Recent reviews by LongshipOarperator793

We're pretty far from the Caribbean and the pirates seem a little bit strange this time around.

While at its core it is a job/sim game, but it is very deceptively complex and challenging so sim players have to understand that before stepping in, but it is a very fun game once you learn the mechanics. Managing time and resources will be tight due to the strain of the extreme conditions of space on your rig and you can very much die if you don't plan well, you will have to drive blind at times due to solar storms with only a CRT camera to guide you, and very often the game turns into asteroid-field-hell for space ship. This is more Elite Dangerous than Euro Truck Sim.

Also the new custom radio update is a game-changer, which lets you put any radio station link on the Internet into the game which instantly puts it into the coziest games spot. You can enjoy some cooking talkshow or real-time traffic updates while ramming into big ass rocks.

Also you can do some illegal smuggling and evading the cops as well which add some spice to the game, however I wish they expand on this more rather than just vent the container of dangerous high explosive (and yourself) into space while the stupid police bots scan your cabin and haul-ass back into the ship while solar storm is roasting you alive.

The game starts very slow, it has some problems but please be patient because once you get out of Lesser Zone, holy ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥ it kicks into gear. Some spoilers onward but honestly who cares if you are familiar with the mutants of the game.

I decided to visit my old stomping ground Army Warehouse from a lifetime ago, place is pretty run-down and got me a little teary eyes, got attacked couple times by Snorks and Bloodsuckers while raiding the place, easy no problems. I was just looking around for a code to a safe, and literally opened a door to hell. Behind an innocent wooden door to a rundown building was a Controller, completely unscripted. In a few seconds flat, the world goes from Blue Nostalgia to Red-Purple Terror, the character's head started to spin and ears ringing. I turned around and fled, instinctively, for the first time in this game, and started finding high grounds as one should. What transpired over the next 20 minutes was me fighting for my life against weaponized PTSD and schizophrenia, with the moans and souls of the dead coming for me. After changing into a new pair of underpants and gaining a new respect for mutants, I killed the thing (with the aid of some Snorks), hid from an emission, etc... And I thought it was over, no it was absolutely not...

Despite my previous close encounter with terror, my greed overcame me and I went a little deeper into the Zone for another stash. I ran into some new, flashbang fire-related invisible anomalies in a field, with the atmosphere like straight out of a UFO documentary. But... the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ moment I KNEW that they cooked here in this game is the absolutely unscripted ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ subtlety that the Fire Poltegeist reveals itself on that field. It was like a good Ukrainian Kvass that starts off slow, then builds up without your knowledge, the chills down your spine when that rich rye hits so good that it left you mentally naked and almost kills you... and suddenly you realize you're enjoying a masterpiece in the work.

Point is, it's hard to grade a Stalker game without the emergent stories. You can take the bugs, the tanky enemies, the slow start, the broken A-life, the infinite spawning enemies, the Xray Engine crashes, the performance issues, etc... Threw them all together and make the judgement that the game sucks, there's no balance, that they killed the hardcore elements, etc... but the Zone does not care. You only arrived here yesterday. (some of us never left)

This is coming from a long time 5: Mercenaries player

Pros:
- Guns are shootier, mechs are stompier, laser more pew pew, explosions more crisp, etc... Visually and mechanically everything feels great.

- More story focused. You play some great setpieces of the Clan Invasion and take part in the harrowing day to day of a Clan Star Commander, especially being the notorious Smoke Jaguar. Old school players will love this more.

- You don't have to worry about finance and hiring and logistics like in 5: Mercs because you're a Clan warrior and you have essentially infinite budget. Also the nature of Omnimechs mean it's essentially swapping boxes instead of tearing apart your mechs like before. Small downside is most of your firepower is on your arms (also due to the nature of Omnimechs) because Clanners are stupid and inflexible so you need to relearn engagements (can't really walk in there and torso-twist to block shots anymore)

- The battle map is a good step in the right direction (as opposed to having ♥♥♥♥-all), it gives more control over your lance. The original commanding interface (click there to go there) is still there. Combining both methods, IN THEORY it can lead to some pretty flexible tactical maneuvering, though it requires some time and learn and get used to commanding on the fly as you zip about and getting shot at. But you can mini-RTS some scenario, it's pretty fun.

Cons:
- You play as Smoke Jaguars.

- The characters absolutely suck. Even by 5: Mercs standard where you hire and control faceless goons, many of them still have more personality than the characters here. I guess that's lore accurate, considering they're Clanners, and Smoke Jaguars to boot.

- Career mode is non-existent. I love the sandbox of 5: Mercs, and people argue that there's no good story missions and most of it are fillers. That's not true, I still remember charging up the hill with the 2nd Crucis Lancers on Tikonov's moon, or dueling a religious fanatic with the mech in bloodied paint after a grueling raid. The whole point of career mode is to sell that soldier of fortune fantasy, and 5: Mercs does that in spades, though not as good as HBS did with Battletech. You don't manage anything here but pick some shallow skill points for your mechs and determined pilots.

- Teammate AI is braindead, still. Somehow after 5 years the devs have managed to make the teammate AI even worse. Most of the time they just suicidal-charge into encounters even when they obviously have the range advantage and geared with a generous amount of LRMs and long range lasers, and get torn up by two tanks and a Locust because they have no backups. Or if you tell them to guard a location they will mostly just stand there and get hit, or constantly running into your line of fire. Elite Clan warriors, my ass.

- The music in 5: Mercs were awesome. Simple and hard hitting, it was infused with its mythos and you can feel the bravado, the desperation, the triumph, the wonders and horrors of an Inner Sphere mercenary life. Here, none of that remains, and instead it's generic electronic music. Also in 5: Mercs there were the sounds of missile wizzing by, the hiss of laser burning your armor, PPCs striking your cockpit like a sledgehammer, etc... Most of which are neutered hard here. Most of the time you don't notice you're hit until you look at the paper doll.

Can recommend because it's fun for seasoned mechwarriors, though it might be hard to market this to anyone else but series veterans. Newcomers might be lost for a bit, but the learning curve isn't as steep as 5: Mercs as it is more accessible this time around, might be even a good stepping point to go back and explore 5: Mercs.

Survival crafting base-building open world (horror?) goes where no man has gone before: Inside. And it works.

Big DD1 fan, great game so far, despite the atrocious performance my rig was able to hold its ground. But still gonna give this game the negative until its ♥♥♥♥♥ get ironed out (Denuvo and performance), and you should as well if you have any common sense. But glad to see Dragon's Dogma coming back.

Honestly don't buy the micro-transactions if you don't want. If this game still works like in the original, you're gonna get buckets of wakestones and an infinite port crystal down the road.

Astral shifter is tactically useful as it glows in the dark which helps putting the car in park or drive quickly in emergency situations during pitch darkness. -69/10 for P2W mechanics - IGN

This game is amazing. It's basically Ace Combat 7 but more blowing ♥♥♥♥ up and less cutscenes, and you have an unstable mercenary waifu for a WSO and an equally(extremely) unstable nemesis; it's perfect.

This is more Street Fighter than Yakuza, but in a good way.

Just wow... I don't usually leave review unless I finish a game or the product completely wows me. This is... WOW. This is THE BEST roguelike I've ever played, and this is from someone who hates turn-based RPG. Probably the first of its kind as an extraction fast-paced rhythm... excuse me... turn-based game, and it will force you to think and react on your feet instead of having the leisure of most turn-based rpg. This game is about making decisions: from moment-to-moment decision like would you take cover and reload or switch the the secondary, run for the door and lure the enemies out, would you sneak past the enemies and just complete the objective, and to bigger decisions like extracting with some valuables or run in for more while risk fighting off a full demonic incursion. USUALLY if you make good decisions like scanning a room or take a second before you enter to locate the enemies then you will be fine, but alas a lot of your run depends on RNG as some guy with a flamethrower or an industrial cutter gets alerted the moment you open the door (even if you've been doing the whole floor stealth) and promptly cuts your head off from across the room; again, taking a second to pie the room before you go in helps but ♥♥♥♥ happens and ♥♥♥♥ happens A LOT. Thankfully if you die they give you a free starter box with like a knife, pistol and a few essentials so you can just keep going back in and pile the mangled bodies of your clones on your way to success.

Speaking of clones, storywise you play as a number of cloned soldiers of fortune. You work for opposing space corporations all the while there's an actual apocalypse happening where Aztec demons are invading the solar system (you can also choose to work for the demons if you want), and each faction gives you different rewards (guns, ammo, meds, clone templates for more mercs and more classes). Though to say you are just a merc is an understatement (but more like John Wick/Rambo in space/Issac Clarke/Doomguy/♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Samson armed with a demonic jawbone). You enter space stations like a force of nature, John Wicking from room to room killing hundreds of enemies (per level!) in a rhythmic ballet of bullets and blood (yes, the combat is actually a rhythm game!). But the catch is the more blood you spill or the more evil ♥♥♥♥ you do (eating corpses, killing enemies in general, or hell, just by you being there) the more the "quasimorphosis" meter goes up, and this is where ♥♥♥♥ gets real. The music changes from creepy_space_station.mp4 to the Doom 2 soundtrack, and the demons materializes out of people you just killed. The demons range from a walking tree to entities armed with Hellraiser-spikes repeating crossbows to demonic chariots depending on your quasimorphosis tiers. Your only haven becomes your gun or melee weapon as you carve a path of blood to your objectives and your extraction. The game is best when you're bleeding out, limping toward the extraction with one leg, laughing maniacally as your HMG spitting 7.92mm caliber in rhythm with the music and on your other arm with a demonic greatsword cutting down demons like its judgement day; rejoice in the fact that it doesn't matter how big or bad the demon is, nothing is bigger and badder than a 7.92 HMG in full auto, or a greatsword at a chokepoint.

Sheer desperation and anger, adrenaline shower, and eventual exhilarating triumph... are what you get for 15 bucks right now.