Recent reviews by vassilevb

Gameplay — if you've played Portal/2, then you've accidentally played this game already.

There is no level editor, which makes this game short-lived and story-focused (dare I say, story-crippled).

Spoilers ahead, obviously.

I expected the setting (Europa, one of Jupiter's moons) to be intriguing, but I got severely disappointed (all I got to see is Portal/2 chambers). The story simply stinks. When the human characters in your story are supposed to be highly trained scientists on an extraterrestrial mission, but are actually less mature and less informed than the frickin' AI (they are unable to give an adequate response to the AI's solid counterarguments and are arrogant enough to say "I am not arguing with a robot"; they've obviously never heard of basic principles of utilitarianism to which almost any sane economist and politician abides by (this is especially obvious during the global frickin' pandemic we're witnessing)), you know that's lazy writing (yes, I am aware that this is a game, not a lecture or a textbook, but it's painful for me). Also, why do you have to put your føkkin' religion in a sci-fi game, for føkk's sake... Also, almost any scientist would give his/her life to save humanity (they are already doing it indirectly) and is mostly aware that "free will" is just another folk-psychological explanation of a certain set of behaviours. The pretence of seriousness and "depth" in the narrative is overdone, making this game even less entertaining. In my book, this is yet another piece of evidence that almost all sci-fi is actually psci-fi (i.e. pseudoscience fiction) which makes me hate fiction in general even more.

One of the few things that "had my vibe" was the optional chamber F56 (chapter 6). It allowed me to apply my training in formal logic (something that the majority of my university peers find very irritating), albeit in a very simple manner (just four operators (conjunction ("∧"), inclusive disjunction ("∨"), exclusive disjunction ("⊕"), negation ("¬")), no hints like truth tables, but even if you lack this kind of training, trial-and-error would always lead you to the solution, of course, at the cost of your time). One of the reasons why I'm fascinated by formal logic is because of the simple devices, called transistors are grouped in what's called "logic gates". The latter are what make contemporary electronics work (integrated circuits, RAM sticks, CPUs, you name it). Anyway...

The music is fine.

This is not a bad game (there are worse games that got my thumbs up in the past), but there are too many things that are just ruining my attempt to have fun.

It's a weird mix between L4D and tower defense (the latter is especially true on higher difficulties, since you're forced to use choke points to your advantage, if you want to survive), but without zombies (which automatically wins bonus points in my book). It's also way less frustrating than L4D and offers some loadout customization + an interesting grid-based skill/trait/perk system. It's grindy, of course, but still fun in coop. The "story" is garbage and irrelevant (and also offers an m-night-shyamalanian "twist", lol).

1o female marines that have never been mistaken for a man / 1o.

This is not a game. This is a second grade humour (not fun for me, I guess I'm an old guy) clicker-achievement-spammer trashware. I almost can't believe that you can sell something advertised as a game, which lacks any meaningful gameplay. I got lured by the simple art and now I feel stupid for falling for it.

a.k.a. theGrind: Call of the Wallet

Disclaimer: I've payed for all the DLCs, because I don't like the butchered versions of my games. I've only played on Layton Lakes so far. I know about the shooting range in Hirschfelden, but it does not negate my second point.

This game is fun for me and I'll keep playing it. However, it suffers from the following:

1. Too many bugs (e.g. AI pathfinding is atrocious — animals, including your paid DLC dog, constantly bump into and/or get blocked by boulders; sometimes my gadget breaks and I can't see any marked tracks on its display, not even my dog indicator, so I lose sight of my dog, I have to restart the game in a middle of a pursuit of a wounded animal — it's so frustrating). This breaks the immersion significantly. Also, did I mention the crashes?
2. It is extremely grindy. It's almost impossible to enjoy this game in a casual manner. You can't jump in and simply test your gear (some of which is paywalled, but more on that later) right away, as you can in Arma 3, for example.
3. When you begin to play, you're given extremely limited information about the behaviours and the states of the animals. You're bound to read external guides and maps, if you hate wasting your time.
4. At the beginning, you don't have access to decent ammunition (higher penetration is what you should be aiming for, don't waste your in-game money for hollow-points, as I did). This results in an extreme disadvantage in long range shots (which are almost the only shots you'll have the opportunity to take at the beginning, because you haven't learned to be patient/silent and don't know about the fact that you need to crouch-walk/crawl all the føkken time yet and you spook animals 200 metres away before you're even able to see them).
5. Software-as-a-service "business model" scam + paywalls everywhere = a game that most people expect to enjoy in a singleplayer. Føkk this 5#1+, I am so sick of it.
6. If you decide that you want a less arcadey and more of a simulator experience, you can turn off the highlighting of the animal tracks. However, it's very hard to notice them that way if you're just starting to play, unless they are very well illuminated (most of the time they are not). Then, you have the option of buyng a DLC - the bloodhound. It can do the following of bloodtrails/droppings for you somewhat reliably. Doesn't make it a piece of cake, though, it's still kinda tough to pursue an animal which you couldn't shoot in the organs for some reason (cf. point 4).
7. If you decide that you wanna cosplay as Robin Hood, I mean, you decide to go with a bow/crossbow, then get ready for lots of frustration and even more grind. Before you get the hang of distance estimation and arrow drop which naturally comes after many hours of experience (you need your animals to be around 30 metres away from you — good luck not spooking them with the tiniest noise you make while crouched/prone), you will give up and pay more money for the tripod/treestand (yes, they are paywalled).
8. Get ready to re-download the whole game (30GB download, 60 GB installation) after every single update. Good luck with the reduced lifespan of your SSD. I'm sorry, but this is føkken ridiculous.
9. The zeroing is arcadey and has fixed values (25/50/75 metres or 75/150/300 metres). You will not actually learn how much of a struggle (especially for an unsupervised beginner, such as I am) it is to zero a weapon IRL.
10. You must pay in-game money for sleeping in a cabin (e.g. you want to fast forward to daylight, because you føkken hate not being able to see 5#1+ during the night, because the night-vision scope & night-vision binoculars are paywalled).
11. Oh, yeah, in-game money is hard to come by. The prices for some weapons (some of which are required for quests, e.g. the .45-70 lever action rifle costs 48000 money) are insanely high (cf. point 2). Also, don't waste your in-game money for the hunting structures (as I did) — they are overpriced and are next to useless (offering limited angles and distances).
12. Some of the quests require luck, not skill.

That's all I can think of right now, I'm sure there's more.

A few good things:
a) The game looks and sounds beautiful. Unfortunately, this wears off quickly, after you get acquainted with the flaws I mentioned above (especially point 1).
b) You will learn a thing or two about shot placement. As Paul Harrell said (while discussing the legal consequences of participating in a citizen-involved shooting): "there is no replacement for shot placement".
c) It's fun only if you can accept the grindiness.
d) To appreciate the autoloaders (before you ask — yes, the ARs are paywalled), you will need to make the game a little bit "harder" for you. Go to Settings -> Game -> turn off "Auto chambering". Now, every bolt action rifle/pump action shotgun/single-action revolver will have to be c0ck3d manually (default button R) after each shot. You will appreciate the autoloaders' IRL added value (yes, the semi-automatics are also referred to as "autoloaders").
e) (EDIT from 23-NOV-2022) I'm giving a "Labour of love" nomination, since I'm willing to bet that almost all the problems are due to poor management & lead game designer decisions, not because the people who actually create the game are incompetent/lazy/scammers.

EDIT from November 21st, 2023:
It gets a second "labour of love" nomination from me for the same reasons mentioned above.

Okay, this is a somewhat simplified Rainbow Six Siege/Zero Hour with, dare I say, very ugly graphics (at least according to my personal taste). I cannot make the connection between a cartoony art style and tactical shooting setting — it feels like an abomination to me. My association with close quarters tactical shooting setting is realism (cf. Insurgency/Sandstorm/Zero Hour), not cybercunk high school grade comic book. All these bright colours make it hard to see enemies for me (try to spot someone standing stationary behind a commodity shelf in a supermarket, for example). Furthermore, there is no leaning to the sides, making it hard to do quick and relatively safe acute angle peeking.

I have to admit that I got lured by the "no map knowledge/procedural map generation" marketing fad. I got deceived successfully. The maps get "procedurally generated" each week. It's got too small of a playerbase, which makes it so that the regular/veteran players learn the maps quickly and take advantage of their overall experience with the game. Even nastier, you sometimes get into a 1v3 or 2v1 matches.

I bought this a few months back and didn't install it right away - I was struggling with HDD space and enjoyed Hunt: Showdown (I still can't get enough of it after 2000 hours). Thus, I can't refund, but at least I can whine about it in my "review". And, for the record, I'm not a R6 Siege fanboy (it's too cartoony and arcadey for my taste as well).

I hate myself for being a stupid consumer with limited capacity for self control. I despise the software-as-a-service business model. I despise the economic system in which company leaders' only true goal is profit above anything else (regardless of what they claim — this is what a systematic observation of their behaviour unequivocally reveals; and I hate the fact that anybody on their place would behave exactly the same, regardless of what one believes about what one would do in identical situation - overwhelming evidence weigh more than anecdotal self-ascriptions). I hate myself and my primitive brain. I hate myself. And I hate my primitive føkcing brain.

If you forget (which is not possible) how frustratingly buggy the PC version MK (2009) (I'm sure at least one person wanted to kill themselves after experiencing the progression reset), I consider this one a downgrade (with the exception that the gameplay is identical to MK (2009)). Everything looks more plastic-y. The x-rays and fatalities are getting more cartoony. Some of the DLC (yeah, we have DLC, welcome to f0kken 2022 gaming) fighters have no place in a fighting game (the alien now does kung-fu, seriously?). The online is almost dead (I, personally, don't care) and the people you'll come across are try-hards that will juggle your pathetic useless body over and over again with any fighter they pick and you won't be able to touch them once (which is quite depressing). The absolute worst thing about this game is that Steam requires 77 gigabytes of free hard drive space, despite the game actually taking ~40 gigabytes. You will not be allowed to start the installation if you don't have at least 77 gigabytes of free space. But, wait, f0kk me, even 40 gigabytes is too f0kken much for a stupid fighting game that you wanna boot up for the rare occasions of your buddy visiting you and you both decide on a quick nostalgic-driven local "couch" fight (the only multiplayer fighting games are good for is local "couch" multiplayer). Oh, and speaking of booting, if you don't install it on SSD, but on a regular mechanical HDD, then the game will take an obscene amount of time to start (for 2022 standards). This is ridiculous and this is not how fighting games should be "evolving".

Why the thumbs up, then? Well, it's still fun to play. On "very easy" difficulty. (:

uninstall / 1o

Thank you, Alle Silva, Marcos Teles, Renato Silva, Natalia Rodrigues, Eduardo Carvalho!

This game føcks with you in lots of ways, some of which are:

1. Dreadful UI/Main Menu/control over settings (why can't I turn off the irritating music?).
2. Bland gameplay of "shoot the robots in the room, go to the next room, shoot the robots in the room, go to the next room, shoot big robot boss".
3. In-built failure to control your avatar/playable character with fluency, resulting in painfully slow turning/movement. Also, bad action trigger detection, resulting in evasive movement/going into cover when you actually wanna just sprint/go up a ladder, etc. It's very frustrating to deal with. It's as if you're playing an ancient PS1/PS2 action adventure of lesser quality (there are lots of them, one unfortunate example being Predator: Concrete Jungle).
4. Pseudoscientific fictional bülls#it about "human vs. robot" type of racism, which leads to utterly re+ärded and unlikable characters. "Bonus" fückery points for the 7+ plot twists that you are subjected to (at least the cutscenes are skippable). Obligatory line of the final big bad boss being "I'm the good guy".
5. Pathetic attempts to hide the pretense of serious social "commentary" behind goofy humour, which just isn't funny (I've been labeled by my IRL friends as having a goofy humour, so maybe I know when stuff that passes as "goofy" actually is just not funny).
6. Irritating unstoppable music during the intensive action gameplay sequences.
7. Missable cheevos that force you to play through the game multiple times (føck me, I guess, I'm never doing this to myself).
8. Dead multiplayer with grindfest cheevos (I've reached a point where I prefer to play games that I actually enjoy, not turning my gaming passion into a second føck1ng job that nobody pays me for).
9. Disgustingly ugly weapon art/design.
10. Ridiculous bosses (both in art/design and tediousness).
11. Unskippable credits. There's a cutscene that you apparently *must* watch, because you need to get the føkken message that, you see, "THIS GAME IS ACTUALLY ABOUT LOVE, NOT DEATH, IGNORANT RACISM, OR DESTRUCTION". As if I'm watching a føkken anime (this is why I don't watch anime).

The curious/likable things about this game for me were:

1. The damage model of the regular (non-boss) humanoid robots.
2. The art/design of the non-boss humanoid robots.
3. The Frenchie-boy Cain. He doesn't føkk around, doesn't complain, and actually has some føkken brains, in contrast to his fellow human "characters".

If I wanna be constantly føcked by a game, I can always go back to Escape From Tarkov (I've got ~1500 hours in it, FYI).

I'm happy to uninstall / 1o.

I didn't expect this to be as fun as it is (with a G29 wheel and a manual gear shifter). Pretty cool.