Recent reviews by Insanity

Great story about a sassy little lady and a cool fox.

Performance:
With a 3060 and a 5800x I currently get around 80-100 fps on average at any given time at 1440p. There is some variation depending on the level and amount of current action on the screen, but more than playable overall. The main issue with rendering performance in this game is the unacceptable fps drops of more than 20+ at times, which shows that there is still optimization that needs to be done. This is with DLSS set to performance mode, and if you want to play this game at a high enough frame rate to have decent responsiveness, DLSS or FSR is essentially a requirement unless you recently got a 4090 or so. Luckily performance DLSS is good enough in this game that I don't notice any real drop in image quality with it on, just a huge increase in fps. Ray tracing is indistinguishable from the regular global illumination besides tanking fps, so for me it stays off along with other silly options like motion blur, depth of field, and "lens" options where someone got rendering confused with movie cameras.

Visuals/Sound/Immersion:
Great effort has clearly gone into making the game true to the universe that its portraying and it shows. Lots of high quality assets, voice acting, and atmosphere when progressing through levels. The battle music is awesome during fights and it really does feel like you're in the role you're playing. It is however a strange decision that some of the voice acting has strong accents: If the character being played originated from a fantasy planet, why do they sound like they're British/Jamaican? A relatively small gripe overall.

Combat:
Default keybindings are good, except perhaps for sliding(shift+ctrl) which can easily be changed. Combat feels quick and responsive(provided that you have sufficient fps). Killing enemies feels very satisfying with dismemberment, rag-dolling, and just how weighty and impactful the weapons feel. One of my favorite parts of the game is how seamlessly you can switch between blasting enemies with a lasgun to slashing them with a sword. For some reason though, enemies can spawn nearly on top of you, and I have witnessed several times a group of about a dozen enemies, including elites, pop into existence about 10 feet in front of me. If this includes a trapper(which can one shot you) or any other specials that can instantly disable you it feels even more cheap.

Progression:
This is where the problems begin, as the current progression system leaves something to be desired. There is a max level of 30 and you get to pick between three traits every 5 levels, except that none of the choices are all that appealing or change the gameplay(or your class) in any meaningful way. Rather you are given a choice between, for example, +5% damage or +10% toughness under some condition. This leaves the acquisition of gear as the primary way to improve so that you can take on higher difficulties. The only ways I have encountered so far to get gear are at the hub's shop, sparse rewards for leveling up, or from "contracts"(basically dailies). All randomized. Of these the hub is most accessible and is available right away. What's the downside? The whole inventory is randomized! An inventory refresh only happens once per HOUR. Yes, this means there is no guaranteed way to get any piece of gear, instead you are forced to roll the lootbox of a shop for it. To make matters worse, if you picked a specific class for a specific weapon, for example the psyker for a staff, you don't start with one... and good luck finding it!

Now surely that's the end of it right? Maybe you got lucky and your dream gear was just sitting there in the shop waiting for you on your first visit. Like most games, you'll want to inspect the stats to see how good it is beyond just the gear score that is provided. When you look at a piece of gear you'll see not numbers, not explanations, but rather arbitrarily chosen terms and bars that are filled to varying amounts. What do they mean? You'll never know because they aren't explained ANYWHERE. At least the damage bar is straight forward, but to compare gear you'll have to play a game of spot the difference by flicking your eyes back and forth. To be fair, this is something that is apparently being worked on, but I have yet to see it change.

Community:
This is a team game. So how is team play facilitated by the game? Poorly. The ping tool has one step too many, requiring you to middle mouse click and then point to a selection of icons. Just take a lesson from Deep Rock Galactic and have your character and the prompt react based on what you're pinging. Extra unnecessary steps for communication in a fast paced action game don't make sense. Beyond this of course is text/voice chat, but in my experience neither are quite as effective or quick as being able to instantly point something out in the midst of combat. Enemy tagging in the game does function this way though, and is a good example of how all the other pinging should work: one click, instant communication.

Matchmaking with randoms is always a gamble, but unfortunately there is also a small subset of people play this game who will get upset like children if you don't play it how they want you to. I imagine they have likely come from thousands of hours in the previous game, Vermintide 2, and don't realize this one, while similar, is a whole new game. As an example I was unlucky enough to end up as a +1 in a 3 man party of such people, and they were so upset that I deigned to pick up a grimoire(which one of them pinged) that when I died from a bomber spawning nearly on top of me they threw a tantrum and refused to revive me, preventing me from playing the game if I don't want to leave... and end up having wasted my time(which shouldn't be possible). Fortunately this is an edge case and the majority of matches I've had were not like this. The root issue here isn't even immaturity, but bad game design, which leads into the next issue.

Time:
Easily the biggest issue I have encountered in my play is the ways in which the game simply does not respect your time. Every level that you load into you must first sprint for about 30 seconds to get to the actual beginning of a level, and most certainly you will run out of stamina before you get there which makes the process take even longer. While the intro paths are cool and immersive, its a novelty that wears off quickly through repeated play, which this game is designed around. If you want to play a specific mission as well, you'll just have to hope its in what randomly available missions have been selected at the hub or you'll have to wait around or come back later. While I understand the purpose of this choice by the devs, it just further compounds the other sources of control that they are taking away from the player. Finally, there are a lot of issues with server errors, disconnecting, and straight up CTDs. Many of which I have experienced, and continue to experience, pretty much anywhere in the game. Nothing quite as rewarding as your game crashing, or being disconnected, right as you're completing a mission.

The secondary objectives for missions(scriptures/grimoires) are also pulled straight from Vermintide with a much worse implementation, and provide barely any incentive to complete them. To find them in the first place you're really just staring at various empty areas within the game and hoping your team cooperates.

In summary, the gameplay is fun... if you can run the game and it doesn't crash/dc. The co op is good... if you have 3 friends to play with or you're lucky enough to get good teammates. The progression is just bad and needs work for the game to have longevity. While this is a "beta", let's be real. The game launches in about a week and I find it extremely unlikely these problems will be solved by then. If they are, I am more than happy to adjust my review. My current advice is to either wait months/years until issues are resolved or get it on a nice sale.

A happy little game where you can imprison all the cute slimes in tiny boxes and milk them mercilessly for that sweet sweet plort.