Recent reviews by scruty

Having played the game regularily over the last 3 years, I'm genuinely baffled and disappointed in the direction (or lack thereof) of the game. Crytek seemed to hold the throne in the extracion shooter genre, but as it stands, Hunt just isn't fun to play anymore, as reflected by the recent reviews on Steam.

Two of the stronger points of the game - it's unrelenting gameplay and intriguing visual identity have both been all over the place lately. It's just one huge bag of mixed signals: devs acknowledge the issue with the necromancer trait, they make it single-use, but in the same update add revive bolts for hand crossbow, effectively negating their own reasoning for changing necro. Each event devs add custom ammo to a larger and larger pool of weapons, blurring the lines between weapon uniqueness, only to make ammo types for some weapons scarce (cannot be equipped in the menu, can be found in-game). Fundamentally, it is a good change, but why waste time and effort to give weapons more custom ammo in the first place? Silencers, which always came at a hefty price of harsher damage falloff and huge knock in the bullet velocity, for years were only available for a handful of guns and served more as utility options instead of combat powerhouses. Now, a sniper rifle got a silencer, so did the best performing long ammo rifle in the game (coincidentally, the favorite rifle of Post Malone). Moving on, Hunt always relied on its sound design, judging the distance, position and type of gunshots , making mental notes which guns the enemy use etc. Instead, we now have a silencer fiesta, players fight without making noise - entire server may be fighting two compounds away, but you'll never know. Again, an undeniable strength of Hunt, its sound design, undermined by Crytek's decision to make silencers high value, low risk playstyle.

Same goes for visual identity. We now have Vikings in the Bayou, Samurai in full garb, Ghostface TM, Post Malone in not one, but two variants, gilded and ornamental Egyptian equipment straight out of Titan Quest etc. It says a lot when the addition of literal clowns to the gameworld seems like the most loreful and fitting inclusion in a long time.

The issues get aggravated even more by progressive greed. Premium currency acquisition by just playing has been severly nerfed, the prices of cosmetics have gone up, while the quality, especially of battle pass items, relies mostly on reskins or slapping the same visual motif on different items. I understand, the game is in live-service mode now, it needs to find revenue somewhere, but compromising quality on top of all the issues I've mentioned, will make a lot of people fed up, sooner rather than later.

Then, there's the technical side. The 1896, or the glorified Hunt 2.0, update hasn't help either. The game boasts terrible performance, bugs, woeful servers, matchmaking problems and the worst menu in the industry (by a mile). It's been more than half a year since the update, promises were made in the meantime, not much been delivered. Always one step forward, three back, going on for years now.

All of this makes me wanna play Hunt less and less with each game session.

EDIT to elaborate.
IMO the introduction of regenration shot was the first serious warning sign of things to come. Before regen shot, each bodyshot, even from compact ammo guns, was a blow and dilemma. Do I use medkit (commit a resource) or try to greed it out? Maybe look for a doctor grunt, but then I'm leaving my team to fight 2v3? Every hit used to matter, because it meant something during a fight, whereas with regen shot, people just shrug off hits by hiding behind cover for a while. Regen shot rendered body shots in a medium-long range fights useless. Hence combat becomes a tiny bit more shallow.
Other changes followed over time, like the possibility to recover lost health chunks. A huge spawn fight cost your team some chunks? Remedy, restoration shot or restoration medkits can help you out no problem. Instead of creating a choice: do we leave and play another match, or push our luck and try to banish the boss while being weakened from a fight? The second option brought additional tension to the game, the against-the-odds situation that made games memorable. But no. Let's give the player a crutch, help them out.
Red-skulled teammates can be revived if you hold the bounty token. Let's not forget, there was a pact trait around that allowed you to resurrect a red-skulled friend for a health chunk, which you can then restore by looting a dead hunter. A very forgiving feature in a game like Hunt.
Same goes for solo-play, which by default should be the ultimate hardcore experience. It's just you versus 11 other players. Again, Crytek decides to give solo players a crutch: necromancer for solo revive, multiple others traits with enhanced powers exclusive for solo players, like not making noise while crouchwalking (seriously?), etc.
Even the economy, which to some degree should be a balancing factor, got reduced to afterthought. With all the different sources for earning Hunt dollars, it is indeed quite hard to go broke. Over last 30 prestige levels I haven't had a money issue once. What is the point of higher grade guns being more expensive then? Everyone can afford them. Why get a Vetterli, if I can get Krag instead, a clearly better gun? A certain aspect of the game, once again, watered down and made irrelevant.
Granted, none of these changes seem too drastic or harmful in isolation. But it's been 2 years of changes like the ones I mentioned, a slow trickle of new features that take away the beauty of Hunt. Once a truly uncompromising, harsh experience with which players fell in love, now a easy to get into, somewhat forgiving shooter.
That's not Hunt: Showdown.

A classic Fatshark release. One step forward compared to its predecessor, three steps backwards.

Darktide has improved and more engaging combat than Vermintide, so that's the upside. However, the game severely lacks content as of now; there are only 4 classes (V2 had 15 on release) and a handful of missions which actually reuse the same couple of maps. Crafting not fully implemented and 'coming soon'. Weapon shop which sells a selection of guns and trinkets and rotates the gear each hour, so good luck finding exactly what you need/want when you need/want it (remember, you can't just craft what you want 'yet'). Penances (challanges) for cosmetics which force you to grief and actively sabotage your team. No attachments system for firearms which was advertised. Economy and weekly quests tied to each character separately, so you cannot pool your resources and instead have to grind like crazy to earn currency. No meaningful rewards for completing high difficulty missions (meaning no loot chests with higher chance for better tier weapons you earned after every Vermintide match on legend). The list sadly goes on.

I've played a tad over 100h in pre-order beta and post release and I've seen everything this game has to offer (it took me more than 600h to reach the same state in Vermintide 2). Knowing Fatshark, they will drip-feed the content over the years and ultimately, Darktide's going to be amazing. But now? This is an early access game, with an emphasis on early. Cannot recommend, even though the mix of melee and ranged combat turned out great, so the foundation has been laid, now it's a matter of Fatshark managing the game and supplying content at a satisfactory rate.

Very similar to Banner Saga in its format. Some differences in the combat system, but the alternating turns principle remains the same. Lots of characters and very engaging world building. Bottom line, if you liked Banner Saga and crave more of the good stuff, look no further.

Alright, production values are below standard for a game priced within this range, however, it doesn't really matter. They nailed the atmosphere and created a thrilling and genuinely interesting story, backed by solid RPG elements (stats greatly influencing how you can play, choices that really do matter) and surprising replayability.
I see a lot of confusion regarding the game's identity, ie. what genre it is. Well, it's a Cthulhu game that kinda escapes classification. CoC just tells a story of a private dectective that has to do whatever he has to do as the story progresses and so the game navigates through many gameplay concepts because that's the only way to tell this tale of descent into madness. Make no mistake, most of the gameplay elements don't really shine and are rather average but servicable, nevertheless, CoC's strength lies in its storytelling and atmosphere, and said gameplay elements never really hinder the enjoyment of these.

So bottom line, for any Cthulhu enthusiast, this is a must buy. For people looking for a story-driven adventure? Also a buy. Other than that, I think it's a wait-for-sale (the price point is a bit highish).

PSA: There are a few jumpscares.

I'm baffled by all the negativity.

It's a beautifully grim co-op first-person combat game, with an endearing cast that is fatastically voiced. Each of the 5 characters have 3 subclasses that alter their playstyle and a unique set of weapons at their disposal, both melee and range (for a total of 54 weapons if I'm not mistaken). The meaty and extremely satisfying combat comprises the heart of Vermintide while each map always provides a fresh set of challanges for each playthrough. Really, what's not to love here.

People complaining about game-breaking bugs that persist since release? Curious, as I don't know any of the sort. There are occassional bugs, but not one of them are 'game-breaking' (ie. prevents you from playing the game). Bugged skills or phantom strikes? Maybe, but they are definitely not as severe as to stop me from doing successful Legend runs. If anything, any bugs that I encounter end up being so hilarious that the whole group just has a good laugh and moves on.
Fatshark has been slow with updates, yes, but I treat this game in the same way as Vermintide 1, which needed 2 years to get fully fleshed out. What's here already is solid enough to get you anything between 100-500h+ of gameplay, depending how much you like these sort of games. The DLCs are just there to enrich the experience, not complete it.

Wholehearted recommendation. It's already a damn fun game that will only improve with future content (albeit probably at a slow pace).

Disappointing. If you're interested, grab it when it's on +50% sale. Caution advised.

SoW proves that bigger does not always mean better, but what hurts this game even more is the arcadey direction Monolith choose. Poison or frost novas, double jumps, super speed, orc's corpses exploding after you kill them, etc. - it's just too much. I, for one, preferred the more coherent, grim and down-to-earth approach that SoM took which made me feel like I'm actually in Middle-Earth (albeit after a very slight suspension of disbelief). With SoW, there wasn't a single moment I felt like this is Tolkien's universe, that I'm actually playing a Lord of the Rings game.
The highlight and focus of SoW is fortress sieging, during which an army of your orc followers and the enemy orcs from the region clash and fight, accompanied by siege beasts (graugs with catapults strapped to their back, which guess what, can be cutomized to fire either poison, fire or cursed rocks), and whatever else you/them bring to battle. In essence, you're supposed to capture vicotry points (at least 3) in order to unlock the stronghold's boss. Now, victory points are basically small, arbitrary circles on the ground into which the whole action is funneled - orcs swarm one little area in the entire fortress and that's it, you kill them, you move to the next one. It's not a grand scale battle over the enitre fortress. It's rush point A, capture, rush point B, capture, etc., unlock the boss fight. Pretty underwhelming to say the least.
The fighting also somewhat loses its focus, with customizable skills that you can switch and activate on the fly for various builds. Let's say you want a poison build, so you get yourself some nice poison-enhancing gear, choose poison skills and you're set. The build I went for was a versatile one (to account for orcs' immunities), with the main thing being that once I counter someone, they're knocked to the ground immediately, and then I cannot be interrupted while finishing them off. Anybody attempting to stop the finisher gets countered, knocked to the ground, finished off. I played on the highest difficulty setting, where orcs can kill you in ~3 hits, so obviously this was a golden strategy for me. Sadly, it very quickly became super repetitive and sucked the fun out of combat. But was bar none the most effective approach to combat.
As for the story - forgetabble and unispired with moments that surely got Tolkien roll in his grave.

Overall, a game less focused than SoM, but with improved Nemesis System, packed with meaningless stuff just for the sake of being able to say 'IT'S BIGGER', without the LotR feel. IMHO, SoM is a better game.

Don't really know what's up with all the complaints.

This is a great expansion, in my opinion.

I see a lot of disappointment both on the official forums and in steam reviews, and it really leaves me scratching my head. CA did the best thing they could do - they created a race that truly feels UNIQUE, both by being confined to the Athel Loren and the controversial Amber. The WE requires a very different approach than all other races, and that means leaving your comfort zone, that's been building up since the release of the game.

To address common complaints:

- Amber. It provides incredible depth to the gameplay. Do you conquer, or try diplomacy? If so, where do you conquer (lost my first campaign, because I misjudged early on and went for very susceptible lands) or with whom you make allience? Do you invest in your tech to reap powerful bonuses, or focus on developing your capital? Or the Oak of Ages? What about your units? How many amber-upkeep units can you afford - do you keep them in one powerful army or spread across minor ones?

- Units and battles. Now, I do not play multiplayer, and I understand that some units may be underwhelming there. However, in the Grand Campaign, with the lord/hero bonuses, most of these units are absolute beasts on the battlefield. The infamous Glade Guard archers? Just try the ones with starfire shafts or hagbane tips. Deepwood Scouts not performing good enough? Again, try the Swiftshiver Shafts version. They slay everything that comes their way and they can fire while moving, meaning with enough micro, you can really get a lot from them. Infantry feels as it should, they can withstand some damage, but will lose prolonged encounters. Cavalry, even with underwhelming charge bonus, still gets the job done. Monsters are great and provide much utility, with the exception of great eagle.

- Economy. Techs and building provide some incredible bonuses to income, one just has to adjusts to take full advantage of them. 400% increased income from ports? Well, yes! Multiple and hefty bonuses to income from sacking? Great, have a lord specifically for this task. Trade bonuses? Check. Income buildings and increase income from neighbouring provinces? Thank you.

In conclusion, IMO, way better than Beastmen DLC, and I don't even like elves. But the uniqueness of their gameplay made them my favorite faction so far, and I believe this is how CA has to go about this franchise - implement races with really distinctive and individual mechanics (not like Beastmen, who just had carbon copies of other faction's mechanics) to truly flesh out the variety and differences between Old World's races.

Great game that constantly gets better thanks to refinements and new content. Very addictive, tried and true TW formula spiced up by the Warhammer lore. What's truly great here is the diversity between races, playstyles, and units. It's also comprehensive and easy to grasp, so if you haven't had any experience with previous TW titles, this one provides an opportunity to get started.
Recommended!

Another update 18/09

So after putting some more hours into it, I have a gripe that stems directly from the combat system. The longer you roam the wasteland, the more notoriety you have which is reflected by levels of threat (low -> guarded -> eleveted -> severe -> bedlam), akin in theory to the FTLs chase system, where it discouraged 'farming' or basically taking too much time. However, in practic, the threat level of bedlam does not coexist with its combat system, through which threat is represented. For each threshold you surpass, the battles are supposed to get tougher by simply putting more enemies on the battlefield. You face the same type of enemy units throughout the game, so they have the same health and damage throughout your whole journey. What is broken here, is that late in the game you encounter the same weak (as compared to your badass elite units) henchmen, but there are just way more of them, however, the numbers advantage they seemingly posses is mitigated by the two moves per turn system. Therefore, out of 15 enemies, only two, or even one move towards to attack you - easy pickings for your hardened lot. The rest is just grouped in the corner waiting their turn to enter the meat grinder.
The only battle headache is the random placement system, which can really put in a tough predicament right from the start. Still, you always go first in battle so you can immediately activate shields, damage absorbers or flat-out nuke clustered enemies.
In essence, you just drive around wasteland, hoping to unlock a new dozer (I didn't unlock anything yet), and scoring levels (= more damage output). And boy, you'll need your elites levelled if you are to have any chances with boss. What does it mean? If you manage to survive your first 20 minutes, you're rolling and the game gets grindy fast. Still, the potential is there, the game just needs tweaking.

Update 17/09

So I kind of finished the game on normal.

Let me say this. There are two difficulty bumps after which the game is a breeze (at least on normal). You hit the first bump right after the start - you only have rookies, who, for the most part, won't withstand more than one shot. Keeping them alive and leveling them is the tricky part. Some of them will die, but their sacrifice allows you to keep a force of capable veterans. Then, you gonna find the first elite recruitable. After the moderately hard battle, he/she joins. Elites are powerful units - they have more health, and their damage output raises each time they level. By the end of the game, one of my elites dished out 16 damage per shot (which means one-shotting regular and elite enemies, the only exception being the boss). I'd say that's pretty deadly.
The second difficulty bumps comes right after you established a foothold with your now veteran troops. The resources. All of a sudden, your fuel and food are almost depleted. If you manage to gather some, you good. But that's random, as most of it comes from points of intrests that hide a random encounter. It could be your precious fuel, or a band of cyborgs.
After that, you just steamroll. More elites join you, they level, you gather more powerful equipment for your dozer to use in battle (like a nuke, or a shield granting immunity to damage and regenerates your health each time someone hits you for one turn), etc. Most of the time I fielded my 3 elites and they mopped the floor with like 15 enemies without taking a scratch.

As for the random encounters, I'd like to see more crew-specific, contextual interactions. There were only a handful during my 3 hour playthrough, and I'd would greatly enhance the feeling of accomplishment and connection to your crewmembers if they had more options to interact during encounters. As it stands now, half of the encounters don't even give you any option to pick - just a quick, flavor text and that's it. Hell, I don't mind losing my guys because of a choice I made in a random encounter!

Everything written below still applies.

Also, I cannot comprehend how you can compare this game to Xcom (the new one).

---- Original review ----

I cannot recommend Bedlam in its current, underdeveloped state, as it lacks certain, IMO, fundamental features.

I do not share many reviewers' concerns about overall unbalance of the combat mechanics. I think two moves in a turn spent on whatever by whoever is an interesting concept. It just requires getting used to. However, I do have an issue with how uninteresting and not varied the characters are mechanically-wise. I.E. You start with 4 snipers, each of whom has the exact same stats. Like carbon copies. Same for your 4 gunslingers (each has 5 health, 3 damage, 3-4 range, 4 move). A wasted opportunity right from the start, a little mix up in the roster would greatly improve the decision-making process. Said gunslingers should all bee a wee bit different. Like imagine, one gunslinger with 4 health and 3 range, but 3-5 damage. Another one with 5 health, 2-4 damage, 2-4 range, and 3 move. You know, some tactical flavor.

Once a character levels up (after scoring three kills), their combat usefullness increases dramatically, and their stats go up in a fixed manner, which means we do not get to allocate any skill points. A real shame - the way it was in Banner Saga kept things interesting - there you could specialize classes, having direct control of how and what function a given unit would perform on the battlefield. What a wasted opportunity! For instance, I would heavily invest in health for my sniper given the chance, granting him survivability, but at the cost of lower damage output. I would increase the range and quickness of my shotgun unit, making them glass cannons, etc. Choices is what we need, to further adjust the characters to our playstyle.

Unfortunately, there are no active/passive skills either (sniper is the most 'exciting' class, as they have a passive chance for a headshot each shot), so there is no incetive to use your lesser units, as they are prone to dying extremely fast and cannot really dish out any proper damage. If the vanilla troops had a skill, like for instance your tank having a charge, or granade to use once per battle, that would justify using them in certain situations, even if they do not scale to the enemy stats-wise. Currently what happens is you end up using your two moves on your badassest guy, and reasonably so! A skill-tree, like choose one skill out of two per level - that's what Bedlam needs.

Same goes for equipment. It's all bound to a character and is unchangable. Your frontliners will use a simple melee weapon, always dealing 2 damage. After the level up, the damage will increase, but it's always a fixed value. You cannot influence it in any way, your troops gonna deal the exact same amout of damage each time they attack. Instead of a boring 3 damage each shot, why not introduce a 2-4 mechanics? What about finding weapons as you travel along the wasteland? We don't need an abundance of them - just a few to spice it up.

Apart from combat and character progression, the Dozer's upgrade system seems to be lacking. There are four areas of research - bio research (slower food consumption), armory (less power cells spent for using dozer's special equipment), barracks (faster soldier recovery), and engineering (less fuel used). By spending power cells, you can improve each, up to a level 5. Each level grants a % improvement in efficiency. And that's it. It could have been a small research tree for each research area, with at least a few passive bonuses to choose from, maybe an active bonus here and there. As it stands now, it just feels underdeveloped.

Nevertheless, the art, the feel, the world, the atmosphere, it's all here, and it creates a fantastic coherent entity.

In essence, the potential of Bedlam is huge, it may even surpass FTL, but as it stands, I cannot recommended it, even though I wish I could.

Remember Me is a strange mixture of Batman Arkham (the fighting), Tomb Rider (the jumping), Portal (the puzzles and sometimes environments) and Bioshock (the distinct world and atmosphere) with a touch of Chris Nolan's Inception.

You play as Nilin, a memory hunter - able to enter the head of any person and remix their memories, changing this very person forever. The setting is NeoParis, year 2084. The design and detalis are amazing - from claustrophobic, futuristic corridors to beautiful vistas that blend classical architecture with neo skyscrapers, you will discover every flavor of NeoParis, even though the path is always straightforward and linear. The story is gripping and mature. The feel of the game and the concept alone are the reasons to play this title. Remember Me has its flaws - the pontential of the game is not really realized and the borrowed elements from the abovementioned games are sometimes poorly executed, but not to the point where it ruins the experience.

Unfortunately, the price tag feels a bit inadequate - the game was a pleasure to play, interrupted by several nuisances here and there, nevertheless, worth half the current price. I recommend Remember Me, but grab it while it's on sale.
PS.
Oh, I just noticed the game is 28€, not 50€ as it used to be. Well, I guess it's worth it.