Recent reviews by Tilup

I don't understand how this game has near perfect reviews. There's this blur on the screen that makes it impossible to see anything, and I can't figure out how to turn it off, or what's causing it because you don't see it in the gameplay footage on the steam page.

Game is fine. If you into it with the mindset of "Power Trip Simulator," it's a lot of fun. One of my main critiques is they give you a firearm, but they don't have a situation in which you're allowed to use it yet. The other one is the UI- the UI is by no means bad, infact it's one of the better ones I've seen in a game. However a lot of the actions are contextualized only though the UI when they really should be bound to their own key instead.

So here's an example: You just arrested a drunk, and you're about to search his car. You go up to the car and hit F, or (A) if you're using a controller (the controller support is great btw), you then must select the "Search" option, when the only other option is to call it in for a tow. This gets rather tedious when you want to search four doors and a trunk on two vehicles. This should be its' own option unto itself.

The other area where the UI slows down the gameplay is selecting equipment. I'd rather the tools you had were bound to 1-8 so you can hot-swap to them, and for controller, to cycle between your equipment by tapping the inventory button, and to open the menu when you hold it- then assign the Glock and Taser to buttons of their own. Maybe change the hat button on the right stick to being the dedicated firearm button, and move the hat the menu itself.

I have few final bits of criticism for the game thus far:

- I'd like see first person mode for being on foot.

- Get rid of the awful lens smudge, it's a REALLY bad effect that's always there at like, 5% opacity. Don't change it for something better, just drop it- I work as a digital artist, trust me, just straight cut it.

- When you detain a *fleeing* suspect, for some reason the game doesn't see that as justification for searching them, and if you find an item on them, like a knife, then proceed to arrest them; you'll lose a bunch of points. I think this was an oversight and whenever anyone runs, I just let them run.

- Final point of criticism, is don't shout at the player to end their shift/day. Just tell them it's over. Your dispatcher or whomever is shouting at you is essentially nagging at you- oh I'm sorry, let me just walk away from this car accident because we're suddenly watching everyone's hours because corporate said no overtime this week.

Beyond what I laid out, the game is actually a lot of fun, and I look forward to the multiplayer being added.

I don't write up reviews very often, but this game has been sucking the life from me since I got it about a week or two ago and I love every minute it. Let me start by saying this game is the most frustrating thing in existence, but that's not a bad thing, despite it might sound like such. What's ultimately frustrating is the moments in which you're constantly spawning and dying and you feel completely helpless in what's going and that exact feeling is why I'm writing this review.

Squad is a Strategy Game disguised as a shooter, where the controls aren't your keyboard but your mouth. Your own skill doesn't matter at all, but your ability to communicate does.

Someone can be awful at shooting in these games, but if you can communicate "Bush, 315, 250m out" having four-to-five people sight in their gun for 250m and all fire on the bush-line at 315 azimuth will be more effective than 1 silent guy who's a really good shot trying to kill who is there.

While you might see videos online of youtubers "larping" in the game, you don't need to do that by any means. But, one thing you should acknowledge is that there is a chain of command in the game and that's reflected in the radios. Think of it like a 3-tier system:

1- Command + Squad Leads (Yellow)
2- Squad Lead + Squad (Green)
3- Local/Proximity Chat (Blue)

So you often want to listen to your Squad Lead, not because of some LARPing "listen to me private" but often they're communicating with the other Squad Leads and Command to all be on the same page with eachother. This is really important, because the goal of the game is to organize 50 people into accomplishing the same goal.


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I'd honestly recommend this game to everyone, but with the understanding, that this isn't CoD, and this is more like Battlefield 2 than 3, 4, 1, and 5. Communicating with others matters more than your own ability or understanding of the game, and the community is often nice enough to answer questions anyone has on it.

The first FROM game I really didn't like; the game has a hidden enemy that's constantly over your shoulder and no matter what you do it constantly kills you. I thought it was a glitch at first, because who the hell puts an invisible enemy in the game that just kills you, but it was pretty intentional. The Camera is by far the most annoying enemy in this game that makes it pretty much unplayable at points. It contrast to Devil May Cry, different genre but also a third person action game with platforming elements, they dissolve objects that are in your way so you can actually see what's infront of you.

The graphics for this game also are really lackluster. I played the game on the max settings, 60fps, and there's a scene where your character wakes up with what looks like a blanket or a mat overtop of you and it looks like a Playstation 2 texture. Most other textures are very blurry and the blood looks just terrible.

The game also has a heavy reliance on timed blocking and for some reason they put a full second delay on the block, but the animation you do is less than a second, so they don't match the animations with the actual mechanic which is very very frustrating for learning the game.


I can't recommend the game, it feels like it lacks a lot of polish, especially compared to a game like DMC5 or Dark Sousl 3.

Really good game, although V controls kinda wonky where it feels like you're having to Micro Starcraft 2 units with a controller, and I would have loved an option of having the creatures on AI at times because I find myself using multiple fingers to press the face buttons to dodge, melee, shoot, finish an enemy, and reading poetry all in quick succession.

Maybe I don't watch Rick and Morty but trying to learn the flight controls on Mouse and Keyboard were just way too difficult. I kept over-shooting the first astroid I wanted to go to, and when I'd hold S to quelle the throttle, I wouldn't slow down to a complete stop, it'd just keep me going at 30% the speed of light. Why? Why can't the game just give me a heads-up explaining why I can't go under 30% C. I did the tutorial missions, I even beat the advanced Combat tutorial, but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ the constant over-shooting of the first astroid has lost me. Refund.

I SPENT 35 MINUTES TRYING TO JOIN JUST ONE MATCH. I COULDN'T EVEN JOIN A CUSTOM GAME. I SPENT 35 MINUTES LOOKING AT A LOADING SCREEN.

EVGA GTX 970
8 Gigs of DDR3 Ram
i5-4440 @ 3.10Ghz
480 GB Sandisk Ultra II SSD

Game runs terribly. Couldn't make it past the 10 minute mark where you're driving because of the single digit FPS. Do not buy if your rig is on par of below par with mine.

I have played a lot of this game and here are my thoughts.

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Pros
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-Pro: It feels like a strategy game from a first-person perspective. You can win consistantly and get lots of kills by just playing smarter than the enemy team. I totally suck in fire-fights, but things like opening up the ceiling, or jumping outside take little skill, however require "information." So the more information you have on the enemy, the better you can make choices to avoid those gun fights and rather go for straigh-up out thinking the enemy.

-Pro: Weapon customization is nice. It's very simple and comes down to play-style. ACOGs are basically mandatory however. So by play-style customization, I can break this down as the barrel attachments: Silencer, Flash Hider, Compensator, Muzzle Break, and Extended Barrel.

Silencer cuts weapon noise, and removes the vapor trail from the majority of your bullets, but there will still be one or two trails every 10 rounds, instead of every one to three rounds.

Flash Hider reduces vertical recoil, and remove flash from -your- screen. This is great for low-fire-rate guns, or tap-firing. It helps to make a small grouping on a target to keep a more consistant time-to-kill.

Compensators reduce left-right kick of a gun, however do nothing to stop vertical recoil, so single-shot firing with these is really difficult, so just unloading is the better option with this attachment. Making it so you just need to hold down on the mouse to keep on target is very nice. This is better for higher RPM weapons

MuzzBreak has abouyt 75% of the effect of each the Flash Hider, and Compensator. It also has a minor bonus to the second shot by reducing its recoil by 50% of what it would be normally. This is a good well-rounded attachment which is a jack of trades, however it is a master of none. High RPM weapons still kick left and right too much when unloading, and repeating tap-fires fall off target too much. It is however exceptional for single-shot firing of a gun, making it fantastic to have on pistols and DMRs.

The Extended Barrel is a joke, there is only one use I've ever seen for this thing since it came out, however it's quite an important use and that's for shooting outside, or into spawns on casual (which is actually rather difficult to do as you're going against a group 1v5). It says in the description that it keeps more damage when shooting through walls, however I've never found this to be very useful as I'm rather shooting through walls in such a way that one of the other barrel attachments wouldn't benefit me better. The barrel may make it from an 8 shot kill to a 6 shot kill, I'd rather have to use 8 shots to kill someone and stay on target better than using this barrel.


-Pro: The maps keep the same lay-out everytime, there is no randomness on individual maps, which keeps the game consistant.

-Pro: The game looks damn ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ gorgeous

-Pro: You play as a character, and not just a class. This isn't for immersive reasons but rather to keep game-play dynamics, some characters are better at things than others. I like asymmetric balancing, it reminds me of playing StarCraft II back in it's hayday.


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Cons
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-Con: One Shot Head Shots are dumbest mechanic to have in a competitive shooter. It doesn't reward good gameplay, it just rewards lucky recoil RNG, and guns with high fire-rates are favored above all others for the fact that all it takes it just 1 bullet to knick you in the ear and you'll drop like a sack of sea-turtles from a plane. Some make the comment of it's more "Realistic." This is false as it's 100% possible for a ballistic helmet to stop a 9mm round. I also don't want hyper-realism in my games, if you get shot in the chest with a 7.62, on it's exit, it'll open your chest cavity and you'll sufficate from the pressure inside your chest cavity balacing out with the pressure inside your lungs. Doesn't that sound like fun to have in a competitive shooter? One shot in the chest and you die? Or how about if you get hit in the middle of your thigh, it can hit your artery and you'll pass out within two minutes, and die of bleeding out. How much fun would a shooter be if you got hit anywhere and instantly died? Anyways, OSHS is a dumb system and it removes skill from the game and adds luck. I would rather a headshot knocked you down to 10 health, so you have to get hit with just one more shot anywhere on your body to die. This system would make the most sense since people with good aim will not only land the headshot, but the follow-up shot in the same burst from the rifle.


-Con: Lag Compensation. It's 100% possible to die to someone who isn't on your screen yet because they have 200 more ping that you do. That sounds silly but it's the case since there is compensation given to players with higher ping. I've ran to corners, and gone through doors only to die to OSHS from hit-box lag which only is there because on his screen, I'm still running to the door because he's playing at 1/5th of a second more delay than I am. When he shoots, the server checks to see if his shots landed, if true, than I will die around the corner since there is no bias in the server against higher-pings.


-Con: Hit Registry. For whatever reason, they just can't make it so if you hit someone it'll do damage, always. I've 100's of screenshots saved from me dying, and my enemy's blood smeared on the wall behind them, clouds of blood around their heads, their heads knocked back from the bullet, but they're sitting at full health.




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Wrap-up
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I would recommened this game 100%, despite the cons being big ones, they exist and can turn the tide of games. However I've never been more engrossed in a shooter since COD4. I don't think any game has ever had me so frustrated, but in 20 minutes of coolingdown, I'm ready to get right back into it.

It's good.