Recent reviews by Dissonant Serenity

It's a mad world.

So I went in looking for a 'Command and Conquer' type experience but... well... There are quite a few things they did badly wrong.
Maps over-crowded with random crap making things linear, no breathing room on getting a base, just continual waves dropped on your head, and the fact that absolutely nothing you need to know to control the various units, or even make use of your own base is explained.
Oh, and the tone the voice-actors use doesn't fit the dialogue. You can tell that one or two people wrote most of it in one sitting with minimal input from the rest.

You will die a lot.
Die to the acid of a biological flamethrower equivelent dousing you in bile that can eat through rock.
Die to a heavy android with red-hot chainsaws for arms that cuts you in half at the waist with three well-placed swings staining the sand of a dustball of a world red with your insides.
Die to a bug that somehow figured out cloaking, and has been following you through the dense jungle for the last four minutes waiting for you to be distracted.
Die trying to your own sentry gun walking fire over your position as it switches targets.
Die because you got unlucky and got dropped into bug-hole and it collapsed under your pod crushing you dozens of meters below the ground.
Die failing to run far enough from the bombing run your squad mate called in, as your corpse flies dozens of meters.
Die because you tried to flank a Hulk only to find you walked into the sights of a 'Mech Machine Gun.
Die because despite your friends, despite your skills- you made a bad call and tried to cut the mission short by air-striking the boss only for the chaff you ignored to vomit pheremones skywards and call in the Swarm.
Die for Super Earth!

You play as [Space Jesus] a hero who's race and gender have gone unrecorded by history mostly due to the only civilized world around to record it getting attacked by Anime Girl's Bane with you the lone survivor...
Really though get Frackin Universe and abruptly you are playing what this game could have once been with a little more funding and polish...
This... This is the most I have ever been disappointed in a game.
I mean this in a good way, the devs really damn well tried.
They tried so hard but as the years turned into a decade... Well the light in those young game devs eyes went out and only sorrow remained.

Ahh DRG, it's been a while hasn't it?
When I was told this game was about being a dwarf and digging a hole I mostly thought my friend was talking out his ass.
Then I ended up a Driller Main.
So you start the game and choose your class, you got Scout, Gunner, Engineer, and of course Driller.

The scout has a grappling hook, no area-denial, and the better Scout players have the mobility of a fat bearded Spiderman. ♥♥♥♥ verses large groups unless you can fly around the map like the guardians of legend.

The Gunner is not all that different from The Heavy in TF2, but has a shield he cannot shoot out of to keep enemies off you when your rez teammates. Big ♥♥♥♥-off minigun capable of invoking the Divine-Right-Of-Chunky-Salsa on any mortals who stand against you, and a revolver that hits like the pocket-AWP on a near-overdose of methamphetamine.
Somehow this is not enough, but a good gunner makes up for this with keep-away via ziplines, and by burning through ammo like the aforementioned revolver's hypothetical drug habit would burn through loose cash. Keep as much Nitra handy as possible.

The Engineer has been here before: he has a shotgun, and a turret. This said his secondary is a grenade launcher, and he has a gun that makes platforms which while only horizontal are the only way of *ADDING* terrain in the entire game and so can be used to make choke-points with some creative remodeling. Able to fill any role, but not my cup of tea (that would be apple chai)

The Driller, my personal favorite is the class most unique to the game. Defined by a massive set of drills that cool off fast if you do not let them overheat, the driller's primary is a flamethrower that leaves a short-lived burning pool of fire, and has a startlingly long range despite appearances. Secondary is a semi-auto pistol that fires as fast as you pull the trigger, so about five rounds per second from a magazine of twelve. The pistol is startlingly useful for low-damage high-precision rapid attacks, damaging enemies before they get in flamer range, and conserving fuel by finishing burning enemies (it actually has an upgrade for this purpose) thus making it feel more like a utility tool then a weapon. The gunner also has a Satchel Charge that is the single easiest way to kill yourself, and your team-mates in the game if you do not pay attention to the expanding and retracting red dome that shows the blast radius. Incredibly damaging but low-ammo and highly situational. Using it to mine ore tends to leave a single super-high-value chunk for some reason and gathers less so you might not want to do it.

One (or more if you have these 'friends' people go on about) of these are dropped in a drill-pod onto Hoxes, a blasted ruin of a world where your pod will drill far below the surface to the auto-generated mission map, expect verticality, weird terrain mixes, and an over-all fairly convincing cave asthetic that looks like everything was made out of polygons stitched together.
Also expect hoards of angry bug locals who are entirely to aggressive to be merely carnivorous and behave like bees defending a nest but at all times.
If you see a giant glowing orange one then watch out for the frontal instant-kill AOE, and keep away from it when it dies. By 'away' I mean a good 35 meters at least as it goes up like a tactical nuclear device.

Spiral knights.... Where to begin?
Probably one of the best Free MMO's to come out of the early days, the game has it's flaws.
But between the pay-to-win garbage you can see glimpses of true brilliance. It's far from a bad game, and it has aged very well but... It's honestly a tragedy. The feeling of the old-school zelda games combined with fast-paced bullet hell, and some very creative and rewarding gameplay variance, all of this is there just mired under time and added on pay-to-win. Trinkets are a good idea, extra weapons slots? not really as the dichotimy of the three weapons types mean two is enough for everyone who aint a munchkin but the price for what you need is not too high, it is not unreachable in normal play- far from it. It just isn't instant. It takes a lot less time to farm then in many MMO's for most things you will need too.
This is probably one of my favorite games, but is also the single most I have ever been dissapointed by a game. Trinkets could have totally changed play-style by adding unique abilities like out Spirits do, but as it is they are a sub-par extra chunk of armor that costs real money to rent slots to wear it. Things like that, glimpses of true brilliance through the murk. I know it's there somewhere.

Choose to see what this game is about
Choose life through a gunsight.
Choose the class, and tree with no healing until level nineteen.
Choose to pick up that particular rifle.
Choose the Shield that steals enemy bullets, or the one that makes you explode.
Choose to ignore the plot in favor of sidequests.
Choose to overlevel for the story.
Choose to hunt down every vehicle part.
Choose to grab the guns that allow you to swap for situations between modes or element.
Choose to ignore all Atlas Brand weapons because you so cannot be assed to let the game aim for you that your ass is threatening the airspace of Vladof's homeworld.
Choose to load your mech with a grenade launcher firing bursts in memory of when Lost Planet 2 was the only shooter you owned (for three ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ years) and you came to expect cluster grenades.
Choose to arm the other side with a nuclear ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ warhead because you hate things being alive and sympathize with Necron Destroyers.
Choose to hoard Maliwan Legendary weapons even as you gun down the corporation's troops in droves.
Choose to Slice a man's arm off because he sassed you.
Choose to pet the kitty, though it's adoptee can go take an airlock walk with no tether.
Choose to slaugher the human refuse of the corporate wars of the far future we will never admit is inevitable.
Choose to play Borderlands 3, it's less depressing then Delta Green. Also it doesn't require three people minimum.

Drop in to the world of [REDACTED] where, after you are shot down by [REDACTED] you find yourself beset by everything the planet has to throw at you. Mortar crabs, Fire throwing lizardmen, the very ground rises up to smite you.
Why does everything want you dead?
We do not know.
Why was the ship carrying Anomalous Artifacts and Devices? Where did they come from? Who are these bodies we find of those who came before?
How did they get here?
We don't know.
This game does a very good job of encapsulating that feeling when you play it, the feeling of being alone in a situation where you have no answers, and anything you find only gives you more questions.
The strange pauses as the world realizes where you are, the ruined fragments of structures built for unknown purpose, and the music... The best damn music I have ever found in an indy game on-par with FTL: Faster Then Light.
The logs are written by the Commando. The items Descriptions are the notes on the packaging, they were sent through the mail.
Why are so many anomalous and... unique devices present on this one ship? That happens to get so close to an anomalous world?
We don't know.
And that's the scariest thing there is.

Very good, though the Alpha was much kinder in respect to purchasing new parts. All parts you get are randon based on your position at the end of the match, but the crates are not necessarily worth it for the effort when you are trying to rank up.

I bought this game along with a bunch of other rougelikes durring the steam summer sale of 2016.
Then I ended up playing for the next four hours without realizing I forgot to eat dinner, and until I fell asleep at my desk.
This is taking into account the fact that I have actual diagnosed chronic insomnia.
This game is far far more immersive than one would expect, and will delight fans of unforgiving games such as Darksouls one, or the sort of people who always played Jack and Daxter with the difficulty set to maximum at all times.

Five stars- would die again.