Recent reviews by Taki

goood

Play the original PoE. This one's trash.

Somehow worse than HLL

If you enjoyed playing the world renowned two-player board game "Guess who?", look no further than Squad44. You'll love spending most of your time squinting at the 0.001 opacity, 2px large nametag above friendly players. Because that's what multiplayer video games are all about: manufactured difficulty and NOT besting your opponents at warfare!

If you thought this game is about combat, shooting, and roleplaying as a soldier, you are wrong! It is actually a contemporary art piece on how not to design a user interface! It is designed to look like trash so you can turn away from it, which is its purpose.

Sometimes I'll alt-tab during a queue and click back and accidentally select a team; that causes me to not be able to join the other team if my friends are there for 15-20 minutes (depends on server).

Some items like outposts block movement and can't be jumped over.

Enemies will sometimes spawn-camp a garrison, killing spawning enemies instead of destroying the garrison (as is the intended mechanic in the game).

Your friendlies can block your movement, effectively cutting off narrow corridors.

There is a felt lack of features in the server browser (filters by ping, map, etc.)

Teams without a commander are doomed from the start. This dependency is bad game design.

Game is too dark (even in daytime settings).

There's no way to adjust sights. H&G had that.

There's no way to adjust fire rate. H&G had that.

Trucks ignore most of the terrain, like low walls or thin trees, but get stuck in ditches and trenches (it's amazing the game lets you roll the dice on driving over a trench instead of having an invisible wall there which would save everyone the time).

Grenades will continue to roll after landing no matter the surface they land on. Snow? Watch it roll 5 meters away from where it landed. Muddy slope? Nope, there it goes rolling back down to you. The only reason a grenade will stop rolling is it has exploded.

The game can be fun sometimes. The most fun you can have is actually talking and taking it not very seriously. Let yourself get immersed, and if you want to get better, watch some youtube videos; or just play more: once you use the mic, there's going be someone willing to help you get better. There just so many tips and mechanics you just won't figure out on your own. Plus, you can't know what else you are going to found out about your teammates? Someone has a funny voice? Someone can do impressions? Someone is a Harry Potter fan? Someone is a gun fanatic? Someone is in the army? Someone is actively serving? Crazy, right? All those people I had in my team, which was nuts!

It's perfect

The game is fine but my PC can't handle it; even with DLSS set to performance and 3080 Ti, I can't hit 100 FPS.

The crafting is very simplified. It's not clear what can you get from what. It's mostly a looting game, rather than survival, which is fine, but not what I was looking for. The story seems dull, the good, 'old, "Hey, you are finally awake, now save the world or something". For how big of a role the lore plays in the game, it sure is boring.

The UI is pretty but maybe a bit too pretty; as I mentioned, it's no clear what you can get from what, and even if you need to forage or just loot. It's unintuitive. The building is very flexible; maybe too flexible: there are too many keybinds to cycle through available build elements, and to position and rotate them.

When an item breaks, it's not clear that you need a repair bench. It just goes red and you are left with no weapon.

One of the best games I've ever played. The story, the narration, the setting, the characters, the dialogue, it's all phenomenal. The low-res graphics don't take away from the incredible world of Avernum.

Frighteningly immersive.

I feel unease being in the radius no matter how much battery of my headset I've wasted girding my loins and gearing myself up at the home base. I haven't felt this way since Metro games. Atmospheric environment, but not distracting. Scary, but not petrifying.

Also, you can dual wield weapons if you want to. I still haven't done a dual sawed-off only attempt at clearing an area only because reloading is a bit of a pain if you don't have chest tracking and your body is all over the place. I will try to do dual Beretta's at some point.

Exploration was slow and difficult at first, but once I got to know my gear better and learned how to take care of it I acquired confidence to explore the areas more, which is rewarded with more loot and boosts confidence further.

Still, areas stay scary and challenging no matter how many times I've replayed them and looted them.

The game is very forgiving since it has auto save and manual save options, but I don't see myself abusing it to perfect an encounter once I've completed it - it would just mean I'd be getting spooked again for no benefit. If I had wasted ammo or lost a piece of gear, maybe, but I haven't seen point in reloading yet unless I've died.

There is a lot that can be improved and added. Really hope that devs can keep updating it often and for a long time.

Mistlands is impossible to play without mods. The rest of the game is fine up to that point, but once you reach mistlands you might as well stop playing. The biome is no fun at all and feels like a different game; the hares running around feel like an after-thought; the progression path in mistlands is convoluted and idiotic (2 more crafting stations + to get them you need to kill friendly NPCs which is not immediately clear you are forced to do to progress further); the bugs in combination with the terrain make it difficult to fight and they basically circumvent every combat mechanic you've learned up to that point (they have knockback and flight, and weakspots that leave no room for opportunity unless you are willing to cheese it or put yourself directly in harms way); during thunderstorm there's an obnoxious, loud, crackling sound of thunder. Every. Four. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Seconds.

So after "meadows", "mountain", "black forrest", "plains", and "swamp" the developers have run out of creative juice so it's all X-lands now. Why not "swamplands", "plainslands", "forrestlands", and so on? The next biome is going to be Ashlands. It took them months to put out this garbage biome, so in half a years time I don't expect anything better. If Mistlands, and the naming convention, are anything to go by, god help them

Barely tolerable game design in the other 6 out of 7 biomes doesn't warrant a thumbs up.
The game is tolerable with mods, and friends.

Gun play and mechanics are similar to Far Cry 3 and Far Cry 4, though the inventory system and skill point system has been changed drastically, as was the case with Far Cry 4. Despite that, with the story and world detail, the game does feel new - but you just can't shake off the feeling you are replying Far Cry 3 in a different setting. That is, if that was your first Far Cry game.