Recent reviews by (not) Y2K Compliant

Going in blind an experience on par with your first playthrough of Journey. Short, sweet and unforgettable.

This game is a perfect example of why I got into VR. VR is a immersion and skill multiplier.
Sure I have experienced this gameplay before of a fast paced mech combat with Hawkin in the past but in VR, where you have to use your own eyes and ears. With your head in the cockpit and your hands controlling movement and firing arcs its a whole other beast. Everything is on another level. Get jumped by enemy mech? If you panic you will die. Light mech vs heavy? You can keep out of firing arcs and chip away at them if you are fast enough. Sniping builds are effective but you are always on edge that something may be behind you or will be soon once you fire and give away your location.

Only thing I would like is a flatscreen version for non VR players to boost player count pool with crossplay. Not everyone can VR and Hawkin refugees have been looking for an alternative for years.

I expected Gladius 1.5 minus the 40k with some derivative donut steel skynet vs cthulu lore and world building.

What I got was lore, themes and world building that pulled me in right off the bat. Gameplay aside which was always great the reason to buy I want to continue replaying this game to learn more about the story and characters. I want to strip mine this game for every juicy detail I can find.

EDF with an actual plot that I kind of really liked. Even the plot based limitations on Air Raider was kind of fun in hindsight as you had to do more with less rather then I am become death right off the bat. Glad they removed Epic requirements or I would have never bothered to touch this game.

Sucks about no MP as it sounded fun but still worth the 14 year wait to play it for the first time.

Straight up hardest campaign I have played through in years. This is not a complaint, I live for the suck in RTS single player. Best part is there is a bunch of other branching campaigns I have yet to try.

Gameplay is amazing but no ultrawide support and 60FPS lock kills it for me. Add those things into a patch with a FOV slider and I will buy again.

Devs said they need till end of September to get ultrawide in the game.
Mod community had ultrawide working flawlessly within hours of launch.

Only drawback is it requires disabling easy anti cheat which means no online gameplay.
Half the singleplayer features are tied to online functionality including customising your squad.
Also this game tried to install epic game service on my PC at first launch. Instantly uninstalled yet the game can run fine without it? Make it optional if that is the case. Also on my gen 13 i7 this game gets to 95'c on a water cooler. No other game including cyberpunk on max settings, stellaris at endgame or x4 after a 300 hour run even gets close to these temps.
Tested same setup with older PC running a gen 8 i7 with a lesser video card (3080 TI)

Performance is exactly the same between both rigs but the gen 8 i7 averages 75'c.
the gen8 is only aircooled. Something very strange is happening with CPU temps in this game.

Negative review will continue till ultrawide is added. Better have a FOV slider as well.

Update: 26/09/2024
Big ultrawide patch has been released after weeks. Ultrawide implementation makes the camera so close to the back of the marine at 21:9 melee combat is impossible at higher levels and sickening to play. Without a FOV slider only way to play this game is offline with FOV fix which means you miss out on huge chunks of the content. Overheating issue has been fixed at least. Desire to play has fallen to 0%.

Update 09/02/2025
FOV Slider. No longer a need to use mods. Now I will play again.

Update 25/02/2025
Locking the classic Astartes helm behind some 3rd party data mining platform you have to link your account in order to opt in for event. I don't want it now and I no longer wish to play. At least Helldiver 2 devs learned from there past mistakes eventually.

All the Sins: Rebellion content but improved in every way. This is how sequels to popular games used to be. Looking forward to how DLC will build on this base.

Call me crazy but I kind of like it. Yes I have a lot of hours in x4 but I am someone who was disappointed by the boron xpac due to the faction feeling 'tacked on' and isolated and with no mission paths that could change the diplomatic outlay of the galaxy like the split and terran dlc.

Anyway, as other reviewers have said the first 4 missions are a generic slog but it really comes into its own after that. I am smashing out the missions and will likely go back and try to get as high on the rankings as I can then start a new playthrough with all the unlocks.

Final thing I would like to add and has probably been said before by other reviews. After thousands of hours in X4, Timelines has (by force) taught me a few new things I did not know and shown me some gameplay paths I never would have considered before. People tend to get comfortable playing the game in a way they are familiar with. By forcing players out of this comfort zone they may find new or better ways to do something. For vet X players this isn't the DLC we wanted. This is the DLC we needed.