Recent reviews by Scab

I otherwise like this game, but punishing a person for having to leave a match for legit reasons is archaic and stupid.

A game with a lot of potential:

Some pretty cool fight mechanics with some glaring flaws. So, where to begin . . .

-For one, the game instructs you that if you're pressing no buttons nor are you in the middle of an attack, your character should block automatically. This does not always seem to be the case. Why does it work sometimes and not others? Man, I'm not sure, it seems arbitrary to me.

-Hit registering is kind of jank sometimes. I buried my ax in a dudes face, twice in a row, and it played the squishy "you-just-buried-an-ax-in-this-guy's-face" sound, displayed blood effects, and he killed me with one sword slash about 15 seconds later . . . amazing . . .

-Is it just me, or do developers who make fighting games always make the progression "harder" by disabling you and giving the opponent abilities you could never have access to, you know, instead of just giving them better and better AI? I swear this is happening here, which might explain my previous mention of burying an ax into some dudes face twice in a row while he was able to continue on to scratch me with a sword. Not to mention, one dude was able to consistently grab me and insta-kill me. If there is some counter for that, I haven't figured it out and the game never instructed me on it. But for real, having a bot spam an unblockable grab over and over again does not make for a fun game.

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With all that said, I'm going to encourage the developers to keep putting effort into this project. When everything is working properly, you have a fun game here. It kinda reminds me of playing Bushido Blade, which is a game I genuinely enjoy. I'll keep coming back to this every now and then, and I'll gladly change my review to a recommend whenever this game is cleaned up some.

Had some launch problems that, through some work, I was able to resolve. Starting playing the game and it was okay, at best. Eventually came to a tutorial track that continually launches you off the track no matter what you do; it wasn't fun. It was so not fun, that I requested a refund.

Some optimization issues under very specific circumstances, but this game is still Early Access, I imagine it will be corrected in time. Otherwise, no complaints, I really enjoy this game. It's a lot of fun on co-op with your friends. High recommend.

Man, I had some big plans for this review. It was supposed to be a thorough review that directly compared Ready or Not to SWAT 4, which it still will be, but where I'm now deviating is that the review was to end on a positive note, one in which I highly recommend the game. I've taken notes on the game as I progressed from mission to mission, attempting to be fair in pointing out both the good and the bad, but ultimately showing how the good heavily outweighed the bad. I was going to post the bad first, and then the good to illustrate this, but then the game-breaking glitches started . . .

The Good:
-What's the first thing you notice about a video game? The graphics, that's what. The game looks good, very good. I get minor screen-tearing, but it doesn't effect the game play and I also bet I can get rid of it if I messed with settings enough. SWAT 4 looked good for its time, and Ready or Not looks great today.

-The controls feel good; nice and tight. Commanding your team feels awkward at first, but quickly becomes second nature. I always liked how SWAT 4 handled commanding the team, and the way Ready or Not addresses it feels intuitive. You'll be telling your dudes to "breach, bang, and clear" quickly with only a little practice.

-There's a mechanic in the game has you juggling your team's mental and physical health. If your dudes become too stressed, you can send them to therapy and they'll be away for a few missions. Same for if they become incapacitated, they'll need to convalesce until they can get back into action. The physical health of a SWAT team is something I think we all already expect out of a video game, but also addressing the mental toll doing this job takes on people is a real-world issue that I think goes overlooked way too often. It's cool they added it.

-Your team will cuff people, report them, and secure loose evidence all on their own if they're close enough to it and are not currently busy with something else. In SWAT 4 you had to do every bit of it yourself or directly command your team to do it. Ready or Not simply makes more sense to me in this regard.

The Bad
-Sometimes combatants go invisible. I don't know why this is, but there have been times when I'd watch someone shooting at me disappear. There are other times the game is indicating that someone is shooting at me, but there is no hostile model to be found. Luckily though, my AI team mates can see them, and when that happens, the hostile will eventually get killed by the team.

-Gunfire, when directed at you, obscures your vision greatly. I've been in the U.S. Army for over 20 years, I've been around gunfire many times. I've experienced it behind me, beside me, in front of me, etc. Trust me, when it's close enough the pressure from expanding gases can put a very slight flutter in your vision, but it's not anywhere close to being an impairment. I have no idea what this game is trying to convey with gunfire directed at you making you go partially blind. It simply doesn't make sense.

-Sometimes your team simply doesn't do what you tell them to do. You tell them to breach a door and clear the room behind it, three out of four stack up, but fourth dude trots off in the opposite direction. One time I followed him and he went upstairs to a completely different floor of the building. He faced a wall and just sort of hung out, like I had punished a child to sit in the corner to get him to "think about what he's done". I've seen this sort of wonky AI behavior in SWAT 4, but never this often.

-Speaking of the AI, there are times you'll tell your dudes to breach a room and then they'll just stand there. After some investigation, maybe you'll learn that the door is locked and they're awaiting orders on how to proceed. This would be fine, I've seen this SWAT 4, but the difference is that they report locked doors every single time in SWAT 4, and about half the time in Ready or Not.

-The mission briefings don't always seem to explain why there's an army of armed suspects in the location in which you're going. SWAT 4 always seemed to give me at least a vague idea on what to expect from the missions, this game is like, "Hey, there's a dude that said he killed his mom and now he's taken his brother hostage", but then you get there and there's like six or seven people shooting at you for some reason. I mean, cool, the mission is more exciting than I thought it would be, but it doesn't make any sense when you juxtapose it with the briefing.

-And now the thing that breaks the game, trust me, it hearts me to report this. I looked forward to finally playing this game and was having fun but then . . .

Went to a mission and all four of my team mates died, randomly, after I told them to throw a flashbang. They did, indeed throw it, and shortly after it went off, they all fell to the floor, incapacitated. Okay . . . the mission glitched. It sucks, but ♥♥♥♥ happens, right? I restart the mission and it shows every single one of my team members in convalescence. I can't fire them and get new members. Okay, I'll have to do this mission by myself, I guess. I get loaded into the mission, but still have four team members. Okay, weird, but better than having to do it by myself. I play for a bit, and all four fall to the floor randomly, incapacitated. What the hell?!

That's when I made the decision that I simply can't recommend the game. It still needs some work. I'll try to run a file integrity check and maybe even uninstall and reinstall the game. If those things fix it, I'll redo this review. Otherwise, I'll have to keep this review as is.

*****Post Edit*****
Running a file integrity check seemed to fix the issue! Also, turning on Vsync got rid of the minor screen-tearing. Changed it to recommend this game.

*****Post Post Edit*****
Tried it in mulitplayer and am back to having the same, old issues, as well as some new ones. Going to try to do a file integrity check again. Changed it back to not recommend this game. Meanwhile, I'm uninstalling and reinstalling the game in hopes that it fixes the issues. This has been one hell of a rollercoaster.

*****Post Post Post Edit*****
Completely uninstalled and reinstalled the game. Everything seems to be functioning now.

*****Post Post Post Post Edit*****
I was told by another person I know that has a lot of time in this game that the "Elephant" mission is aboslute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. It is, and I can't recommend this game until they fix it.

All right, first thing's first we need to get something out of the way: The single player campaign is absolute garbage.

But that's not why we play Battlefield games now is it? No, of course . . . silly.

If you're familiar at all with the Battlefield franchise, the multiplayer will feel right at home and probably won't disappoint. It's cool seeing Dice go back to their roots and releasing a solid WW2 multiplayer experience. It's a good time.

Man, I really wanted to love this game. Yeah, not like it, but LOVE it. I have an ungodly amount of time spent in Fight Night: Round 2 and Fight Night: Champion. Those, especially the latter, are fantastic games.

So, is Undisputed bad? Not exactly, it's "okay", at best. So, what does this mean? It means if you play it and you've spent any amount of time playing Fight Night: Champion, you'll wish you were playing Fight Night instead. It's not a good look for this game, especially when comparing it to a game that came out in 2011.

I think this game has a nice coat of paint, but the actual mechanics that drive the gameplay (the most important part) needs refinement. It feels sluggish and kind of awkward compared to Fight Night; which felt crisp and pleasing to play. Spend some more time under the hood developers, and I'll most certainly give this another go. I might even change my recommendation to a "Yes" if you get the feel of the game right.

Until then, I must advise anyone that will listen to avoid this game.

I gotta give this game a thumbs down in its current state. There's a lot of glitches present, but I am hopeful it's solved soon. This is a potentially awesome game, hoping the devs pull through and improve what they have going on here.

I enjoyed this. The story is told well and interesting enough to keep you going. All in all, a good game.

Endnight has proven before to be excellent developers with an ironclad dedication to making a good game into an absolutely excellent one over the course of its early access.

I came into The Forest about halfway through its early access and watched as a that game became more and more polished over the span of about two years.

With that said, does Sons of The Forest need some polish and fleshing out? Yes.

Do I genuinely believe it will receive aforementioned polish and fleshing out over the course of time it's in early access? Also yes.

Is it still fun as hell in its current state? A giant YES!

If you like The Forest and its core game mechanics, you'll most likely really enjoy yourself with this. Base building, gathering supplies, exploring the surface and a system of caves, and combat with cannibal tribes and creepy mutants are all here.

It's like putting on an old, familiar jacket that has had new pockets craftily sewn into it. Oh, and that jacket got a makeover too, because this game looks gorgeous.

Well done, Endnight. I look forward to seeing what you guys add to this game over the course of time.