Recent reviews by Levitate

I enjoyed every bit and moment of the campaign. This game is amazing and really doesn't deserve the hate from its Play Station release or now at it's PC release. Look i'm a really picky and stingy gamer, who can easily get a dozen or more gripes with games from a point of passion out of wanting those titles to be or do better. But The Last Of Us Part 2 is actually good. Better than days gone or god of war actually which are both really good games too. And as much as i enjoyed Ghost of Tsushima and want to play it's upcoming sequel, even that didn't get a review out of me.

As a single player, third person, story driven game. The animation quality of all movement, aiming, reloading and swapping weapons. To the hit feedback from both range and melee combat. To AI combat, voice lines to eachother or at the player, use of cover, flanking and pathing. Down to the fantastic audio quality and insane detail of having dozens and dozens of different sounds, with seamless transitions of every terrain type that you can walk on. It's all pretty much peak until some other game reinvents the wheel and is truly next gen. The AI will even call out a name of the person who you had just blown their brains out right next to them and then cuss you out for it, it just feels so immersive and reactive.

I want to point out how incredibly freaking impressive the ai for companions are during the campaign. How no other game has been this truly seamless with no loading screens or janky animations cuts or snapping into place. The game play is completely smooth the entire time. From walking around and looting while talking to eachother. To the perfect stitching of game play to in game cutscenes and Right back to gameplay. With realistic and believable movements, pacing and the unique character based charm, quirky and awkardness in how they each move and act along with their facial expressions. Seriously, after someone makes a joke or has a near death experience. Pan the camera and you'll see a cheeky smirk on their face or a terrified look that you can't help but chuckle at.

There's even a room early in the campaign, that feels like they just wanted to show off their audio lol. A room that has wooden floors, wet puddle spots, carpet areas, mud bits, debre concrete bits ect, ect. That are all incredibly seamless and accurate transitions of footstep audio. There's even scraping shoes or pants tearing audio if you walk on slopes or slide over small cover. You can even hear companions and enemies breath and walk. I'd also like to point out that the behind audio has full range and quality. Unlike god of war where anything behind you, even npcs talking are like 5% volume and muffled...

The only gripe i have, has to do with the no return rougelike game mode. It just feels lacking. Like enemy density being much smaller scale than the campaign is rough to enjoy along with not having enough customization settings. I really would like to crank up the spawn rates of waves or double to tripple the density at the start of single fight encounters. I'd also want the holdout mission type to allow all 4 factions and not just infected.. Along with a modifer to make every encounter have a guaranteed companion and even a slider to increase the max companions allowed in each encounter up to 2 like Yara can have. I'd also want the holdout mission type to allow all of ellie's and abby's companions into the encounter for bigger fights of 5 person teams.

I feel like the no return mode should have focused more on the fights in each encounter and having to survive. Rather than this gimmick type of play style and game play loop. Dealing with scrambling around the map in a limited space and time window. To craft specific items to then give to a dead drop mailbox for an after encounter bonus loot. Or specific round based challenges and gambits forcing you to play or kill in a certain way for more rewards. Against only 5 enemies at a time... All while doing challenges for characters during runs that you're forced to do one by one and can't just bang them all out in a single encounter, so they might take an extra run or two to do. Isn't really that fun at all tbh... It's also kinda strange that every character, for the most part, can obtain the same traps, throwables, guns and perks during a run. Each character should have been more unique than they are now to make runs more interesting and diverse. It would be cool to have new weapons tho and the ability to sell stuff. But maybe I'm being too harsh. I really just want more enemies to fight and less time being wasted between rounds and before and after each encounter.

9/10 Worth every dollar and time spent.

Edit: Oh and the flashlight is really well done. Also how the character turns with the mouse feels amazing. Especially while running and dodging around to flank, cover by cover or backing up around corners to run away. It's sick and gives the player great control over their movement.

Path of Exile 2 has been out for a month now and i still have 0 interest in playing the endgame. I leveled a monk and demon form witch to the start of endgame and had a really good time, a blast even with the dozens of gripes and moments of mixed experiences i have with the game. Yet i still preferred to level the other classes through the campaign than to even touch the endgame ever again... That's how boring, not fun and unfinished the endgame is and of course it would be, it needs years of further development. But even when changes are made and content updates roll out, i still wont be an endgame grinder. It's just not for me and has never worked in any ARPG.

All i want is acts 1-6 on normal to be a leveling experience of 1-60+. With endgame unlocking and being optional. Then acts 1-6 cruel to be levels 60-90+ For a Diablo 2 type of feel. Because Leveling, Gearing, Bossing in every zone and developing your build is the best experience in any ARPG. As soon as the campaign is over, The game is immediately boring for that character and will not be played any further. Especially since even at level 70 your character feels fully built, resistance capped and there are no longer any impactful or build changing moments to be had on your passive tree, skills or your gear, ever again. And never in a reasonable amount of hours invested.

Something that really grinds my gears and why I've stopped playing for a week... Trading just 1 exalt for best in slot gear is 100x cheaper and faster than dealing with the trash gear drops, vendor items and the rng gambling crafting system that bricks gear and builds. That has not yet once provided the player with an item on par with a single exalt piece of gear let alone divine orb gear on the trading website. Then in game gear and self found items means absolutely nothing to the player anymore. And gear is the core function and game play loop on an ARPG LOL! Half of the game play loop is just stripped away from the players experience after finishing the campaign and entering the start of endgame. Because hey... You need to trade to cap your res and min max damage rolls, now nothing in game will drop better than what you bought even with magic find, needing to then trade again 5-10 levels from now for a small, very small, stat increases. Yet still have to deal with 1 shot mechanics while your character is min maxed, at an increasingly higher rate than in the campaign with trash magic gear. You literately just feel weaker and now there's no dopamine hits to keep you going. And your build and skills aren't changing or evolving anymore, so why keep playing?

I just cant leave a positive review right now, even tho i love the combat, animation quality, hit feedback and flow so much! There is just too many more gripes i have with its early access, but I'm hoping and waiting for things to get better. I'm Excited for Druid and Huntress and to see what the next 3 acts bosses and monsters are like.

It's really such a disappointment and a slap to the face... Gut punch really, that armour/physical damage reduction and even elemental resist doesn't work at all. For 95% of the player base it has been impossible to solve the 1 shot problem while having capped resistances and 20+ divine orb cost builds. That can happen at any given time by a dozen different things, like crit attacks from magic or rare mobs, on death effects and boss aoe attacks. Energy shield is the only thing that's viable to play yet even that gets 1 shot still at random and i'm already burnt out on being forced to run only that type of gear. What's really silly is how useless evasion is because the moment you do take damage you get 1 shot. So i will never waste my time leveling a dex stat evasion only character. Looks like its a helldivers 2 situation all over again and how many months are going to pass while in this terrible state? To put this into perspective of how bad the current state of the game really is... A fully strength, max life on gear, 75-85% physical damage reduction character gets chunked for half its hp by a normal white mobs basic attack! Yet any build with energy shield and 0 physical damage reduction gets tickled and shrugs it off like they never even took damage just now and can tank a crap tone more hits, like wtf?

Fake in engine game trailers before release. Bodies disappearing after 15 seconds, causing half the kills in the server to be unlootable. The absolute plague of duplicating millions of dollars and endgame gear. Dozens of used assets and trash net-code servers. Broken audio, HIt registration, Terrible performance and lasty...The company is shutting down after 4 days of release and clearly broke steams early access policy. I expect steam to remove this title from existence and refund everyone, like they have done before for other games.

FPS dips down to 19! with constant stutters during any PvP fight. Windows and drivers are up to date and i tried low, medium and max settings but still nothing helps. I run every other game i play at 100-144 fps at max settings. This has truly been the worst performance based experience I've ever had. When i mentioned stutters, i don't just mean every first or third shot during the start of a fight. No i mean constant freezing and micro stutters with every few steps taken, during each gunfight spray and after each equipment use or explosion. Just walking up to and inside a building there will be 12 consecutive stutters...The average frame rate during a fight is 50 fps! Where anything under 90 in a shooter feels like its lagging. Even when launching the game you have to allow 6 different popups that I've never seen before and it runs off its own anti cheat? It's just...weird. I also ran into 3 different and blatant hackers, 2 that i was able to kill and one i used the coin ricochet shots to counter. Your first fight each game will be an AI team that seems to slowly hunt you down. While the rest of the match you can possibly fight 1-4 other player squads. Battling over 1-2 artifacts on the map, usually at the middle or an extract. I experienced 2 pretty cool multi squad fights, that i cleaned up and extracted with 2k damage and both artifacts. I really cant comment on anything else about the game, as my experience was ruined by its performance and had mostly and awful time. Even when being mvp and extracting most of my matches.

Edit: Developer notes didn't fix anything.

The animation quality, sound design and performance is really good and better than most RTS games. It's obvious how much work and passion was put into this. Yet how can it be, that they release this with only 1 game mode? Victory Points. The most hated and unfun game mode in RTS history. Annihilation and even king of the hill are far better and the preferred standard. So why are those modes missing? The matches are so short that its pointless and a disadvantage to push and take enemy territory. There are no awesome ambushes behind enemy lines or tug of war fights for territory. Because of how you can cap and take a victory point in 3-5 seconds, From just a single unit. Winning a match in 12 minuets before the opponent can reach tech 3 or let alone tech 4. Some matches can go the distance but still end abruptly, without ever losing or taking 1 piece of territory.

The prices for towers are also way too high causing matches to be very stale. Only building 1-2 gold towers and maybe 1 command tower if you feel like it. I'd go as far to saying cut the price in half! To the cost of a unit or two. The rest of your economy goes to rushing your HQ tech tiers, paying to use abilities to win fights and keeping your population maxed along with each needed upgrade. There's also a major flaw with retreating units not falling back to healing towers, making them a complete waste and unlocking extra training slots on the HQ shouldn't be tied to that building. Instead have training slots be increased with each HQ tech tier, only if its not op for Nighthaunts to have as it isn't sought after right now.

I also want to point out how this is a Warhammer game...with only 4 factions? There really needs to be Skaven, beastmen, lizardmen and the other 3 chaos factions. Even Elves and dwarfs are missing. The hard truth is, this game isn't even on the same level as dawn of war soulstorm and its 15 years old! But it still has a chance to be better than dawn of war 2 and 3. Don't make the same mistakes and fail like they did. Change the main game mode, add more and release fairly priced dlc factions. Above all it needs mod support to keep it alive. It's release day hype and it only has 421 more players, than soulstorm right now. Let that be a wake up call.

Edit: All unit stats and ability damage numbers are hidden and should be updated to show on the hud of the build menu. Not knowing units health, damage and armor in and RTS is crazy. Since min maxing their cost to effectiveness is very important. Unit pathing and commands also need further updates. Attack moves for melee don't engage anything on screen. Units only engage if they walk into each other and they wont move, follow or route on their own. Needing constant move inputs to attack the correct target or protect your ranged units. Trying to target fire is very problematic with ranged units. because instead of attacking where they stand they will instead move all the way...point blank..and then proceed to punch lol. Every unit needs constant movement inputs and turn changes or else they stand there afk or simply walk right past. When you target click on an enemy, your unit should chase them to the ends of the earth till you tell them to stop or the fog of war completely covers them. And when you tell your units to attack move, they should engage with everything in the radius of their fog of war. Don't even get me started on trying to command a single melee unit around these tight and narrow paths, trying to target only ranged units. Only for a single model to clip into range of another melee unit, pulling the entire squad into combat. Congratulations you now have only a few seconds to decide either 1. Full retreat and waste a whole bunch of command points. or 2. Watch as a small glob of archers rain down a volley of arrows and insta kill everything on screen. This will most likely, be what happens to you.

The Pinnacle of RTS. As none have surpassed it, for 15 years.

This games AI is more jank and unresponsive than mobile games...I really thought it wouldn't be as bad as the early access reviews but nope, its just as bad as they said. Only a small portion of your army will engage in battle, while the rest stand afk, taking damage while not defending themselves or you. While every enemy unit is 100% active and responsive. Combined with awful game mechanics, like forcing your character to stand still to shoot. Making each time you do so to cause the enemy to instantly target and hit you. While the entire screen is covered in health bars and insane amounts of ground clutter. I also very much hate the feeling caused by your units health always decaying. Like actually why? When have you ever seen any of these creatures die after being alive for mere seconds? Skeletons are ancient...It causes an unnatural rushed feeling during your runs. Also having to finish off a mob in order to summon units is terrible game design. As you will engage with 3 different mobs, and some enemy units will run away off screen. There's just so much unavoidable damage and losses at all times. Lastly i felt like nothing about the meta progression made you any stronger.

According to global steam achievements. I'm the first and only player, (At the time of this review) to beat this game with starter weapons only and without upgrading any turrets. Along with completion of all quests, Achieved solo on 3 player difficulty. So I have a solid grasp on this games feel and balance. The Performance is smooth with only a single crash on startup. The character design and music give me constant risk of rain 2 vibes which i enjoy. There's enough playable characters, enemy variety, weapons and quests to sink 20 hours into. Tho it can be a bit dull and boring at times, killing mobs off screen due to the camera not panning far enough or because of walls and the radar blocking the view.

There's 3 different ways of play-style to finish a run. As there are 3 resource types including food, industry and science. Food for leveling your character, Industry for placing down turrets and science for researching new or upgraded turrets/buffing towers. All of these resources can be used at a certain vendor too for weapons and a single upgrade each stage.

1. Build only food generators, maxing out your characters stats to become completely unkillable. I'm talking 80% damage reduction, 3 hp regen a second and a taunting aura. Or 200% damage and 50% fire rate bonus. While saving 300-400 industry to spam turrets on the later levels without a care in the world. My personal favorite and the strongest play-style.

2. Play a balance of all 3 resources. Pushing through at a moderate pace, getting all 3 characters to levels 4 or 5. While having 2 level 3 turrets and a couple of buffing towers. Having possibly a struggle on stage 3 and a hard time on stage 4. As turrets in this game lack the dps to hold off on their own for even a short while.

3. Build mostly all industry, putting down turrets every level. Feeling weak the entire time and go through an endurance run till you get 1 shot lol. This is how the 3 coop random matches i played went. As people bought bad weapons from vendors they didn't need, while lacking levels to the dps characters...

All in all i think its a neat little top down rouge like, tower defense and twin stick shooter. My only real tweaks i'd like to see is a buff to single target weapons. Because they absolutely lack the dps to clear anything even when its a legendary weapon. Also a change to turret stats, Since it feels wrong that 8, level 3 buffed turrets cant even hold off a single spawner on their own when its the correct damage type to the enemy mob.

Better Than The Cycle Frontier. While on the same level as marauders, with a dark and darker feel.

This game is absolute trash and not worth the grind. You Still fight against purple armor and red guns on the first map while wearing green armor... Even tho this was said to be fixed and the first bracket of matchmaking was nothing to blue rarity, then purple and exotics. This was a lie and the majority of the time you're matched against players 1 tier above your gear level. So you'll have to work twice as hard, doing 200 damage on multiple peeks and passive aggressive healing back to full, just to win those fights. Then once you're fighting against the same gear tier the game defaults back into whoever shoots first wins. Causing again this passive aggressive playstyle of people immediately stimming back to full over and over again, resetting the fight till their the ones doing damage first.