld, it is not a bad game but sadly it is a disappointing game too. It is a little buggy, lacks polish and I wish it was more fleshed out.

- ok gameplay

- not bad missions

- good fitting music

- good atmosphere, mysterious, in a way it was somewhat similar to original Homeworld

- story started out well (even tho I played good old Homeworld games before and I knew how this game will probably end) it made me curious and made me ask questions sadly in the end game never answered them properly and left me with unsatisfying ending

[Possible minor spoiler]
After mission called "Tombs of the Ancients" I was wondering if there was perhaps a device left by original Kushan that landed on Kharak long ago, one that was supposed to protect them from anyone trying to find them on their new planet, one that was making all ships that appeared near Kharak crash/hyperspace jump into the planet, I wanted to know if that was it, I wanted to know why so many wrecks cover the planet but I guess the only "answer" to this was "artificial quantum waveform"

- bad guys - Gaalsien, while playing we will barely get to know anything about them, we meet lesser bad guy boss and after a while the main big bad guy boss (he appeared only in one cutscene before I actually got to face him) they both barely said anything during whole game, sad to say but we can get more info in general about our enemies from "Deserts of Kharak Expedition Guide" than in the game itself and said guide is a paid dlc heh(if you preordered the game you got it for "free") but you can check it out here; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOA_Qa9B6To https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TahkgANylA https://youtu.be/L-CE8RpYhQg?si=jTDXR3eJz_a0nc9P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL_0BU5IVX4


- our allies, I would like to hear more about our allies from carrier Sakala, the Siidim, while playing the game, we get to hear few lines from captain of Sakala, we get to fight alongside our allies too and the captain of our own carrier Kapisi at some point says "The Siidim. A loathsome Kith if ever there was one. Arrogant. Self-righteous." It was quite out of blue because back then they didn't do nor say anything to deserve such description, now after reading thru "Deserts of Kharak Expedition Guide" I know why it was said, but this should be explained in game somehow

- missiles from command carrier are sometimes flying thru rocks, not only that, my command carrier during one of the missions while passing thru tighter parts of the map went crazy and jumped into air so high I could not see it anymore heh, then dropped back without problem and continued to move where I wanted it to move

- no interaction between resource collectors and carriers/support cruisers, collectors gather resources and move somewhat not even so close to the carrier/support cruiser then stop, turn around and go back for more resources

- can't store/dock any units in command carrier(well except for flying units), so we can't hide resource collectors for example when they are not needed or just to keep them safe during combat like we could do in previous Homeworld games

- units have ok textures but we have low rez textures almost everywhere else (even with max settings on) wrecked ships have such and even very first base from first level, at that base there were also little red npc vehicles moving around, not only those had bad textures but also those things didn't have any animations, their tracks/wheels didn't move

- on some maps I spotted weird little objects/items floating in the air, parts of environment

- when you retire units to get back some resources, unit will go back to command carrier but it won't bother with using doors, it will just go under the carrier and vanish

- camera jumps around while passing near some of the higher objects

- game may not notice that you completed an objective, this happened to me and so I was stuck, couldn't complete the mission, quick reload fixed it for me at that time

- group of units will assume default formation, you can't choose different formations

- can't rebind buttons in game, which is pretty annoying if you want to use WSAD for moving the camera and if you want to have active pause button nearby but you can still rebind buttons by playing around with game files;
http://forums.blackbirdinteractive.com/forum/deserts-of-kharak/deserts-of-kharak-general-discussion/4174-hotkey-rebinding-documentation

- active pause, we can pause the game if things get to hectic and issue orders, that's nice I just wish we could see while paused what orders we gave to which units and what units we added to production queue etc.

- even on "classic" difficulty setting which is apparently the hardest difficulty setting, enemies during campaign were not really a challenge

- not a big fan of unit design, baddies have a little cooler units, matter of taste, not a big deal I guess

Wish there was more to this game, maybe just a longer campaign, maybe more/longer cutscenes/dialogues, I was hoping that story will be the strongest part of this game but it leaves too much out, not enough info about world, characters, factions is presented in the game and as I mentioned before, game has unsatisfying ending. This game could have been so much more,

Pretty fun game, playing this quite a lot since beta. You don't need to buy anything for real cash to enjoy MWO, well maybe except for mech bays then again quite often, almost every week there is an event during which you can win something like; mech bay, MC(cash shop currency), c-bills, gxp, cockpit items, premium time, colours, sometimes mechs, camo patterns. Except for hero mechs, every single mech is avaialble for in-game currency after some time, hero mechs are slightly different variants and come with a 30% C-Bill bonus.

We have a lot of mechs to choose from in this game(some have quite nice models I must say) there is of course nice customization too (armor/weapons/engines/equipment/modules/colours/camos/decals), I wasted so much time tweaking my mechs in the hangar, that is quite fun on its own.
It is not the easiest game for new players, it is important to find your favorite role in game, brawler or sniper etc. to enjoy it completely, get yourself mech perfect for your playstyle, join some unit especially if you want to play CW(Community Warfare) which was also called FW(Faction Warfare) and now FP(Faction Play), playing that solo may be quite painful experience, it is a team based game after all. Not to mention that in CW/FW/FP unlike in "quick play" you won't be playing only versus players of more or less similar skill.

The combat is fun, each mech is made of parts; separate legs, separate arms, two side torsos, central torso, cockpit and the back. To kill a mech you need either to destroy both legs, central torso, cockpit(which is very small so you rarely can hit it) or the back where armor is weak.If mech is using XL engine(it is lighter than standard engine) you can kill it not only by shooting the parts I mentioned earlier but by destroying side torso, that works at least with Inner Sphere mechs because you won't kill clan mechs by destroying one side torso, you need to get both side torsos to kill a clan mech(clan IIC mechs can use either std or xl engines, rest can use only xl).
If your mech will lose a leg you will move way slower, if your side torso gets destroyed then arm attached to it gets destroyed too.

Teamwork, positioning and communication are all terribly important in this game, rambos and stragglers will be easy prey so you should stick with your friends unless you are in very fast mech with ECM. You usually won't die instantly unless you get shot in the back/cockpit with some big gun or if you will be unfortunate enough to get a lot of unwanted attention from more than one enemy.

There is "heat" in the game, every weapon will give you some heat whenever fired, mech can withstand just so much of heat before shutting down for a moment, which makes you an easy target. Energy weapons give more heat(but you don't need ammo for those) than ballistic weapons but with those you have to put some ammo on your mech, which not only takes precious space but possibly can explode when you get shot at. Right now missile weapons are somewhere between energy and ballistic, heat wise, more or less.

At the end I must say that there are few things that I would like to see added to the game in the future, more maps(seems like we won't be getting any), melee combat(which sadly we will never see implemented), npc infantry/vehicles(never), real changes/updates for CW/FW/FP, something to make me care for my faction, that game mode is shallow(basicly it is QP with respawns and occasiona siege map, devs never wanted to put real work into that game mode) also I really hope for better optimization, maybe engine change/upgrade(PGIs boss said this is "unlikely") since we can already see that this is not the prettiest game around.

In may of 2019 during "Dev Update with Russ Bullock" we were told that mech packs don't bring PGI enough profit anymore(so no more mech packs at least for now, they may make more in the unspecified future as opposed to 1 new mech pack per month) also game basicly enters "maintenance mode" now so there is no new content coming anymore, devs told us that servers will be up for at least a year and big boss hopes that they can still go whole 3 years. All depends on their new shiny game Mechwarrior 5 or should i say EpicStockWarrior5 because it is now Epic Store exclusive game.
--------------------------------------------------
Btw. as a side note I must tell you the story of how actually PGI got their epic exclusive deal for MW5, It is funny really, in the beginning PGI was selling MW5 preorders on their own site and ppl were promised that steam/gog keys will be delivered when game will get released. We were being constantly assured by Russ Bullock big boss of Piranha Games that game is not going epic exclusive.

https://youtu.be/5lVxyBsTVc8

But as it turns out PGI was selling preorders to ppl while ACTIVELY looking to sign epic exclusivity deal (which they did sign as CEO of PGI Russ Bullock said himself during MW5 AMA(skip to 56,47); https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctkA-qViVv0

After PGI got their epic deal signed in april they were STILL selling preorders for about 3 more days without telling anyone about epic exclusivity, they were selling us game and promising steam keys & gog keys when they knew they won't release their game on steam nor gog anymore.
Few months later after epic deal was signed and preorders were already over, PGI finally announced that MW5 is now epic exclusive (Jul 24, 2019), they only told us about it because one of their employees removed old MW5 FAQ and uploaded a new one(by accident?) that didn't mention steam/gog anymore, someone from MWO community noticed that, soon ppl started asking questions; https://twitter.com/russ_bullock/status/1151180563895615488

https://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/274292-mechwarrior-5-release-date-amp-epic-games-store-exclusivity/

As you can see here; https://twitter.com/russ_bullock/status/1154892441025015808
Russ Bullock CEO of PGI wanted to wait even longer to tell anyone anything about epic exclusivity, till Gamescom.

In the end, Russ Bullock & Piranha Games/PGI refused to honor their promise of steam/gog keys for ppl that bought MW5 preorders, they did offer only refunds and you could ask for a refund only for about 1 month after MW5 goes epic exclusive annoucement.
--------------------------------------------------
So, I must say, MWO is a good enough game for the price of free, tho it is not as good as we were promised by its devs, try i sure, just plz don't support its devs, they are bunch of shady lying scumbags, at least those responsible for all big decisions are.

Useful website, you can customize any mech from MWO here;
http://mwo.smurfy-net.de/
https://mech.nav-alpha.com/

Fun game, combat is quite enjoyable with all the violence & gore tho story of the single player campaign is nothing special really, not too bad but not great either. There is also pvp multiplayer(very basic one, can't even pick a side - chaos/loyalists) and a horde mode here called "exterminatus", for max 4 players(vanilla game comes with exterminatus for loyalist marines, Chaos Unleashed dlc provides one for chaos marines but you can't find people playing it all that often) it is quite challenging I must say.
Sadly there is no co-op through entire campaign, nor separate campaign for some other race.

You can unlock many armour pieces, weapons and perks that can be used in multiplayer, which is always cool.

Weird thing about this game is how you can heal up in sp campaign, while your armour will regenerate on its own you can regain your HP by stunning enemy and then executing him, in multiplayer on the other hand you will heal up automatically after few seconds.

Fun little turn based strategy game, cute style and nice music.

Pretty good space strategy game that in some way equals even Homeworld games. Fine story and gameplay, combat reminds me a bit of ship to ship combat that we can see in Star Trek (you can boost power of weapons, shields or engines and target specyfic systems of enemy ships) + ships look pretty good.