Recent reviews by DC| TehAgent

Im going to keep this short given my hours into the game currently. (Ok well that was a lie)

This game is simply not the train wreck review bombers want you to think it is.

Its different than Skyrim and TES - sure. That does not make it a bad game. It gives off strong Mass Effect and Fallout 76 vibes - the 76 vibes come from the crafting stations. The combat gives me a Mass Effect feel.

Running around 'undeveloped' planets thus far is still fun. I dont want to call them barren, because theyre not - theyre also not teeming with life, like a typical TES title would be. The structures are somewhat repetitive yes but far from 'copy paste' like so many say.

I think people feel like this game is bare because its a space game. We're on generally unsettled planets - there are TONS of POIs though if you just go roam around.

Yes this works differently than Skyrim where you can just basically run anywhere that you want to. I havent found any invisible walls that Ive read about yet, but it seems best to explore an area then fast travel back to your ship, lift off, and land on another part of the planet - generally you'll want to pick a different type of biome than you just left. Say you landed on a volcanic desert; you'll want to find a mountainous region or go to the polar region to find stuff that you werent able to find in the desert.

The game is a solid 8/10 so far. I just dont get the hate for it. Its not poorly executed and its not an empty shell of a game. Its just not as 'riveting' or 'alive' as TES Obivion, FO4, or Skyrim. I have no problem with that, being that we're exploring the interstellar frontier...it does an excellent job of conveying how alone you are without being bland, empty, and boring.

It IS a very different...'pace' than your Fallout or TES title. Its not completely jam packed with constant interaction and stimulation - but that is perfectly fine. Again, its not like the worlds are empty and bland. You DO have to do some jogging around though. Perhaps some sort of small personal transport would help get around to all of the POIs that pop up without the DayZ Lite style running.

Posted 1-2-2024 at 15 hours in game. Will update as I progress.

Edit: Also something extremely noteworthy: ZERO BUGS SO FAR. I have seen people claim this game is riddled with bugs, and I have not experienced a single one yet.

Update : 1 (More Information!)

Ok - I do have some gripes about the game - BUT - I am still enjoying it.

1) Inventory management is...not great. The menu isnt great; feels cheap and low effort. Every time you open it, if you want to sort by weight, you have to do it over and over again. It reverts to sorting by name as default. It should stay however you left it - not re-sort itself back to default.

The ship's cargo hold? As far as I can tell its accessible only via menu. Here I was in the ship, looking all over the place for storage containers to use. Thats kinda weird, and cheap feeling too.

2) Planet exploration? 'Disconnected'. Yes its a mostly empty planet - we're on the interstellar frontier. There are plenty of little POIs like I said, but the way to scan all of the items you need to meens you have to visit several different biomes. Thats cool and all, but to do that you have to get in your ship, take off (load into space) then open the menu, click around on the planet's biomes and then land again (load back into the planet) That seems a bit excessive to scan a handful of plants and creatures, grab some ore in between scans and then blast off again. Sure you'll run into a POI while youre doing, it but meh. It breaks up the immersion.

Crisp, fun game to play. Gunplay feels good, vehicles feel good. Maps are pretty good as well; obviously we'll all have our favorites and ones we dont like as much. Lots of fun moments with other players. Very few bad experiences; far less than your typical FPS game. I dont care about your usual trolling or whatever; the players in this game seem genuinely more 'fun' than most shooters. Its like the whole look of the game lets us just relax, have fun together and not take ourselves too seriously.

No other game like it - highly recommended if you want to play large scale combined arms games. Multiple infantry classes, MBTs, light tanks, off road vehicles, fighters, bombers, large transport vehicles both land and ground. Hundreds of players all on the same server all at once battling it out.

2023 Update:

Many will say 'pay to win' and that is simply not the case. Things purchasable only by spending money are purely cosmetic. Everything else is unlockable for free, by spending Cert Points. Cert Points are gained by just playing the game; virtually everything you do provides XP ticks which in turn provide Cert Points. That said, it CAN feel grindy if youre not patient. Its a long term game; not something you max out in 3 months and move on.

Default weapons are typically the best all around guns, but others are sidegrades - they do certain things better but others far worse. Thus useful only in specific circumstances, but excel at what they do in those circumstances.

Joining public squads can help early on. There is a LOT to take in and the game is pure chaos sometimes with hundreds of players all in the same battle space fighting it out. But thats why theres nothing like this out there...not even BF can compare.

5 Players team up to pilot a starship to adventure. What can go wrong?

This can be an extremely fun game to play if you get a good dynamic crew. Captain matters most. Thus far I have only been Pilot and Captain, but I got us into some serious adventures as Captain. Ive been under the command of other Captains that were kind of dry and not so exciting - you need a Captain willing to do some crazy sh.

You will also need to really learn your roles. Captain is a decision maker and really only needs knowledge of how to pilot and man a gun. But if youre Science Officer or Engineer, you need to know what youre doing. A good Science Officer and Enginneer are crucial to getting you OUT of situations the Captain gets you in to.

This game seems very deep and involved after you start learning it. Its pretty much everything No Mans Sky should have been. This game is one of the most promising and exciting EA titles Ive ever played.

There are a few cons though. The graphics look like something from 2000, which is fine - but with a graphical overhaul, this game woiuld be utterly amazing. The space graphics are fine - its the the FPS environments that are old-school. The gameplay more than makles up for this though.

Recommended? Absolutely.

One of my first real adventures found me as a new Captain. Our Weapons Officer had a lot of experience and was somehow assigned to our ship, crewed by newbies. We encountered a very tough and very well armed friendly ship. The weapons officer spied something he wanted - that ship's cannon.

Well, we cant fight this ship, because it has a cannon that can obliterate us in short order in direct combat.

However, we formulated a plan to take the ship..

Two of us had to beam over after we hit it with our main cannon one time, just enough to drop its shields. The pilot had to keep us under it so it cant hit us with that dreaded cannon. We hit it hard, beamed over, and got intp a firefight with its crew. Our Engineer got to their Engineering deck single handedly while I held the remaining crewman at bay in the teleport room, and shut the ship down. The rest of our crew beamed over and helped us slay the remaining crewmen.

The ship was now ours.

I claimed our new pride and joy amid cheering of our ragtag crew.

Then the news came from Weapons Officer Barbosa:

We were now marked as Pirates.

Not Great

This game seems awesome and grand when you first start out. The planet I started on was difficult to survive and progress on.

Once I left, it was pretty easy everywhere I went - even on far more toxic, hot, or cold planets. Even the ones with super mad sentinels were easy. Everything is easy easy easy.

It's like a dumbed down Minecraft where you upgrade a few things over and over with better upgrades until you get bored. You upgrade to be able to upgrade faster.

Grinding money can be boring after a while.

The game isn't bad, but definitely not what I thought I was getting in to. Everyone in my small community seems to have quit playing it within a few days.

It's hard to say recommended or not recommended, so I'm going with not based on the hype, promises, lies, and misunderstandings. Is it a bad game? No, not at all. Is Ita great game? No, not at all.

Heres what you should know about The Crew:

Tuning

The Tuning Garage is more of a bolt on parts shop. You dont actually tune anything. You select a part and put it on. These parts are unlocked through races and events. I was a bit let down on the whole 'tune your car' thing, since you arent really tuning your car.

Customization:

There are lots of colors and vinyls to choose from, but it feels lacking in the customization department. Again, a letdown. Yeah, its got body mods and stuff, but it fails to meet expectations set by NFSU2. For instance, you can pick a wide array of stripes, but not choose their color.

Multiplayer:

This is NOT an MMO. Yes, there are thousands of people online. However, you will only see a few at a time. At no point will you ever see 100 other drivers at the same time. Ive seen a few people, and we have largely ignored each other. 7 other drivers is the maximum it will ever show you at once. They wont always be the samer drivers, but that it the limit. Thus far Ive done everything alone, though Im still pretty new to the whole thing.

Now, the game is fun. Especially with a wheel, pedals and H shifter. They will require about 1/2 hour of tweaking to get just right - but its very enjoyable when done. People said not to use manual and hardcore driving assist (which is zero assists such as traction control and stability) but quite honestly, I find this the best way to drive. Granted, I have just under 20 years driving experience and have had my fair share of street and drag races IRL. Manual transmissions are natural to me. The vehicles simply act slightly more natural with everything off. I think the visceral experience of shifting and turning a wheel really add to the experience...Im not even sure Id enjoy the game half as much without it based on the lack of customization available.

The game's storyline plays out like a cheap ripoff of a FF movie. Given the arcadey nature of the game, thats ok with me. Cheese is good sometimes. There are tons of short mini games involved such as hitting as many targets as you can, jumps, 'go fast and stay on the road' races and such. There are plenty of odds and ends to keep you busy for quite some time if you are a completionist. The races and storyline events can be tough, requiring a few shots at it to learn the track before a victory can be eked out most of the time.

My most major complaint is the lack of actual tuning and customization. Everything else seems to work as it should at this point. After some hours of trial and error, I have the steering wheel decent enough to handle the game and feel pretty ok with it. Its not perfect by any means, but serviceable.

If you want a game with a storyline like a bad Fast & Furious movie, driving style along the veins of NFSU 2, and just a [fair] bit of customization, this might be what you are looking for.

If you're looking for realistic handling, deep customization, in depth tuning, and a more serious/sim style experience, this game is not for you. It has none of those things.

Im going with Recommended because its not super broken out of the box. Everything works, its fun, but its still a bit of a letdown. I was hoping for real tuning and deeper options for customizing your ride.

8/10

Update Dec 2017

This game can be fun, but is often not.

The Developers have failed to address longstanding balance problems with this game.

In most games, there is a balance between fast and agile vehicles/characters, and slow and tanky characters. There is a balance with high mobility and low mobility: High Mobility = Squishy Low Mobility = Very Durable. That balance is lacking in Robocraft.

This game allows aircraft to be much faster than ground bots, yet have the same durability and damage output. Obviously, this leads to aircraft dominating matches. They have many, many pros and very few cons - if any at all.

There is also a balance in the skill it takes to play a character and the skill it takes to defeat that character/vehicle. Typically, spamming keys can be easily defeated with better game play. That is not so in Robocraft. Oftentimes, simply holding the W key allows you to wildly evade being hit, because of low fire rates and low projectile speeds. Other times, all it takes is randomly spamming directional keys to evage shots from the only weapon capable of taking these things down from the ground: The Railgun. Unfortunately, the Railgun is a weapon that has a very limited number of shots that can be fired before it needs to be recharged. The most powerful one can only fire twice every 8 seconds. This does not work when facing aircraft that can bombard with AoE damage from the sky. They do not have to actually hit you to deal damage, and on the ground, you are a much larger and slower moving target.

The game has rarely ever been balanced through various major changes - the decisive advanage always going to aircraft. The developers often take a very long time to address even the most absurd imbalance in favor of aircraft.

The game, when it is fair, is fun to play. Unfortunately, its a coin toss as to whether or not it will be a fair match with 'normal' bots that do not exploit terrible balance mechanics. One game is fun and engaging with both teams having fun, and the next may be a tedious game of peekaboo damage wallops from players that you have little to no chance of retaliating against.

Imagine if you will, a grenadier that is allowed to fly and move very fast to access high locations that your character cannot. That grenadier can strafe out from behind something waaaaay up high, toss a handful of grenades down in the blink of an eye, and immediately disappear back behind cover in an elevated position. The grenades, when exploding, are very difficult to see through due to particle effects - making you play half to fully blinded.

All that you can do is look up and wait for it to pop out again - but even as a sniper, you cannot headshot this grenadier to kill him. He will be hurt, but will not die. Instead, he will hide behind that elevated position again for a few seconds, heal, and begin the process all over again. Every capture point you must take is surrounded by elevated positions that he can use to peek out of and lob grenades at you. You are also highlighted on his screen with a name and health bar - as is he for you. However, if he manages to hit you with AoE explosions from that elevated position, and you fail to hit him with a single projectile from the ground, his name bar will disappear - but yours will stay. Congratulations, now you cant even see when and where he will pop out from, but he can see exactly where you are - through the walls.

If that does not sound like fun to you, do not play this game.

Most of the reviws I see are funny and sadly accurate - but thats not a bad thing.

The game is fun even though there is no real goal outside of gear up and survive.

The 'survive' part means that anyone you encounter that is armed will more than likely open fire immediately. That has been my experience so far. There are snipers that camp areas waiting to shoot you, and may not even want your loot. As a newbie, you must expect and accept that you WILL die and lose your gear at some point.

Looking for a more SRS BSNS game like Fallout NV? Well, you've come to the right place.

STALKER COP is an open world, sandbox style FPSRPG. Its more serious, and less people enjoy your company - but its more fun too. This game doesnt have much humor, no VATS-esque system, no level ups. Its all in the gear you acquire through missions, raids, and stash hunting. You can pretty much do whatever you want, whenever you want - though it is wise to have the proper gear for the job. You can play however you like, from stealth to full auto brawler to sniping and everything in between - or all of it.

The human enemy AI can be fairly cunning at times. You cannot simply hole up in a room and wait for them - they will lob grenades in, bait you out, even lay down suppressing fire while their buddies come around to flank you. I can complain slightly that they seen to 'forget' about the player at times - but their reaction is quick when you reappear as if 'reminded' of the previous battle. This has only happened when I have successfullly evaded them, never in any circumstance do they simply abandon a battle when you are detected. Enemies can detect you not only by sight and your flashlight, but sound as well!

The graphics in the game are great, should be able to max everything out on a GTX 460 or better; a 9800 1GB handles the game very well too. In fact, they are some of the best graphics to date IMHO. It also scales well when turning down the settings for less capable rigs.

The only thing I can possibly pick at in this game are some of the weapon sounds. They just arent crisp enough - but thats it. The ambient sounds and everything else audio-wise is wonderfully done.

I give this game a 10/10. Masterfully executed, lots of content and replay factor.