Recensioni recenti di Dom

I have some gripes about this game that have annoyed me enough to write a review.

Firstly, the game has a progression issue. You start off fairly simple with some triggers that help you learn the basic game mechanics. The few preset starters you get are good at relaying how the game works, however as you unlock new boons and triggers, you make the game more difficult for yourself. I say this because it felt like no matter what i was given in the draft, none of it felt effective or cohesive with the starter triggers I was trying to build around. I had unlocked everything 6 games before I had even beaten the "easiest" difficulty.

That leads me onto my other big problem, RNG. I'm convinced that it's not possible to get the score required to beat the first difficulty without unlocking certain things, but when you unlock things you add more uncertainty to the draft and make it very difficult to construct a cohesive board of triggers. In most roguelites I like the additional variety, but in this case very few things you try will be anywhere near effective enough to beat the first required difficulty. When you do finally get a board that works well, what often happens is you get to the end stage, only to drop the ball three times and watch as it miraculously misses just about everything and loses you the game for the umpteenth time.
In the end I ended up rerolling for a closet, placing literally everything in the closet and finding ways to multiply its score. It was the most boring strategy because it made almost no use of the game's unique pachinko-based spin on the genre, but it won me the game by just watching the money go up each drop.

And what did I unlock? More pin boards and starter presets. At which point I'd tried just about everything the game had to offer besides these new boards because I'd already unlocked everything beforehand. I had no desire to play the game further, but I did anyway just to see if there was any more. It's clear that you're not supposed to unlock everything before you beat the game once, because beating the game again on the supposedly "harder" difficulties just awards you more unlock points that can't be spent on anything.

It's a nice idea for a roguelite. I used to love Peggle so was keen to give it a try, but it's left me a bit deflated. Can't really recommend it if you want something with a lot of replayability and rewarding gameplay. The only reward I got was a kick in the balls for trying something new.

Peak

I can't believe how much potential skill expression there is in manoeuvring a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stick

I feel like this is only really appreciated by those who consider videogames to be more art than actual games. If you're the kind of person who is drawn in by the lofty bar of expectations that reviewers and critics have set for this game, looking for them to be subverted in mind blowing ways by just how deep everyone says it is, I would reconsider.

It is not a bad game by any stretch. It has rules, you make visible progression, you unlock new things, you discover mechanics. The game largely leaves you to figure it out by yourself, so if you're someone who gets frustrated by having zero direction, I'd immediately say this isn't for you.

I personally love games that show instead of tell and respect my ability to discover things by myself. I also like puzzle games, platforming games, games where your progression is meaningfully demonstrated and has meaningful impact on how you play. I also love games that make you think and subvert your expectations. So why don't I like this game?

Simply put, it's incredibly bare, asks for a lot of your time and gives little in return. The mechanics you discover are simple and you'll spend a decent amount of time figuring them out in, what I consider to be, a pretty joyless trial-and-error process. You spend a good amount of time not understanding anything, then when you do start to understand it and actually applying your knowledge, the perceived randomness of some blocks grates on you when trying to reach specific places and set up specific things. And when you do succeed and manage to 'explore' more, you learn that you have to repeat that exact process to continue. And then when you do reach somewhere new, it's the same thing but very slightly different and more difficult.

The unlocks aren't groundbreaking, the secrets are dissatisfying. There's no moment-to-moment fun in the platforming mechanics and I don't feel smart for completing the puzzles, I just feel relief.

If I'm coming across incredibly vague, it's so I don't spoil the things that high and mighty game critics consider to be spoiler worthy. I will say that, as someone who enjoys the things that many people praise this game for, I was thoroughly underwhelmed when I gave up and looked up what all the secrets were because I was so done. I really don't think it is worth pushing through to see, if I am completely honest. But that is just one man's opinion.

All in all, this is definitely one of the videogames of all time. I can't really say a lot about it other than what disappointed me about it because of all the rave reviews and recommendations. I would say if you really want to play it, ground your expectations and you'll probably get a kick out of it. It's a very lean puzzle game with some simple mechanics that, given enough time, are easy to understand and provide you with a somewhat meaningful sense of player progression alongside its smaller unlockables. There's not really a whole lot more to say about it without "spoiling" things.

An incredibly fun, cathartic, tactical shooter that is undoubtedly the best cooperative game I have played in years. As a huge fan of the original, the devs have done a great job of taking a working concept and improving on it in every aspect.


The game feels amazing. It nails everything, getting so many small details right I could talk about it endlessly, but my favourite is how seamless it feels to launch from your ship and land on the ground in the mission. The load screen is there, but it's masked so well.

Stratagems are back and are better than ever. In the previous game, you barely get to see what happens. You barely glimpsed the explosion or the strafing run or the hellbomb. In this, you see everything, and they really pulled out the stops. Explosions, orbital rounds, napalm, gas, it's all amazing to see and hear, especially if you kill a ton of bugs with it. Gibs fly and you hear the bugs cry out as everything explodes around them. It never gets old.

It may seem odd, but you don't have direct control of your character's aim because it's physically simulated. Recoil will push your helldiver's arms back and upwards, being hit will knock the gun to the side, moving will cause your aim to drift with the diver's arms. Accuracy is achievable, but it's always at a cost of something else. The clunky nature of it makes it all the more satisfying. If it was direct aim, the game would truly suck. The fun is in finessing the aim and landing shots, if you've played War Thunder you'll understand the appeal here.

The galactic war has been expanded on, now featuring events and a GM system that allows the devs to create additional challenge or respite. It feels a lot more like an actual community effort. You see other people's squads on planets, the third-person perspective affords you a view of super destroyers in orbit, there are community goals and rewards that drive people to complete certain objectives. Even the TV in the destroyer talks about current events.

Upgrades feel meaningful, you're not finding weapons with slightly better stats or levels. This isn't your drip fed, skinner box, RPG loot. You spend medals you find in the field on new armaments and cosmetics. Each weapon feels purposeful, just like the stratagems. There's always a reason to go back and use something you haven't used in a while just to switch things up.

Even the few we've seen so far feel vastly unique. Malevelon Creek feels like you're in space 'nam. Crawling through the jungle, avoiding enemy patrols, stealthily setting up ambushes on enemy compounds.
Heeth felt like you're on Hoth. Stomping through the snow, making use of the additional weapon cooling, seeing the aurora borealis at night. Depending on where you land, it may be day or night. An interesting little detail that also affects gameplay.
The foliage and ground cover are all very detailed and fit the feel of the worlds. You will not get bored of seeing them.

The two races in the game are the Terminids and the Automatons. Both races play very differently, the Terminids swarm you with greater numbers but can be mowed down easily. They have little ranged capability, but you'll die very quickly if you let them advance on you.
The automatons on the other hand are very capable at killing you from a distance. They'll utilise artillery, rockets, machine guns and cannons to wipe you off the map. Cover and armour become very important on these contested worlds. Both races are very satisfying to play against in their own way, requiring strategies and approaches that greatly differ between bugs and bots.

The music is bombastic, stirring, and contextual. The score is making you feel like you're in a movie at every moment. When creeping around patrols, the music lacks intensity and becomes uneasy. When you're spotted it transitions back into full-blown action, only winding down once everything is dead. The last stand at extraction is even more intense, the game's main refrain playing as you mow down oncoming enemies in an effort to stay alive long enough to see the pelican land. It's a pretty phenomenal upgrade from the last game where there was usually a complete lack of music altogether.

All this to say, the game really makes you feel like you're an expendable, gun-toting, Democracy-loving badass.


There's some stuff to address, for sure.

Matchmaking

It's fixed now, social recluses now welcome.

Firstly, anti-cheat needs to exist in this non-pvp game because we simply can't have nice things. We cannot have a game on PC that connects to a feature like the galactic war without someone trying to manipulate it in some way with cheats and exploits. It's also never fun to play with them either, even if the game is Co-Op. Seeing someone spawn in endless resources and completely break your progression sucks. Seeing someone kill every enemy on the map constantly sucks. These things happened in the last game and I'm glad they've implemented anti-cheat.

There's also concern for what is known as "kernel-level" anti-cheat, which basically means it runs on a system level, it has permissions to do anything on your computer. That being said, it isn't doing anything but monitoring the game and processes seeking to manipulate the game. If you have played any modern online game, then you have played a game with kernel-level anti-cheat. It needs to exist because cheaters use cheat programs that run on the kernel-level too. It sucks, but as I said, we just can't have nice things without compromises. This is true of any online game now on PC.

It's not. At all. The premium currency can be earned in game without limit and each of the warbonds are purchasable without spending a penny. Even if you buy a warbond with real money you still need to play to unlock anything from it, medals can only be earned in game. Warbonds don't run out and you can unlock from them at any time, no time limit.

The last game was/is a live service too. I'm not sure how people have forgotten, but if the servers go down then you simply can't play. The game is heavily reliant on the galactic war mechanic, the game revolves entirely around liberating planets and defending them from the alien races. The community effort is one of the unique selling points of the game, just like it was in the first game. It cannot exist without the live service. The game is better for it.

If you hate timers, I'm sorry to say that every mission in this one has a timer. But I wouldn't fret, because it's pretty generous. You get 40 minutes to complete a typical mission, and a little longer after that but with the added difficulty of no reinforcements or stratagems available. It has been well designed so that you can complete everything within that time limit, but forces you to make decisions on when to extract if you have wasted time. The timer is there to push you forward, it doesn't punish you for not rushing.


Wholly recommended. I loved the first game and I love this one even more. Everything is an improvement, it has clearly been a labour of love for the devs who understand what made the first game great and what needed to change to make this an even better experience.

Ignore the naysayers, they are robbing you of one of the best cooperative game to release in the last 10 years.

A very tight and enjoyable roguelike deckbuilder. If you've played FTL before and thought it was good, this should be right up your street.

For a deckbuilder it's got a decent variety in cards and mechanics, the type of which are determined by the characters you select in at the beginning of a run. A majority of characters are locked behind certain objectives along with the various different ships. They all play differently enough from one another to keep things fresh.

It's the typical fare of cards and artifacts, but the 'board' separates this from other similar games. Resource management takes center stage, you can fire on any given turn but would it be better to stock up on shields, dodge rounds/missiles or activate that really expensive passive at the cost of a couple hull points? Being able to dodge/tank damage whilst still dealing enough to punch through enemy shields is what will guarantee success in a run, and it requires a fine balance throughout because none of the cards or artifacts are overpowered on their own. It's rare you'll get a OP build/god run.

Strangely, I think the game's major selling point is actually its story and characters. I say strangely because I expected the gameplay to be the thing I rate this on. It's goofy but charming, the silliness is mixed in with a more serious overarching story that makes me actually want to 100% it to get the full picture.
The characters all talk to each other as you take actions and make plays, commenting appropriately on your various blunders and successes. It's interesting to see how much dialogue the developers have put into the game. Depending on which characters you pick, your crew will have unique dialogue and will interact with each other and antagonists alike.

It's a charming and well rounded little game, the kind of thing you'd buy for someone who hasn't played a deckbuilder before. I'd recommended it to anyone, whether you're familiar with the genre or not.

As someone who's pretty apprehensive about playing PvP in pretty much anything nowadays, mainly due to me just not having enough time or patience to get good at these types of games, I find Breachers to be incredibly refreshing and I'm very glad I gave it a chance.

The gunplay feels amazing and it's very well balanced, though don't expect H3 or Pavlov level of mechanics. The weapons automatically charge and don't require a lot of interaction besides pointing and shooting or reloading. This doesn't make it worse though, in fact I think it makes the competitive nature of the game better.
Reload times are predictable, you're not going to get rinsed by some guy who's figured out how to bolt his one-hit sniper in a tenth of a second (there are no snipers by the way, it's very much CQC to be clear). I very much appreciate how the weapons have been balanced in this way because it's one less variable that new players would have to skill up in to even try and measure up.

In terms of skill, the game instead focuses on the player's situational awareness, communication and map knowledge. You need to be keeping an eye on your surroundings and what your teammates are saying/pinging. The ping system in its current form is serviceable but I can't really think of any times where it's saved my ass in the heat of the moment despite how often its used by my dead teammates. Nevertheless, it's a pretty necessary feature and allows the team to communicate effectively during round set-ups at least.

There are various gadgets that help with area denial, reconnaissance, blasting holes in walls etc. These are all very satisfying to use and can greatly affect the outcome of a round depending on when and where they are used. The gadgets add a good bit of strategy to the game. Enforcers specifically gain access to a rappel that lets them climb walls and access roof entry points and windows on higher floors, giving them the element of surprise. When used well, the Revolters' gadgets allow them to adapt to whichever entrance the Enforcers might choose to breach through, slowing their progress and forcing them to try other tactics.

For those of you who play R6S: Depending on what kind of player you are, you may really appreciate the lean design of the game or feel that the game lacks variety. It's very much like Siege if Siege didn't have an insane level of variation and variables introduced by the myriad of operators. Every player has access to their team's set of gadgets and weapons, it's that simple. Besides that, it feels very much like Siege in terms of core gameplay.

For those of you who play CSGO: You'll appreciate the game's economy. At the beginning of the game and when teams are switched there's a pistol round, very little money to be spent but you can access gadgets if you don't mind using the basic pistol. When both teams are playing well, there are always some real decisions to be made about what you should buy. I feel like the primary weapon cost isn't varied enough personally, but this might just be me. I found myself sticking to a pistol more often than not, simply because I don't like SMG's all that much.

For those of you who play Due Process: It's like that but in VR, down to the setting too. Visually much cleaner though. There's a lot less planning that goes into each round but there is planning to some degree, you just don't get long to deliberate between your teammates and there's no map layout to draw on. Also no procedural maps, but the maps that are there are really well made. As of writing this review, an additional 2 maps to the existing 3 (or 4 if you count TDM) have been promised.

For those of you who play Pavlov: I feel like you'll be turned off by the lack of weapon mechanics, weapons, maps, gamemodes and workshop support, but I'd implore you to try it nonetheless. There is nothing quite like it, it's the most fun I've had with VR in a very long time and it's very polished. I can see this becoming just as much of a VR staple as Pavlov, it has a lot of room to grow and a great foundation to do it on.

The game is really good and well worth what I paid. Again, as someone who typically stays away from PvP, I've been pleasantly surprised at how much I've enjoyed playing it. The community seems great, people I've played with have been helpful and generally quite nice. The game is on the Quest too so naturally there are a fair number of young players, some more casually racist and abrasive than others, but overall I haven't had an issue with them.

Buy this game, you will not regret it.

Actually better than Rocket League

Very good.

As much as I really want to like this game, the 9 hours I've played as of writing this review have been incredibly frustrating and tedious. Before I get onto the bad stuff, I do want to mention some good things about the game that are a really refreshing step in the right direction.

Combat
The combat has some good mechanics that Pokemon could really learn from. Stamina replaces PP, your Temtem can get exhausted if they spam powerful moves. It forces you to think about what moves you're going to do in what order. Certain techniques are locked out until a number of turns have passed, usually more powerful ones. Each fight is fought with 2 Temtem at a time which allows for a lot of synergy and interesting tactics (At least, I'm projecting that it does. The early game doesn't give you many Temtem to work with).

Breeding
Breeding is entirely based on time. No more cycling around aimlessly waiting for eggs to hatch and Pokemon to breed. Additionally, each Temtem can only breed a certain number of times based on their fertility value. This means you can't just use one Temtem to pump out eggs, you need to go out and catch more. I think this makes breeding far more interesting, certainly more involved than riding a bike around and chucking breedjects on wonder trade.

MMO
The multiplayer aspect of this (hopefully) means that the game will continue to grow and improve as it gains traction/users. This type of game is inherently a social one and it gains a lot from being an MMO. There were some issues on launch, and there is a queue if the server is particularly full, but I think this is a good change overall.

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And here's a list of gripes I have with this game.

Backtracking
I feel like I've spent about 50% of my playtime just backtracking to heal my Temtem. You get a vial which heals your party full and revives any fainted ones. It can be used once before you have to head back to heal and refill it. That seems quite fair, except it's quite common for 1 or 2 of your Temtem to be knocked out each fight you have. That or you swap them out during the fight, which then means another one of your Temtem is subject to a free hit upon entering.

That seems pretty standard, but it's been the most frustrating part of this whole thing for me. Instead of using your vial, you end up running back to the Temporium after 1 or 2 fights so that your vial can be used towards the end of the route. You can use smoke bombs to teleport back to them, but smoke bombs cost a fair bit of money.

Basically, imagine Pokemon but you have to head back to the Pokecenter about 3 or 4 times per route because revives are too expensive and your Pokemon are constantly getting fainted.

Temtem Designs
The game does not make Temtem types clear enough through their designs. I'd wager around 80 - 90% of all Pokemon are easily identifiable in this regard as each type has a fairly stringent standard that dictates what colours a Pokemon can and cannot be.

Temtem does very little to communicate this. It makes the combat very frustrating as you think a certain technique is going to work really well but it ends up falling completely flat.

Temtem diversity
Every run that any player has will be essentially the same when it comes to making a party. You'll pick one of three starters, get a Tuwai (Trumbeak), then a Tateru, then a Paharo (Pidgey), then maybe a Skail, then a Kaku, then a Ganki. That's what you'll have almost guaranteed for the first 9 hours, and I would bet good money that the trend continues.

Pokemon also suffered from this, but not to the same degree. What annoys me the most is that trainers will often have Temtem that you couldn't possibly aquire in that time and they will have types that trump yours. This adds to the whole issue of constantly fainting Temtem as well.

The UI
Some elements are huge, some elements are tiny. The squad menu is a chore to use. You'll find yourself accidentally replacing Temtem techniques when they learn new ones because the game receives inputs before you're even shown the window. Same thing occurs for conversations with NPC's.

Characters
The characters are forgetful. Your rival is a detestable little ♥♥♥♥. Almost every character you fight has a small dialogue menu of throwaway lines which takes up time and adds nothing. Some ask you questions about the lore and places you've been, but honestly it's all so forgetful that you cheese your way through their trivia questions by repeatedly trying each answer.

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Again, I wanted to like this game. Sword and shield have left me quite disenchanted with Pokemon and I wanted something new but familiar. This wasn't it unfortunately.

I'm probably going to continue playing in the hopes that it improves and just to see if I start enjoying the later parts of the game more, but I'm not filled with confidence.