Recent reviews by MIDNIGHT:EXIGENT

Marathon, as I suspected, is everything I hate about Bungie game design with everything I loved about their previous franchises thrown away. I'm not personally a fan of the aesthetics, and that extends beyond just the visual style and into things like completely unreadable loot, if you can tell me what one weapon attachment does from another just by looking at it.. insert the "corporate wants us to find the difference between these two images" meme. In the trailer, it seemed like weapons would all have versatile and unique functions -like- the flip up scope. Turns out the flip up scope and a shield on LMG's are pretty much the only functional attachments. The UI is awful, even people who love the game will usually concede to this. The first 2 of the 3 available maps are really boring and visually unimpressive. The third map is pretty cool. All rooms and buildings look the same. The existence of classes and the complexity of gear means that PVP in this, much like Destiny, will not only never be balanced but that Bungie won't even try to make it so. Above all, my biggest gripe with this game is the TTK. It's garbage. You will be erased at random by 2 bullets from any gun if the first bullet didn't take you down instantly. A team of 3 with endless aggression will win 100% of the time. If your squad splits up in the slightest you are ♥♥♥♥♥♥.

The "ROOK" class, which can only enter into matches solo, can NOT complete quests, so if you want to progress with factions - which is absolutely essential - you can't do that alone, you have to compete with 2 other randos doing their own quests.

I can't help but feel the concept of piloting a disposable biosynthetic body is completely wasted here. If the game had doubled down on mechanics around the idea that your body can be destroyed - lose limbs, damaged eyes, ears, etc - in place of INSTANT TTK, taking it the other direction where you can take a ton of abuse and still manage to limp to extract, we could have had something special.

I scheduled a long weekend to really give this game a chance, as of 03/09 I have uninstalled and likely will not come back. The run that prompted that decision saw my squad wipe 3 opposing squads back to back only to be erased instantly by a player with purple tier shields and a shotgun. Getting to that level of power is a seemingly impossible slog of grinding lore-less fetch quests to rise in rank to earn the ability to buy better gear, and spending all of your currency on the path to get there. The difficulty in this game is artificial, powered by the same backwards philosophy behind Destiny 2's PVP. This game deserves to rot alongside Bungie, I hope someday I stop falling for it.

03/10 - Bungie has refused my refund request.

I feel like it's important to note that I'm a huge fan of Dead Space, Resident Evil - OG and the more modern action focused entries, scifi in general, and Silent Hill.

Cronos draws inspiration from a bunch of different scifi and horror material, namely Twelve Monkeys and Dead Space. The soundtrack is pretty good and the story isn't bad. Every other aspect of the game is mediocre at best. The combat wants to be Dead Space but it's *so* slow and supremely predictable. Every combat encounter is punctuated with reusable explosive barrels that take away any potential surprise. "Reusable explosive barrels?" you ask.. due to time travel shenanigans you can reassemble barrels to blow them up again. You do this after running in circles with your last bullet because ammo is constantly a scarcity. You begin the game with what you think is going to be a really cool heavy handgun that can morph into brass knuckles.. and who knows what else?! I do, I know what else. It morphs into every generic firearm archetype you can imagine and that's about it. You have a flamethrower built into your wrist.. awesome! Not really, it consumes charges that you can only carry one of at a time for most of the game and it basically only serves to stun enemies even though they make it clear that fire is the ultimate weapon against the infected. Enemies are bullet sponges and the "don't let them merge" marketing is essentially moot, if you can hit the broadside of a barn from a few feet away they will never merge. I played for 5 hours and honestly I'm not sure what even happens when they do. The story unfolds as slowly as the combat, and after those 5 hours I had enough and watched the rest of the relevant cut scenes on Youtube. The scariest thing about the game is the unpredictable framerate, tried all sorts of settings and nothing could maintain a decent FPS during combat, and it doesn't even look that great. The enemies are really uninspired and so are the fleshy environments that just look blurry and generic - especially up close.

All of that said, if you could pick it up on sale for $9.99 I'd recommend it.

I'll flesh this review out further down the road because I'm too busy enjoying the game.

I can give no greater complement than this: Arc Raiders makes me feel excited to get home from work and play in the same way I was excited to get home from school as a kid and play a game rented the night before.

I have been waiting a long time for a grounded sci-fi third person extraction shooter!

For fans of souls-likes... this is probably not the game for you. Unfortunately Bloodborne, the later Dark Souls games, and Elden Ring set really high bars for this genre, and Lords of The Fallen doesn't do anything particularly special or new. It is held back by ultra repetitive combat thanks to all weapons within a category having identical move-sets and no special moves. Magic is pretty boring until late game. The story is exactly what you expect, they try to pull off the vague passive storytelling of DS and ER, but imo it doesn't work very well.

All said and done, if you're craving a new soulslike and can pick this up on sale - totally worth it.

I love what I'm seeing so far but if this game wants to survive long term and become a true contender for players limited time there are a few major things we need before a full launch.

- More character customization, and not just cosmetically. With a bunch of potential roles that can be filled we should have some passive and active skills to spec into. It doesn't 'feel' like this is something the developers intend, but I think it's desperately needed to give the player some identity.

- Weapon mods, don't really need to elaborate on this much, weapons need mods that effect how they handle and how they look. There's only so many and they get stale fast from what I've seen.

- The greatest compliment I can pay any early access game is to say that all I really want is "more". More mission types, ships, suits, etc. What we have to start with is great, but this game could really hit it big if they just continue to add more.

- Ledge grab / mantling, enough said.

- Story overhaul / enemy types: The story is weak and cheesy. I expect the devs will add more enemy variety as the game grows if that isn't the case already, I'm only a few hours in.

The OST is fantastic, the graphics are solid and it runs great, the UI is smooth and intuitive, weapons handle well, flight mechanics are great, movement in and around your ship is seamless. Can't wait to see where this goes.

Edit: Do NOT put new ships behind RANDOMIZED missions.

As someone who desperately wants more full length VR experiences, I am obligated to recommend this game.

That said, this game is about as barebones as you can get. I see that at the time of this review they are releasing a non-VR version.. without significantly more content I don't see what their goal is there. There are only 3 weapons and you start the game with 2 of them, none are particularly fun to use. Combat is engaging at first but quickly becomes stale and ultra repetitive. There is no variety in enemy types. There is essentially no story being told here, in fact, the final line of dialogue is "Now, let's go get some answers." You end the game with just about as much information as when you started. Trying to navigate to objectives in late game becomes extremely tedious, your map will OFTEN straight up lie to you and send you in circles with no direction aside from a dot that highlights the objective.

Now, all of this sounds ultra critical, and while all of the above is accurate, this isn't a bad game. If you love ALIEN - or more accurately, ALIENS, or have read the comics that the main character is pulled from - or want a more action oriented tie-in to ALIEN Isolation, this is totally worth picking up on sale.

A brief and thought provoking narrative with few game-y elements about the weight of responsibility that is worth every penny, whether you grab it for full price or on sale.

- Animations, particularly for melee combat, are absolutely god awful.
- The melee combat itself is horrendous, painfully predictable and repetitive. Parry, stagger, heavy attack. Every. Single. Time. Doesn't matter if you're using a knife or a sword, of which you will only have a small handful to choose from for 20+ hours.
- Ranged combat is just as boring and repetitive.
- Graphically speaking, the game looks like dated ♥♥♥♥.
- From an optimization perspective, the game is absolutely trash. Constant frame drops, maybe a memory leak, endless stuttering no matter what combination of settings I've tried, this is not something I've experienced with any other modern game, especially one that looks this mediocre. Granted, a sand planet is a hard sell, ♥♥♥♥ gets repetitive fast. How many dunes and rocks can you look at before it becomes same-y? Well, 1 of each apparently because all of the dunes and all of the rocks are practically identical.
- Story? Idk.. is there one? "Find the Fremen" ... yeah, I'm still doing that after almost 30 hours with no advancement.
- The soundtrack is an easy 8/10. It captures the vibes of the recent movies but also does it's own thing. That didn't stop me from creating a custom playlist of Zimmer tracks to put over it though.
- There is a surprising amount of dialogue choices based on the background you choose for your character when speaking with NPCs, however, their responses suggest to me that those choices are likely completely meaningless save for a few interactions.

Overall, it sure sounds like I pretty much hate this game huh? Well, I don't. I actually kinda love it. I am a huge fan of Conan Exiles, and while I feel like this game didn't take any inspiration from what C:E did right, it definitely improves upon some of what it does wrong - and some of what survival crafting does wrong as a genre. 'Quick Deposit' allows you to immediately dump the contents of your inventory that match the existing content of crates into storage containers quick and easy. You don't need to pull ANY resource to a crafting station, if it's on you OR in your base you can craft whatever. Building your base is fun even with the limited selection of tilesets available. Vehicles are fun and a refreshing way to navigate a suitably large open world. The worms present the greatest threat to you - as they should - and being eaten means losing your entire inventory. This is the only way in which you can die that results in a true loss. If you're downed in combat you can self revive, and if you fail to do so you can respawn at a beacon you have placed OR a checkpoint and recover your dropped in-game currency. Currency that is actually useful, by the way. It can net you cosmetics like faction themed vehicle and armor skins (that aren't just recolors) and thanks to a player driven auction house can get you top of the line gear, maybe even before you'd normally be able to get your hands on it. I haven't engaged with PVP yet as that seems to be a truly endgame activity but I expect it to be total ass, mostly thanks to laggy servers. Visiting the large settlements is cool and an experience that makes the game feel like it -almost- earns the MMO tag, with faction vendors available to buy gear, decor, and vehicles from. There are plenty of subclasses to draw abilities from, both active and passive, and you can freely mix and match 3 active skills with 3 passive techniques from any tree. DUNE does *enough* right compared to all it does *wrong* that I'm excited to see where it goes.. but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ guys you need to overhaul combat and animations from the ground up, you are not going to hold a large enough player base to keep this game afloat otherwise.

Played for maybe 2 minutes before being kicked directly back to server selection during the tutorial. Classes are gender and appearance locked, not interested. Aesthetics are uninspired and from the sound of it so is the gameplay.

At almost precisely 50 hours I have completed the 6 chapters of the main story.

Pros:

- Combat feels good and landing big combos is really satisfying
- The world looks beautiful more often than not
- Transmog exists with as few limitations as possible
- You do feel like you get stronger as you progress
- You can craft custom weapons with different combinations of skills and stats (that are limited to 1 appearance per weapon type, wasted opportunity to implement weapon transmog here)
- You have a customizable mount that is well animated and carries you quickly throughout the world wherever you want to go.

Cons:

- The worst UI ever made. Once you get over the learning curve it.. works.. but is the most unfriendly user experience I have ever seen. This applies to what is displayed on your HUD and every in game menu, and sub-menu, and sub-sub-menu.. etc.
- Your mount often has issues with pathing
- This approach to playing with your friends is absolutely insane. Because every monster hunt launches as it's own instance/lobby you're never really just in the same world as your friends, and to even get into the same world is a chore. The terminology the game uses to describe lobbies / squads / "link mates" is absurd. Why they decided to remake the wheel with all of this is wacked to me. The only way to play the story with a friend is for either you or them to have completed the quest already.
- People complain about performance and I'm sure they're justified but it runs just fine for me with all settings maxed and ray tracing off.
- The actual hunting of monsters seems to have been removed completely, you select a monster from a quest or from the open world map and go straight to it, your options to prep are simplistic, there are only 2 traps to utilize, a handful of typical consumable buffs, and a short list of items you can launch from your wrist mounted slinger.

Summary:

While I have played a handful of MH games over the years, this is the only one in which I have completed the story and intend to continue playing. Farming most armor and weapon sets is straight forward and reasonably paced. I can see how die-hard MH fans may feel slighted that this game caters to a more casual audience, but as an adult with a job I appreciate knowing that with an hour or two in the evening I can complete at least one piece of gear or a weapon. What I really want from this franchise is a pure 50/50 hybrid of Dragon's Dogma's combat implanted into the MH world and aesthetics. This entry isn't that, but it's the closest we've come so far.