Recent reviews by Protocol7

have played on and off since it came out in 2013 - in fact I have founder status - and there's still so much content left.

there's a lot to digest but it's overall so good. core gameplay is a fantastic 3rd person action game

storytelling can be hard to follow at times, but it's generally all very high quality

graphics and everything still holds up remarkably well (though probably has been gussied up as time has gone on)

couple annoying bugs here or there, but nothing game breaking

game ruined by crossplay feature that has introduced a new wave of trolls that abuse the vote kick functionality to boot players from co-op games for "AFK" despite them literally being physically present in the game and active in voice/text chat

not that the game is worth playing anymore with the myriad of server issues that have been getting worse and worse

441 hours down the drain. bummer because the co-op community used to be really chill.

another decent game ruined by clueless developers that don't know what they're doing

so after finishing the game I still really can't recommend it, which sucks because I'm a big fan of the original trilogy, and in this one, there's really good parts. that said...

First thing I want to get out of the way is Unreal Engine 5. What a piece of crap. Epic Games should be ashamed. It looks nice but in our infinite quest for fidelity, we're left with games that don't run well on top of the line hardware, even with all off the fancy bandaids like DSLR and Frame Generation. Don't get me wrong, I finished the game and it was obviously not unplayable, but it was rougher than it should have been for a PC with a 13th gen i9, 64GB of DDR5 RAM, and a RTX 4090. Yeah, Intel sucks and all that, but only UE5 titles struggle this way with this PC.

Next, the gameplay; it's a lot better in a lot of ways than the original games, but it's also worse; enemy spawning is frankly out of control. I never had issues with money, ammo, or gear, but the relentless onslaught of 3-packs of bloodsuckers and patrols of enemy stalkers that seemingly spawn out of thin air really wear on you. And that's not to even say about the AI's laser aim. I was sprinting in a direction perpendicular to an enemy, full blast, without encumbrance, on the lowest difficulty, and an AI still nailed at least 6 consecutive shots on me. Like, that AI is the frickin' terminator in terms of accuracy. And it doesn't change with range, so if an enemy sees you in the night, they'll start taking potshots at a distance, and you can hardly see where to return fire. Better to pop an energy drink and run.

Some mutants need better tuning, the pseudodogs already got a pass but they still spawned like 30+ phantoms if you'd let them. Bloodsuckers are annoying, and I thought they were supposed to be rare in lore, but they seem to spawn everywhere in 3-packs, have annoying ass CC, and seem to serve as a means to keep your shotgun ammunition levels in check.

Level design varies from bad to great. The good parts were really good, some of the laboratory/industrial levels felt almost like Half-Life in terms of design. Other parts like the Swamps were so bad that I almost didn't want to play the game anymore. On top of having countless enemies, the sequence leading up to the Clear Sky base with the chimera and the incoming emission is just agonizing. I think there are maybe better ways to add additional pressure to the player on their way to the base, particularly when the actual area is designed such that going into the water limits your movement so much that they clearly don't want you doing that at all, even if it looks shallow.

That's to say nothing of the bugs, one of which I had to use the UETools mod to noclip through a wall to talk to an NPC that spawned on the wrong side of a door they were supposed to unlock after some dialogue. Without this I would have been completely soft locked, and that's just the worst one I can recall off the top of my head. Like, I absolutely respect the ambition, and it's decent, even good at parts, but the bad parts are just really, really rough that I think the game would have benefited from a few months more of development.

I finished it out of owing it to myself as a fan of the original trilogy, but they have a ways to go until the game is really '"ready." Fans of the series should enjoy what's here, but others may find it too rough.

i like to get high and chop trees

idk who fired the witch but we got cool guns out of it, so

It's a good interactive movie. Great visuals, fairly predictable but overall interesting plot. Loved the setting and wish we get a chance to explore it more.

Gameplay seems fine, nothing extraordinary for 2024, and in fact the encounters and controls seem clunky and somewhat poorly thought out. The controls just do not work well on PC, especially with trackball mice, and even on the normal difficulty, I'm struggling to complete certain encounters successfully because the AI given to your two squadmates in campaign constantly switch between being somewhat useful in melee (not near as effective as the player character is, mind you) and doing absolutely nothing of value at range. And there's a lot of annoying ranged enemies.

Beyond that, the performance issues are too much of a detriment to the experience as a whole. I exceed the recommended specs but can't pull a consistent 60FPS on Medium preset. This computer is a few years old now, and definitely can't hit the 144fps framerate the 144hz monitor affords, but a 3070 should still be able to hit 60fps at 1080p.

Plus, Epic Online Services was installed automatically at launch, which seems undesirable if you don't want to play with other players. EOS is not mentioned on the product page at the time I purchased. Just seems weird to go about it that way, why not be upfront about it?

bought, played, 3 hours immediately deleted from my life

ERROR 2014. ERROR 3013. ERROR 2014. ERROR 3013

yeah I don't think it's my network or fiber optic internet connection. fun game when it works but I've been able to play one mission from start to finish without disconnecting in 3 hours. this is 2 years after release??

fun map design, good mix of towers. I am a sucker for any TD that allows for mazing of any kind (grew up on WC3 custom maps) and this one is definitely a good fresh take.