Recent reviews by SpectreOne

Doom with a beat mechanic. I could not tell you just how awesome this game feels. Has high replayability through the higher difficulties. The challenge is nice and you are able to choose songs with different BPMs to allow for more intense gameplay.

I think VR would kill me, but this version is still amazing to play.

Oh what can I say... Totally blows... me and all of my friends away in pure explosive DEMOCRACY.

Even if none of your friends are on, the game is straightforward enough that the skill level is more nuanced at the endgame. RANDOS don't suck to play with. UNLESS YOU ARE AN UNDEMOCRATIC TRAITOR.

9.5/10 Would Democratize all the bugs and bots again.

RE-EDIT: 5/10


"Some of Starfield’s planets are meant to be empty by design - but that's not boring... the intention of Starfield's exploration is to evoke a feeling of smallness in players."

The juxtaposition is really killing it. I mean killing the game.
I never felt small. I can make it anywhere I wanted to with just a little bit of patience. I can take out entire cities on the hardest difficulty without issue. The issue is the space. Humanity gets pretty spread out when given enough space, but not so spread out that it costs them to be social. New Atlantis would either be MUCH smaller or there would be a small number of cities dotting that planet. If the people with power don't like to share, then there will always be that one guy who takes some for himself. Benjamin Bayou is a really good example of that. Look at every other colonization effort in humanities' history. New Atlantis is basically Virginia in the 1600s. It took less than 20 years for other colonies to spring up. This game is the antithesis of historical human expansion and that is why it feels so empty and wrong. If I had a planet to explore and live in peace on, you bet I am going to get out there. If I had a ship or OTHER MODES OF TRANSPORTATION, there is no reason to live at New Atlantis.

Now we have a situation where simple forms of transportation are impossible to find and WALKING is the only method of getting around. If this was meant to make me feel small, all it does is piss me off to set up a macro to jump and run while I point myself at something 2km away just to go make some coffee. I'm patient enough, but this is insulting.



The most flushed out city you have in the game is Akila, which is meant to be the "capital" of an independent series of planets. That city is the size of Whiterun and the population of the city is around 100 people. It feels the best because of how dense it is. Those three sentences ALONE tell you how empty this game is. Neon is a close second, but only because of how everything is interconnected. New Atlantis is boring beyond compare. The well has a bunch of loitering people thrown in there for population density, but they are ultimately just fodder. There is more interesting things going on in the Vulture's Roost than New Atlantis in general. This is after I have done most of the side quests in the game and have wasted close to 200 hours on it.

From what I can tell, Humanity was at war with itself and both factions decided to stop the fighting. Something you HAVE to say is that they really stopped because humanities' OVERALL POPULATION IS IN THE 5 DIGITS MAX . If you wanted to make humanity seem small in comparison, great... Humanity feels too powerful to be small. Entire planets essentially OWNED by a single family is utter insanity.


"We recommend playing around with ship building and increasing the difficulty you play on if you find it underwhelming. Its a completely different experience playing a fast ship that can dodge projectiles vs a slow tank of a ship that is shooting at enemies in a shield depletion race."

I play on the hardest difficulty with mods that increase the amount of enemies. The only thing that can kill me is the Shardhoppers, because their endless long range AOE is stupid powerful. Ship fighting is the only thing that feels remotely rewarding skillwise, but is hardly ever worth the resources you get from the fight.

"Outpost creation is helpful for those who want to be able to craft resources or to proceed with building an area where advanced research can be done like Alien breeding. You will always gain lots of XP for your production progress as well as the ability to continue to expand your own outpost."

Outposts building is pretty clean, but in the sterile hospital bathroom sort of way. It works the way it is supposed to, there is not a lot of wiggle room or variability in how it can be done. Setting up a new outpost the exact same way I set up my other ones is the only way to do it. It is only novel the first time.



Mostly clean and functional game. Random pixelation at times, but pretty good looking on ultra.


EDIT: 5/10
Inventory management the game. Also, don't get attached to anything you cannot carry. All storage on the ship except cargo resets frequently and WILL delete everything stored.


The game is really polished in a bunch of ways, definitely moreso than any other Bethesda game on release I've ever experienced. I don't agree with the progression system, and they limited the data cache dedicated to inventories to be less than what Oblivion could handle, and the story is a bit repetitive and boring, and the monetary system is totally ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up, and the galaxy feels extremely empty, but at least I can vault now. No serious game breaking bugs yet, but losing hours of stuff to inventory resets makes me a bit salty.

Invalidate the Achievement locks and play the main story and only deviate slightly. Most of the game feels unrewarding and at late game I only seem to get early game weapon drops even on the hardest difficulty. You will get stuck, you will encounter issues where you get insta-gibbed after a cutscene, and you will never get any kind of vehicle to alleviate the 5 minute travel time between points of interest on a generated map. Space is empty, so is this game. Make yourself run like a horse and reset once combat starts. Even the jump packs arc you upwards mostly and don't really help the travel time as you slow down midair. At over 100 hours, I have a few outpost set up, I have a massive ship that basically can take out any encounter with ease. etc etc etc.


TLDR
Game functions alright. If you want to have fun, mod, cheat, and adjust the game values until everything feels right. Kill quests, fetch quests, delivery quests, etc. Nothing that has any intrigue whatsoever. Everything can be solved with violence and nothing is difficult.

We reset 80+ Hours of progress because we changed the game, but probably not enough to warrant the erasure of your time and effort. We hope that you aren't too upset and will do everything all over again.

Ok? Thanks.

OLD:
Buggy. Still has UE4 crashes mid round. Infuriating to lose everything to a bug. Game makes your body disappear too so if you are in a squad they cant retrieve your stuff. Needs some polish.

EDIT 1:
Haven't had any crashes in awhile. Hackers are still a little bit of a problem, but less so in recent weeks. You can tell a hacked lobby when your secondary disappears at the start. At that point, just leave.

I really like the game. It is fantastic in concept. I want to see more reason to have a bigger ship. If there was a matchmaking feature / co-op function to build teams prior to looting I think it would make the ship combat a little more interesting.
Recommendation: Play with friends. Scav on your own. Sell everything. Hunt the Baron.

Edit 2:
total PVP. I haven't seen very many NPCs at all. I get headshot instantly.

Decent game.

There are almost no interrupts when it comes to fighting. You can not interrupt your own actions and can often not interrupt enemy actions. No matter what the animation plays through and damage is calculated. The hammer and greatsword are basically the only truly useful attacks as the animation starts outside of the set enemy attack distance. Otherwise, you just get wrecked tying to use any other plague weapon. Only a few attacks even stagger your opponents. You essentially have to spam dodge and basic attacks if you don't want to get killed in 3 hits. It is hard, but the only skill you wind up learning is when to parry.

Edit: I have to admit that I am a bit misguided in my review here. That does not change the rating. The game is still pretty great. I have finally figured out how to play and time stuns so that you can actually interrupt during combat. This game basically forces you into a dance instead of key spamming, which is pretty nice. I figured out that after the second boss, the game gets significantly easier in regards to player sustain. Early game, it is just... rough. The first boss is nervewracking and the second just doesn't die. By the time you hit the third boss, you learn a decent grasp of defense and parrying to the point that it is just second nature. Trust me, hat 4th boss is going to make sure you've got the game down pat. By the time you get to the end, you can pretty much time all of the final bosses moves and knock him out pretty easy.

This being said, I still die to mobs. 8/10 Would die again.

DO NOT LOG OUT DURING THE SHIP TUTORIAL MISSION. You cannot afford to get it "towed" and it disappears after 600 seconds. Also, the waypoint disappears.

I like it, but there needs to be a better start. My inventory is constantly reset and I don't have the tools originally given to me. One objective leads you into deep space where there is supposed to be asteroids. Instead, there are about 30 other abandoned ships just floating around. I'm not sure where to go for the mining mission past that, as there are asteroids in the skybox, but i'm not flying an hour out just for an asteroid. I doubt I have the required fuel anyway. Ended up logging out after flying about for a few minutes looking for the asteroid.

To the Dev: You could do some sort of large asteroid mining base that resets much the same way the tutorial missions do. I feel that this would provide a smoother early game and increase concurrent players.

Never really got into the tabletop version of Battletech, but I will admit that this game is fantastic. There are various concurrent plot points that add depth to the story. Also, your team isn't a bunch of generic portraits. The mini-events that occur during the game really add to the characterization of your lance and bring them life.

Two Year Update: Good Game. Lots of fun with and without friends. Workshop friendly. Mods fix a lot of what I complained about after I first bought it.


A word to the Dev.

You have one hell of a predecessor to follow up on and years of nostalgia against you. You had MW:O out, but you found out that it didn't quite fill the niche that MW4 did. I understand the difficulty involved with making this game, but there was so much you could pull from. From the lore, to the mechs, and even past games. You had the makings of a fantastic game, it just needed to be assembled.

It looks like you lost a few pieces along the way.



Well, Nostalgia really killed this one huh? MW4 did it better across the board. MW4: Vengeance has practically the same start, albeit different opponents. I mean, did you forget that "you" have done this already?

Game is a big step backwards.

AI:
Granted, the AI has never really been great at following orders, but there needs to be SHARED RADAR and LAST KNOWN LOCATION information. The AI has my allies running at full speed off in a direction if I lose SIGHT of my target.
Guess what? Half the point of the game is hit and run. If I have to provide all the tracking information to all other squadmates, then cityscapes are impossible. It practically forces you into a brawler niche just to utilize them well.

Mechs:
They feel like big stompy mechs. Clunky and limited. Running around in a light attack-mech has never been more difficult. It almost forces you to play like the AI did in MW4. (Stopping to turn during high speed maneuvers.) I have gotten stuck going up hill. Couldn't move up, couldn't move down. Has to restart the mission that I had just completed.
Back in the day, I used the numpad on MW4 and that game was smooth as butter. This one feels rough and unpolished. The UI lacks indicators and random visual options. It doesn't feel like a cockpit, more like a WWI tank.

TL:DR
Game is beautiful. But they could have retextured MW4 10 years ago and it would have been just as good, probably better. IMO the game is plagued by "We need people to still play MW:O after we finish this game and buy our stuff." MW4, MW:LL, and even MW:O did it better. MW:O is the same developer too. Seems like it would have been easy enough to create an AI that at least moves towards the enemy instead of point to point tracking, but hey.

MW:LL is and will always be the spiritual successor to MW4. Despite being made ~12 years ago on cryengine, it has been a fantastic free PVP game that was way ahead of its time.



Further update:

Allied Mechs will walk through your defense objective and practically kill it solo if you let them. I'm pretty sure that the path-mapping is limited only to geography, and does not include buildings. This is likely due to the utility of walking through enemy bases to destroy them.


To the Dev:

There is no distinctive separation between friend or foe regarding buildings. If they aren't smart enough to walk through it safely, add pathing restrictions that prohibit their movement into the space. You could probably add it to whatever area tag you use for tracking damage.

Stupidly placed cutscenes in the middle of boss fights...
Enemies use strongest attacks as soon as cutscene ends. Replay cutscene.

The last boss is not even difficult. Its just lame and buggy as hell. The orbs just immediately bounce back to her and crash the game.

If you die once, you are done because the AOE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ just instantly kills you again.