Recent reviews by Merry

Merry's top tips:

- Bring a friend
- Forget the flip-a-tron
- Always smoke and run, smoke and run
- Winch when you're in a pinch
- Don't forget the remote
- Welder your patties

This game makes me realise I went into the wrong profession in real life.

Prepare for the game (like the company) to become infested with AI trash, better yet don't buy this game.

Other games: Grim Dawn; Torchlight 2; Path of Exile; earlier Diablos; Titan Quest series.

• Enjoying the Control and Fallout mashed-together aesthetics that make for a stimulating PvEvP dystopian vacation
  
• Approached extraction and saw a shootout between two raiders as the elevator opened. I somehow managed to successfully (and clownishly) de-escalate their fight by talking a lot of wholehearted nonsense down the mic, and then ended up extracting together! This is singlehandedly my favourite moment of the game so far
  
• Of the 6-7 stranger encounters I had during one raid session, most of them were been pew-pew absent. I had a few lovely chats about fuel cells, arc components, and sharing loot. Who said friendship is dead?
  
• I also managed to team up with people from Sweden and Norway during a solo raid, and helped each other complete a few quests, whilst also helping another separate raider who went down close to extraction
  
• One raider during another raid did shoot me cold, but in fairness I accidentally pushed the wrong button to voice chat and somehow forgot my quick gesture emotes... Though to their credit, as they punched me in the face they apologised, so I guess some raiders are remorseful? /s
  
• Having many so many sweethearts in-game, you can easily add people from the map screen post extraction! The map will literally show you who was in proximity to you at various stages of your session, e.g., when you loot items, when you extract, when you engage ARCs... A great feature to ensure I never lose a bestie

• What has probably pleasantly surprised me the most about this game is how many women and fems I have encountered through voice chat! Honestly it has been so wonderful having these brief interactions, and I hope more can engage with this game and its communities
  
• Solo queue is super chill compared to 2-3 person squad. I found people are way more supportive and will come help you in a fight against ARCs, and in some cases people will offer health packs and shields, something I really love about solo raiding
  
• For an Unreal 5 engine game, technically it runs very well, bar a few minor issues with server queuing that seem to be resolved for now, and minor graphical pop-ins, e.g., when you are in Speranza

• [Now implemented] Preaching to the choir here but the store prices the developers are asking for might better reflect a free-to-play game, not a game people have already spent between £30.00-49.99 on. The cosmetic bundles should not cost around £15.99 each (e.g., if a bundle is 2400 raider coins), and should be an area the developers revisit
  
• This is already in-game, but from anecdotal evidence I would recommend turning cross-play off for a better experience with players and reducing needless aggro (can only speak about solo raids)
  
• A suggestion I keep seeing coming up is an additional PvE mode, given Arcs are quite menacing and could be more so to account for the lack of the PvP element. I could see this working quite well as my experiences of solo pretty much reflect this currently
  
• There are too many invisibles walls cropping up during a raid; and they are particularly worse on maps where the player has to traverse rocky areas. I have encountered a few also inside more metal-based buildings

• Exoborne
  
• Marathon
  
• Helldivers 2

I don't think I've ever played a game where you can earn double achievements for the exact same event, dependent on whether you played as a woman or a man, e.g., get a job as a schoolteacher (F or M) - accounts for 8% of achievements. I wonder if it bears any relevance to the narrative...

So far the game runs fine, but I wouldn't recommend playing with a controller, despite the store page stating it has partial controller support. I don't think the camera control (something like LT/RT + analog stick) to be all that intuitive. Same goes for the right analog stick functioning as the mouse cursor; it just doesn't feel great! I imagine this would be a similar situation if you were to play on the Steam Deck, something I'll try at a later point.

On the side of voice acting, most NPC lines and story narration has been voiced thus far, and has been pretty decent! Graphics are what you'd expect for this sort of game, nothing out of the ordinary. It's worth noting for anyone interested in this game that it's somewhat text-heavy, not as much as a game like Pillars of Eternity, but maybe more on par with Disco Elysium. Certain tasks like reading books often have its useful information underlined and/or emboldened.

Here's to my deeply disturbing journey into Lichdom, because nothing says a hot girl's summer like characterising undeath by sipping on my 1000th soul, and burning in Hell for it.

Even the player must leave the canvas sooner or later, but I'm so very glad I got to paint in this world, and at the age of 32 no less!

I recommend every therapist play this game, as it does for trauma what Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice does for schizophrenia. Easily a game in my top three games of all time.

[Longer review coming]

"Wow! You're the Grand Champion! I saw your fight against the Gray Prince! You're the best! Can I... Can I follow you around? I won't get in the way!" ...Famous last words, almost 20 years on <3

• A dog as a companion
  
• Vast greenery to explore
  
• Woke homosexuality - Praise Henry's charming face!
  
• Works on the Steam Deck like a dream

A game now without Steam cloud saves... I don't recommend this game until it's resolved (if it's resolved).

Grinding Gear Games have not even got this game out of early access yet, and are now charging between $30/£23.93 to $90/£71.80 for "supporter packs" (4 new packs as of this review). This is in addition to their "early access series packs", which starts from $30/£23.93 up to $480/£360 (6 original packs). This to me is just pure horse sh*t money-grabbing tactics, where micro-transactions are rolled out to the nth degree. I think it also gives some insight to where current priorities lie for the developers.

One of their more recent major updates was not received well and described as attempting to bring back a Path of Exile 1 mode that deliberately slows down the game, and consequently intensifies the grinding feeling that makes a game that should be fun, not fun.

This review does a good job of laying out the current problems with the game: https://v1.steam.hlxgame.cc/id/apeshitsixfingers/recommended/2694490/

For all of these reasons, I do not recommend buying this game in its early access version with how the development is going. I do not think I would even recommend this game when it comes out of this phase if developers continue to basically ignore its player base.