Recent reviews by Quiet

TLDR: collect trash, ore, and wood, build generic base, craft one of 10 available weapons from random trash you find. said trash can be found at povs that are unremarkable and samey asf. 2 hit every enemy thats the same size as you with melee, and shoot anything larger or that flies. low enemy density and variance make it abyssmally easy and empty. lore is meh, npc diolouge is buggy and mute half the time, and story is uncompelling.

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Honestly? this game has potential. it feels like an early access title. its got a lot more content to add before it can really be called a "full release game" and no im not talking about the higher level areas that havnt been unlocked by the devs yet, im talking about base gameplay and mechanics. there needs to be better combos than just you smacking a zombie with a wrench once, and then the finisher is the exact same. not only that, but youre often locked in that animation and its just bad if you have more than one surrounding you.

The core gameplay loop of this game is, walk around a barren, and empty open world and collect literal trash, to then bring home to your recycler and craft a weapon. the weapons you find, vs the weapons you craft are pretty much identical from what ive been able to see, and so theres no real point in calling it a "looter shooter" if theres no variance in loot other than trash to craft with or the very weapons youd be crafting anyway. warframe does something similar in the sense that you get materials to craft weapons that are DIFFERENT. this game only has differences in stats, but nothing in the form of variation. you have the deagle, the ak, the crossbow, the sniper, the vector, and the double barrel shotgun. the crossbow is jarringly hitscan and its a pet peve, but whatever, i could forgive that if it wasnt so increibly... devoid of enemy types, loot, and actual places to explore. youre mostly just walking around and when you do find a place, you learn very quickly that its literally like every other place. if you played new world, you know EXACTLY what im talking about, you can literally waltz to any area, loot the stuff, and then run away from the ads cause they are either too slow, or too stupid to figure out how to kill you. and thats if they even could. everything i encountered died in 2 hits from my melee, and i didnt even bother wasting ammo. theres only ever 2 or 3 enemies at most in any given area, so the actual aspect of challenge is honestly laughable. i accidentally forgot to equip my butterfly deviant, and still managed to kill the first main boss with ease with just an ak, a pistol, and a couple of grenades.

its the classic case of "lets put so many fancy textures in the game and make it pretty so we can ignore all the mechanics that we COULD have implemented instead with our dev time and resources"

that being said, theres are some things i do like about the game. the base building is ok, and the movement is pretty crisp, that being said, i just wish there was a reason to apply the smooth movement. theres lore, but it doesnt really stand out to me, and half of the npc diologue is bugged to being mute, also its a classic case of "main character dont speak, he just makes gestures" kind of story. its bland, and it feels lazy. idk how the pvp stands up, but you have to go through the tutorial to even get to other players, and that in and of itself was like pulling nails with how slow and jarring it was.

the pacing was either you being forced to look at a bunch of textures and cutscenes that made literally no sense with no context, like "ah yes the demon lord slayed the prince of azinoth, causing the blood war to finally end, which is why the teletubby faction came in and caused the blightening because they woke up from the demon lord who slayed the prince" "whats that? you dont know who any of those characters or events are? LOL we wont explain them properly, and we sure as ♥♥♥♥ arent going to talk about ANYTHING else, because thats part of the mystery~" thats essentially what the opening cutscene and tutorial feels like. sure things eventually get somewhat explained but it still feels so random. and im all chaotic storytelling when its done right, but this game just seems like it doesnt know what to be. it feels like at least in terms of theme it wants to be really analogue horror like bioshock, but then sometimes it wants to be dystopian and grim like the division, but then sometimes it wants to go full silly and be like fall guys. the cadence for all of which, never seems to actually make sense because its always random.

All in all, i think the game could benefit from three things, better combos that dont lock you in a finisher animation every time you lower the enemy to a certain health threshold, more enemy types that do more than just either shamble slowly toward you if they even spot you (they need to be better at spotting you tbh) and finally, please for the love of god, make it so that looting weapon chests means something, or make it so when you craft weapons it can roll with random stats. that way you can tickle the autism in gamers to go out and grind more mats to get god rolls. thats literally what looter shooters are, finding the best weapons to slay your enemies with better. nothing is really better, unfortunately, so it would be cool if there was actual variance in the stats of weapons you would find or craft. id avoid this game until they either change those things, or more info comes out, and i happen to be totally wrong, but after making it to the second area, is just screamed "this is gonna be the same every time"

Im actually shocked. Truly, just flabbergasted at how you can mess up this bad. im posting this review after they laid off Micheal Salvatori and a bunch of key members at bungie and delayed the final shape. This expansion was made as filler because the final shape was aparantly "overdelivering". Im shocked because despite how many hours i have in destiny, this expansion made me actually so put off that i just straight up lost interest after about 3 weeks. with every other expansion i made sure i got every exotic and weapon, regardless of whether or not it was good, now i cant bring myself to log on because it just feels so soulless and theres nothing to do thats fun. i cant even bring my friends in because, oh wow the 100 dollar dlc isnt even worth being free. Even if they made lightfall free, i couldnt recommend it.

Man, i really fell for the hype train, i had the copium in my veins and while i did enjoy the challenge of the campaign doing it solo like i do most other things, i now realize the story is as bad as it has ever been. witch queen really did spoil me, i was left in awe, the same kind of feeling when you have that epiphany of beating a campaign for a really well thought out game like metal gear solid, or hell, even sonic adventure 2 battle. you just sit there and are like "woah" while still processing how mind blown you are by the truth once you finally solve the mystery thats been lying right in your face but you either had no idea, or have been digging vigorously only to find that its still been right in front of you. thats an awesome feeling, and thats exactly what the witch queen delivered when we saw exactly how savathun got the light, which is even further supported by her deception of the witness. flawless cutscenes, immaculate storyline connections and not only were we given an amazing campaign, but honestly, the season pass was not that bad either. sure it wasnt as strong or have any major bombshells, but it set up for future seasons as well as character development for crow and other things. on top of all that, we got weapon crafting, void 3.0, the slurry of new exotics we usually get, but we also got a new weapon type with class specific exotics (yea the class glaives were weak, but they still seemed like neat concepts and only have been buffed and improved over time) as well as two new strikes and an absolutely stunning raid with some new crucible maps (i personally hate crucible and barely touch it for anything more than the pinnacles cause its just simply unbalanced and unfun, and it has been since D1, but its worth pointing out for those who main titan shotgun ape).

So why does this sound more like a witch queen review more than a lightfall review? because the campaign instead of having me contemplate the meaning of life and the truth, i was simply just sitting there wondering what the hell just happened and if there was anything else. i tried coping thinking there was just simply more in the after quests, or maybe the lore would explain it better but NOPE. the entire campaign was honestly worse than a marvel movie, it was filled with cringe cliche catchphrases from nimbus who should have gotten the rohan treatment in my opinion instead of the only somewhat likable guy who made his death so obvious from a mile away that like, it didnt feel like anything other than "oh ok, so this is when he dies". The campaign was literally just one big training montage for strand, fully equipped with a They/them (yes thats actually nimbus's pronouns and what everyone refers to "them" as even though the dude has chisled abs and a facial structure and voice unmistakably male, but i guess thats one more force thing to add to the pile of things that felt like it didnt need to be there like osiris and saint being gay out of the blue instead of bros, which i dont have a problem with being a gay furry myself, it just very sudden and forced and not at all what narratively speaking was what was going on) to make snide remarks while the world is "ending"? i say ending like that because this expansion was supposed to make us feel like we lost, as the name implies. its supposed to be our low, like the red war, but instead we win, like throughout the whole damn campaign, we succeed in blowing up the radial mast thanks to rohan doing what nimbus shouldve done by committing sudoku via self destruct (seriously i cannot stress how annoying of a character he is, hes almost as annoying as, if not moreso than ordis from warframe) we win by holding off calus's troops (admittedly, this was one of the few fun and cool moments because it really did feel like you were fighting an army with how many things spawned in) we win by beating calus in a 1v1 boss fight, we win by securing the veil from calus, we win bylearning strand and breaking past all the light supression tech they have (even though it also supressed stasis????) we win right up until the very last cutscene where we proceed to "lose" by the witness possessing our ghost (and nobody even tried or noticed to stop him) into going into the giant alien eggplant looking thing known as "the veil" and proceeding to make a purple laser shoot out and touch the witness so he can draw a purple triangle portal on the traveler and go through it along with some pyramid ships and go through it. im not exaggerating or joking in the slightest, thats literally the entire lightfall campaign including the ending. it can be summarized in one sentence and thats sad.

Now, some people might be like "ok yea the campaign was pretty ♥♥♥♥♥, but what about the gameplay? the meat n potatoes? the content?" brother, its still barren. with lightfall you get one strike (not two like witch queen) you get the one raid (ive seen leaked footage of the ending and its looking to be BARREN of lore) you get strand, which is the main selling point, and ill admit it does feel pretty good, but not nearly enough to carry the failure of the campaign on its shoulders. you can totally break the game with strand, dont get me wrong, in fact id be suprised if they dont disable hunter strand subclass entirely for the day 1 raid because it can literally just fly, and im not talking about skating, i mean ive seen videos of people literally grapple jumping to the skybox of the last wish raid to the top of the tower for the ♥♥♥♥♥ n giggles. theres several weapons that are straight up so bugged that they have been disabled for any content until further notice, and so the only exotics you can use right now are the vexcalibur (mid exotic glaive with pretty cool lore, but aside from that its a "secret" mission, theres literally triumphs for it that are not classified in the collections sooooo) the stasis bow i forgot the name of, the pre order weapon, which already got its fair share of disables when it came available last year, the strand sidearm (pretty cool, but you have to grind an insane amount to get it) and the super meh void machine gun that weakens targets and makes them "volatile" except it doesnt, because if it did, it would proc more than just for that one bullet. thats it, you cant use the exotic glaive cause its disaabled, you cant use jotuun, cause its disabled, you probably wont be able to use fighting lion because its also, disabled...... neomuna was advertised as this super cool vertical city to explore, but when i look at its map, its literally a quarter the size of the edz, and has very little verticality aside from the starting area which has NO ENEMIES. its literally just a fancy backdrop..... every time i log in to try and see something new or do something new with the dlc, i just feel let down. dont buy this absolutely trash dlc and fall for the bait like i did. i trusted bungie too much, and it cost me, i avoid pre orders, but i also should have waited to see the reviews.

yes

its ok

Honestly, i used to be able to say "yea, brawl is good." and dont get me wrong, the core gameplay isnt too terribly changed nowadays from what it used to be. No, my review now is a negative one for other reasons entirely, but still important ones.

THE TLDR
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For new players, what you need to know is that this game is similar to melee, and honestly despite ubisofts greed and lack of caring for the games health overall, still leagues better and more balanced than melee or smash could ever dream of being. That being said, I cannot reccomend this game if you want to play competitively. If you want to have a fun 8 player lan party or just play for the ♥♥♥♥♥ n grins with your freinds, then yes, this game is a gem and its free, so theres no risk of wasting money. This game also has great mechanics despite all of what im going to mention below, and has a high skill curve that if mastered can bring many years of fun, as it has for me. Now, onto the actual review.
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The beginning of the corruption
(and why it affects the game)

A while back, i think around 2018 or 2019, BMG let ubitsoft buy them out. the devs still worked on the game, but they no longer had control of the direction for it. At the time, a lot of people, including myself saw this as spelling doom for the game and thought they would kill it like they do so many other things with their greed immediately. Thankfully, I was wrong at first, and the game actually flourished. The support from ubisoft allowed BMG to make crossplay happen, which at first sucked because the servers couldnt handle it and made for some wild lag spikes. Nevertheless, it garnered a massive following compared to what it had before, so in the end that was about the only good thing ubisoft has done for brawlhalla.
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The steady deterioration

Once ubisoft got comfortable with the playerbase being high, a feature known as "experimental que" which before all this used to have whacky and sometimes unbalanced(more often than not it was, but still quite fun) mechanics that the devs let players test out and give feedback, was hardly ever touched again. back in 2016 the games goldern days in my opinion, this feature was brand new and allowed things like dashing, which many new players dont know, but was never in the original game, become an integral part of it. chase dodging? also experimental. clashing? yup. you see the pattern, and realize that most of the games more refined and skill based mechanics probably were made from experimental que. Most of these whacky mechanics never lasted more than a few months as they wanted to cycle out the stuff to keep it fresh and see if they strike gold with a new mechanic. Fast forward to today, and the last actual addition to experimental que was weapon deflects, and that was two years ago. It has remained untouched since then, but you know what get updated almost on a monthly basis? Skins, micro transactions, and overall things that make ubisoft money. The balance patches are far and few inbetween, but at least they still do them.

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The slippery slope

Now, im not going to make this review political, because politics always upset people, but unfortunately, ubisoft by nature being the company it is, tends to do things that are political, and while everyone has their opinions on things like supporting BLM or not, trump, biden, etc. none of that is what i mean by ubisoft being political ingame (though there is a direct and overt taunt that is literally the blm fist that donates to blm if you buy it, so take that for what you will) no, i mean the way ubisoft handles players ability to speak. Instead of allowing players to have a filter that would filter out slurs and vulgarity like it was before, now its just censored. this paved the way for the newest update, which happened a few days ago as i type this, that has effectively removed ingame chat. Sure, you can type amongst your clanmates, or in pregame when youre in a custom lobby, or lobby in general, but whats the point? They made the hilarious lie and excuse of "it wasnt available on other consoles so we removes it entirely and replaced it with an emote system that we totally arent going to monetize in the most greedy ubisoft fashion" when it in fact was on every console, as i have talked and had great times with people on every other console in post game chat. Now sure, there was some toxicity, but you can just literally press c or whatever it is on the controller to continue and effectively ignore them. I know it was actually a move made by them to both make money on emotes out of incessant greed, but also because the whiney people who politically run this game into the ground, decided that the best way people can make freinds should be removed because they didnt like it. On top of the chat feature getting neutered, they also thought that locking certain skins behind a lootbox formula was a great idea, which im pretty sure i remember BMG original philosophy was to have a game that even though had skins you could buy, would never go down that path, but again, ubisoft. I also remember speaking to a dev about level 100 colors, and he said "we dont want people to grind that much". Mind you, this is while we have the battlepass and challenges that force people to do far more assinine things than grinding exp, like only using heavy attacks, or only killing people with certain champs, in certain ways, on certain maps. The hypocrisy is strong with them,

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The Future

I, like most others, cant predict what will happen with 100% accuracy on anything, but seeing the way things are going with brawl, my guess is that in 2-3 years when ubisoft makes some royally retarded decisions on core gameplay loops and not only the vets who stayed till the end because they spent too much time and money on the game, finally abandon ship because its just too bad of an experience, then yea the game could die, or at least have a playerbase lower than what it was before ubisoft. At which point, instead of making an attempt to reviving it, they will probably close up shop and move on to the next host to suck blood and talent from.