Recent reviews by Zikeji

Needs a good year or so before they iron out the bugs and UX issues.

best game

For a cooperative game the fact you can't queue with friends is basically a deal killer. Not to mention the bugs.. Oh the bugs.. Getting sent to the main lobby on multiple occasions in the same session is a bit disappointed, especially when on multiple occasions you're about to board.

Game breaking bugs galore!

Just trying to finish the campaign. On the second mission the sensor view got "stuck" (as my best way to describe it) and I was forced to kill the game, losing progress. Continuing on, on the third mission it got stuck during an autosave. This time I could actually access the escape menu but when I tried to initiate a save nothing happened. Considering the previous save says it was 40 minutes ago, that's alot of progress.. I've lost my motivation to put up with these game breaking bugs and will resume when a patch hopefully addresses them.

Picture this: you're 39 minutes into your suicide mission (yes, that's a difficulty level), extraction is mere seconds away. You and your squad - you've been through the wringer and are ready to get back to your Super Destroyer.

Except, with no warning whatsoever, you get a network connection error. At this point it's routine, but previously you would have been baffled - you would have checked your network, done the usual tests, just to try and figure out why - why did you just randomly disconnect? Why does it only happen here, in Helldivers 2, and not in your other games?

There is no answer, it isn't on your end, or so you believe. You've met others facing the same issues, in fact, more often than not you hear this complaint when your fellow Helldivers deign to talk. But alas, Super Earth needs representatives, right? You've consigned yourself to this Sisyphus-like existence, of pushing the boulder up.. But never quite getting there.

Okay, maybe not that bad, considering sometimes the game decides you need to earn something for your effort.

In any case, until these network issues and server crashes are fixed, save yourself the disappointment.

Update 4/2/2024:

I haven't encountered the specific issue I mention at the original time of review, but the game is still plagued with joining issues. A quick fix the devs could implement would be getting rid of the minigame where you have to walk back to the server selection terminal anytime you get back to your ship.

Did a 6 hour session (first time playing since it was early access) just to have the game crash, and receive a painful reminder that the game has no autosave. Yes, in the year 2023 ( the game received an update in January so I'll qualify that) there are still developers who don't put such a basic & required feature in their game.

Do I recommend the game in it's current state? No. Do yourself a favor and install an autosave mod before playing it. Save yourself the pain. I'm going to sleep on this loss and see if I'm in the mood to start over again tomorrow.

Update: Now that I've installed an autosave mod I've started over. Receiving a comforting "auto save" lag spike every 20 minutes is well worth it so an ADHD person like me doesn't have to worry about manually saving.

Disregarding the multitude of server issues, which are the type of thing you can file under "suffering from it's own success", the multiplayer experience is poor - at least in my opinion. This assumes the server issues are resolved, which it seems like they have - at least, I don't get "your hit has been denied due to sudden packet loss!" and the other overt weirdness that was going on the first few days.

It's an experience older than the Battlefield series this game aims to recreate. The experience of ducking behind cover only to get hit by someone who, on their end, you hadn't ducked behind cover yet. The experience of shooting someone what looks like a dozen times, but the math doesn't add up.

Because of these issues, the fast paced experience is just not there. Like wading through a pool of slime. It pushes you to want to play ranged. Hang back, take pot shots. If your hit doesn't register, you can move to new spot and try again. It isn't someone in your face - where it matters.

I had hoped this game wouldn't suffer from the same symptoms that always dissuaded me from the Battlefield series. I was wrong. And this doesn't even factor in the odd things missing, and odd "quirks" such as the default shortcut for dropping your medical bag as a Medic also switching your firing mode on the gun.

And to make matters worse - if you choose to use voice chat, they'll hold onto recordings of your voice for an indeterminate amount of time. Now, I'm all for moderation and reducing bullying and toxicity, but not having a firm timeframe in the policy is a bit unnerving. The only good news of recently is that they decided against forcing everyone to use e-sports level anti-cheat.

4/5

It's a simple game that scratches that roguelike itch, only drawn back by a few gamebreaking bugs.

On one instance the game crashed after getting the extra weapon upgrade, then trying to get an extra weapon. I've avoided that since then. When loading the save after the crash, you come back into the system but it is random again and all your progress in that system is lost.

The second issue I've experienced is armor / health not being.. Accurate? On three separate occasions I've gone from 4+ bars of armor to the game over screen after taking a single hit. Could equally be a mechanic I'm not aware of and I'm just bad.

If you're out of touch like me, all you need to know to avoid the game is that it is a Switch port.

You can toggle those graphics settings all you want, but nothing you can change will make it look less like a PS1-era game. But say you're fine with the abysmal graphics quality (even with "high resolution textures" on), you still need to make it past the clunky tutorial to get to actual combat. And if you were expecting MH: W combat you'll be sorely disappointed. This entire game plays like something I'd run on a RetroPi emulator. It's clunky and feels old and dated. If you've played an older FF game, I'd say the feeling of MH: Rise is that of FFIX.

The most shocking thing to me? It was released in 2021 and ISN'T an indie game (obviously it wouldn't be, but the quality makes me think indie).

Wish I had taken the "it's not World 2" review too heart and actually did some research. I saw a new Monster Hunter game, and I loved MH: W. I would have saved some money had I simply looked up gameplay like I usually do, but my motivation was to play it ASAP because I loved MH: W that much. Then I screwed up again because I bought from a third party without a return policy. So now I'm stuck with another game I'll never touch again.

Deciding to pick up this game again and play. After 30 minutes of attempting to play I have given up. Completely exhausted and defeated.