Recent reviews by Ike Arumba

I have tried for literally over 3 hours at this point to setup playing this game with my Dualsense and LITERALLY NOTHING WORKS. This is a problem you will find thousands of people commiserating over online, and the devs have not addressed it at all.

PLEASE P୲RATE THE GAME, THE ONLY SOLUTION THAT WORKS IS NOT PLAYING WHATEVER ON THE STEAM VERSION CAUSES THIS ISSUE.

I am a massive fan of the first Helldivers and have been excited for this game for 5+ years, which is why it pains me that it's off to such an unbelievably bad start. Barely an hour in and I literally clocked MAYBE 10 minutes of actually playing the game between crashes. I ended up refunding the game because of one crash that made the awful anti-cheat software literally just completely stop the game from launching.

This is embarrassingly bad for both Arrowhead and Sony to launch a game like this, and I can't in good faith say they deserve your money with the game in this condition. I will buy the game when these issues are fixed, but until then I guess I'll go back to Helldivers 1.

I cannot overstate my disappointment with this game. An incredible art style, phenomenal music, perfect tone, and gameplay that is a complete and utter disrespect of a players time.

I have a bit over 26 hours of playtime as of writing this, and at at least 20 of them have been nothing but dreadful backtracking, not after death mind you, just how the levels are setup seems to have been built to be as annoying and forgettable as possible. People praise this game for it's "exploration and adventure" what that means is the map function is a complete joke and you'll be wandering aimlessly around areas you've been in for hours, and if you're lucky enough to stumble into somewhere new, chances are you'll die and get sent back to god knows what bench (bugged for me frequently, would respawn at the wrong bench more often than not). A majority of all areas are just dead-ends at the time you'd naturally be going to explore them, but it's not like you have a choice with the useless map and no direction for where you are actually supposed to go. Exploration my ass, this game is an overhyped walking simulator (I hate Deep Nest, I spent a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hour there for literally nothing, why am I even let in if there's nothing but a headache for me at the time I find it? Is there genuinely any reason to go to the Howling Cliffs?)

Make no mistake, a large majority of your time in this game will be nothing but traversing the same areas back and forth, hoping that a small hole in the wall is somehow the intended way to go, and not just a still-inaccessible path or worse; a useless NPC - Mask Maker, Midwife, Bardoon, etc.

Everything having the same style and palette means it's pretty common for enemies to blend into the environment, ESPECIALLY when it's a small, flat enemy spawning out of the ground when there's foliage or foreground decoration, which the game loves to do. Another issue of this is it can legitimately be hard to tell enemies apart from friendly NPCs - multiple times I approached what looked like a neutral character to only be damaged when I walked into them, often dying because I gave something I had snuck up on the element of surprise toward myself.

Enemies legitimately just become a chore to fight after you've killed a couple of them, meaning even interesting encounters quickly become stale backtracking with more steps a few rooms in. Bossfights that become braindead endurance tests when you master their ~3 attacks in the first minute, or just annoyingly difficult by blatantly reading inputs to catch you mid-air without possible time to react (multiple bosses that you will die to only a single attack, because it becomes clear it's the only one capable of hitting someone who's paying any attention). I'm not good enough at 2D platformers or metroidvania games to warrant these bosses taking 5 minutes and I only get hit 3 times during the entire fight, that's just wasting more of the players time.

But by FAR the biggest and most egregious waste of time absolute spit in the face to players is the Colosseum of Fools - the first two rounds are more complete fodder to mindlessly space out to for 10-15 minutes each, while the third and final round is just 15 minutes of absolute mind numbing nothing immediately followed by multiple waves of the same enemies and without the ability to heal. Telefragging enemies mean it's not a test of skill as much as just remembering where they spawn for the 7th time you have to play through it again when the first dozen or so waves become an unskippable cutscene.

Yes it is all optional, but it stands as a testament to the design philosophy and general competence of the game when the bonus challenge minigame is so numbingly boring and painfully hamfisted that you start yearning for walking around a map you can ignore because at least that doesn't demand your attention to be actively un-fun.

I've seen praise of the game for there not being any bugs, but I've encountered multiple in my playtime, most annoying of course being respawning much, much further away than I should. I've also had issues with coins falling inside of walls, enemies not having sounds/particles, and maybe worst not being able to heal during bossfights (I start the animation but never gain any health, I just sit there consuming soul until I usually get hit).

All in all, as much as I've played I've enjoyed maybe 20% of it, and the rest has absolutely not been worth it. This game disgusts me for the praise it gets as such a horrid addition to this genre, for gods sake please go play Shovel Knight instead.

With over 400 hours in this game and months of anticipation up to the release of this DLC, it hurts to say that about 40-50 hours in, I genuinely cannot say I recommend it. There's a difference between a game setting the odds against a player and expecting them to overcome them, and being unfair under the guise of difficulty. The base game was questionable about this topic at best, but this DLC inarguably passes the line over to dishonest challenge.

I honestly despise the design choices they've made for this expansion, it has completely ruined my enjoyment of the game.

-Blind Pests completely inaudible when spawning for the level of threat they are INSTANTLY - a group of them in the first 2-3 stages are capable of ending a run within seconds of spawning. I have yet to hear a single person say they enjoy the addition of these.

-Blind Vermin move faster than default player speed, plus the unpredictable movements make them essentially inescapable for most survivors.
---Both Blind enemies seem like a (mechanically) very uncreative direct upgrade in threat and purpose to standard Wisps/Beetles. What is the point of adding these? Unfair difficulty camouflaging as 'new content'.

-Void pests are difficult to hit and have maybe too much HP, but the real problem is they will latch onto friendly turrets (including Engineer) and often kill you before you understand what's happening. Even if you avoid picking them up as Engineer there's still a good chance you'll come across some naturally during the run, and I don't have to explain how it's incredibly frustrating to have a character that's basically just unplayably countered by an enemy - losing 30 minutes into a great run because "oops you were doing well so this enemy can one-shot you!" is just demotivating.

-Simulacrum is fun until so many enemies spawn around you you literally become locked inside the horde crowding wherever you happened to be when the wave began. It just feels so slow as well, like you're making half the progress in twice the time of a
normal run.

-Railgunner feels unfinished like Captain, 5 minutes into a run and using the exact same ability for the hundredth time just becomes a chore (or you get the alternate abilities and spend 95% of the time aiming down your sights playing Bandit without the stealth mechanic).

-Most new items are just bad, either in concept or execution. Really? Mocha was such a groundbreaking item I had to pay for the inclusion of it? Bottled Chaos? Laser Scope? All functionally super bland items that feel like they were included to market the DLC as larger than it is.
--Egocentrism is fun to play with ONCE. The Flux Pauldrons are both just despicably unfun, literally run ruining for the single time you'd pick them up to try them out. Why are these added to the normal lunar pool? They are just filler items that dilute the already-abysmal pool of usable lunar items to begin with.

-New maps are alright, the trend towards making them larger and larger directly contends with the fact that speed is a big limiting factor and heavily encouraged
---Sulfur Pools (map) can spawn you standing inside stage hazards, regularly killing the player within seconds of spawning if unfortunate.

-Oh man the Voidling Boss... absolute slog of a fight if you're literally just fortunate enough to not be undodgably killed by the laser attack. The rest of the bosses are interesting to fight because they themselves add a new dynamic to fighting the waves of enemies you're already dealing with. The Voidling just feels like you're fighting the Wandering Vagrant but they maxed out the damage to 'final bossify' it.

There are a handful of good additions to the game as well, it's not all terrible.

+Corrupted items are an interesting way to give the player a calculated gamble of power, but generally kind of overpowered for no reason.
+Two new Elite Variants are both fun to fight, with more depth to them than most the others.
+The changes to the Void Fields are necessary and make it a bit more than just 100% necessary, if not a bit repetitive; why was this change not added to the base game? This just feels like balancing that it's absurd to make people pay for.

I come back every month or two to put in a couple more hours thinking "Maybe I was too harsh, let's give it another try and see if maybe the devs have addressed any of the issues." Every time I do I leave disappointed. Hopoo has failed to make more of the quality content that the base game had - if you felt the same iffy hesitation about the quality of the latest additions before SotV (Captain feeling unfinished, Bandit feeling OP but repetitive, Grandparent boss being really underwhelming, skill variants being balanced poorly, etc.) this 'expansion' is the worst of that but sold for $15 as maybe 10% more content.

I say do not buy this, just mod the base game.

An insulting downgrade from Armageddon in every conceivable way.
Bullet points of all the major issues compared to Armageddon:

• Worse, more limited controls
• Removed the short backwards hop for absolutely no discernible reason
• Simplified and severely nerfed weapons - a handful even being removed entirely
• More annoying and less predictable physics
• Worms (and grenades) have much higher friction and less knockback, no way to alter this in settings
• This means rope-knocking is almost unusable anymore
• Much, MUCH less match customization
• limited to 4 teams / worms per team instead of 8
• More map 'types' but less interesting generation between them
• No weapon editing i.e. changing the power of them, limited to just amount of uses and round unlock timer
• This has to be changed pre-made 'rulesets', these settings cannot be edited while in a lobby
• Less intuitive and predictable rope swinging
• God I hate the new fire, way slower moving, much less of it, and none of the interesting terrain modification anymore

And this is all just off the top of my head.

I played this game for maybe ~8 hours before trying out Armageddon, and I would not have put a second more into it were it not for Armageddon's online becoming completely nonfunctional for no reason I could find. I've put hundreds of hours into dark souls and bloodborne, and not once did I experience the amount of frustration from worms reloaded. This is genuinely my most hated game I've ever played.

I don't even understand how you can make an art program so frustrating and difficult to use with so few features.

Of the 7.4 hours I have put into this software, maybe two of that was actually spent modeling. The remaining 5.4 were used primarily trying to undo the numerous ♥♥♥♥-ups Blocks would make while I was trying to do the literal most basic action possible. I just spent the last 30 minutes or so trying to model a computer desk. I made a total of 8 shapes, all just basic rectangles. I ran into so many incredibly bad (hopefully) bugs that I just gave up.

Until they make some major bug fixes and fix how unstable the program gets with just a few too many models I cannot recommend this as a worthwhile use of time, either for fun or actual modeling.

as of 11/21/2018 I am 17 years 325 days old.

as of 4:45 pm PST that is 156,809.75 hours old

I have spent 0.7337553946741193% of my life playing terraria

I'm #3 on my friends list for most hours put into this game

I bought this game at $2.49, with 1150.6 hours put into I payed 0.21727794194¢ per hour

game's prolly worth $10

2.9 hours in at this point, and this is already in my top 3 best vr games so far, and absolutely the best I've played this year. The teleportation works incredibly well for this gameplay, and the portal preview mechanic is phenomenal. The physics are near perfect and throwing works almost exactly as you'd expect it to.

Pacing is great, with maybe a single paragraph of dialogue every 30 minutes. So little direction is given but the environments, artstyle, and level design naturally lead you in the right direction. In the 3 hours I've played not a single second was spent thinking "Well, what now?"

The AI is a little strange, but consistent. Akin to Metal Gear Solid, where it's immersive until you really get a grasp on how it works, and you can sort of exploit it after. Not a big deal, but the 'stealth' factor sort of fades away when you get the hang of it.

I believe I should be about 40% of the way through, and so far I'd give it an 8.5/10. I would recommend full price if you're a fan of these types of games, and if you're on the fence I'd say consider waiting for a sale, though it might not be for a while. There is still the demo, and although dated, it's still a good representation of the final game and I would say 100% of people should still play through it before buying,

Great idea, decent execution, but poor overall experience.

I respect the dev for coming back to work on the game, but h hasn't updated any of the actual issues with the game.

1: The AI: Absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. The second you get in range of an enemy, it will immediate start firing at you with pinpoint accuracy. This of course means that it's basically random if you;ll be able to kill some enemies in time or not.

2: The physics of your tank: Oh you touched that wall? Well now your gun is still in it and you have to restart after fighting 2 of the BS other tanks.

3: Inconsistency: Sometimes mines will blow up when terrain touches them. Sometimes they won't. Sometimes falling terrain hurts you. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes enemies take 5 point blank missiles to kill them. Sometimes it takes 2.

4: 'Falling' Damage: I say falling because I really don't know what to call this. If you're tank falls off a drop it will simply randomly blow up. Not take damage, not have the physics connections mess up, just simply die instantly

Now I'd say most of the other problems I or other people have with the game are either nitpicks or user error. Stuff like controls, the ammunition, particles getting caught in the treads, etc.

It's clear that a lot of creativity and effort was put into the game by how all of my problems aren't bugs or glitches, but design choices that don't work well. This game has great potential, but as of right now I cannot recommend this game, at least for the singleplayer. If these major complaints are fixed I think this would be a thoroughly enjoyable sandbox action game, but until then it's just another half-baked indie game.

Maybe the best co-op game I've ever played. I just wish there were more players.

DLC is a very worthwhile investment.