Recent reviews by Diode

Great story and fun, cool environments and gameplay mechanics. Completely worth the cost, especially with replayability including with mods.

Terrible servers, terrible spawns and lack of spawn protection, terrible hit detection, terrible maps, ai "art" and ai character voiceovers, constantly reverting settings, cartoony overpriced skins...

Need I say more?

TLDR:
+ better, non-potato looking survivors
+ new custom world generation options

~ lack of significant changes from A21

- $45 price tag is a bit absurd
- removed clothing and armor variety
- progression heavily tied to magazines

I've played this far back enough in the earlier alphas, that I remember progression was based more on practice and repetition rather than random skill books. I get that some skills and recipes in the game would require various rarities of magazines, books, and manuals to unlock, but it gets ridiculous when I cant even cook a damned steak on a fire without having to find and read about it in multiple magazines first.

Tying back into progression, a large part of it is going to require doing various jobs for traders, and holy smokes that gets tiring and boring fast. It's the same handful of quest types over and over again, for the same a-hole trader(s) over and over again. I'd honestly rather just shoot the guy and go find the nice medical trader lady in another town.

Another huge chunk of your time is going to be spent raiding and looting various abandoned and ruined buildings. What I don't get is how the looting system is still so bad. I get it's just a game, but why do I have to raid a whole neighborhood to find a singular cooking pot and grill? All I'm saying is the loot drop rates for certain locations and their various containers (ovens, cabinets, vehicles, any object you loot in general) is a bit nonsensical.

In relation to the game world, more control over biomes, landmarks, and more would be awesome. For example, perhaps I want to do a Mad Max themed run, and set the world to nearly 100% desert with maybe one fairly large city, and with a dozen or so smaller outposts around the region. Having more control over map generation would make for a more fitting custom experience.

For some reason, TFP has removed the vast multitude of clothing and armors that existed up until the most recent alpha, and has replaced them with a handful of very specific armor sets. Supposedly they plan on addressing at least the clothing in the future roadmap, but I hope to see more additions and positive changes

$45 is kinda absurd for this, especially in its current state. Get a cheaper key somewhere else or wait for a sale or price reduction.

Fun mod, but the puzzles aren't easy to understand and solve, and the end boss event is badly designed.

Great game, fantastic community. Unfortunately Sony let people from several countries purchase the game, then locked them out, and have not reverted since they tried pushing their PSN account link garbage. Basically anywhere you can't make a PSN account, even though it is not needed, can no longer play the game they bought.

Screw you, Sony.

We dive together, or not at all.

5/6/2024

Nailing shots and earning sprees is still satisfying after all these years. The only gripe I have is some games will have shotty connections, and even some players will be too laggy to reliably hit and counter.

Ridiculously broken with the CS2 update. Why did this mess get released from beta?

Saw some gameplay online and the intro was intriguing, so picked it up and started playing and getting invested in the story and unfolding events and mysteries. Honestly feel let down at the end, and to avoid giving any spoilers, I'll just say I don't feel like the game gave a proper conclusion, or at least gave enough information to strongly suggest how events beyond the game ending would play out.

My pros:
-good atmosphere
-decent graphics
-reasonably easy puzzles

My cons:
-intense moments followed by badly placed jokes between characters
-forced to walk, never even able to jog the slightest
-repetitive areas
-unnecessary quick time events
-lots of stuttering
-unsatisfactory story + ending

TLDR: Recommend you watch a playthrough on YouTube if you're curious, I would have refunded if my time hadn't gone past the max 2 hours.

Came to this game hoping to find an alternative for the soon to be shutting down Cycle Frontier. Unfortunately this title so far is making quite a few bad moves that may likely ultimately end up killing it, too.

Maps are bland, uninspired, and have illogical layouts. Lots and lots of gray and very muted tones, weird placement and flow of rooms and areas, and very dumb AI. I'd like to see more variety besides "industrial spaceship", maybe introduce planetside stations with outdoor areas? You are running on an oxygen timer regardless of if you're in your starter ship or large ship/station.

Weapons are neat, heavily based on WWII era firearms, but recently they took the "machine gun" part out of one of the SMGs, which makes no sense considering they simultaneously nerfed the damage output pretty heavily.

Looting is very clunky and unrewarding, I honestly feel like I've gained nothing after running in, filling up a backpack and leaving, as there's no way to upgrade your stash with items you've acquired. Speaking of which, the starter stash size is painfully small, and you'll struggle to find reasonable space after a few successful runs, especially since a mechanic to "fold" backpacks doesn't actually decrease the space they take in storage. Often times I've found when looting I get a popup saying I don't have enough space to take an item, but upon double checking I can see I clearly do, with a perfectly shaped slot ready to accept the item.

Health management is simple, with a variety of ways to treat your wounds after combat, which is definitely friendlier to more casual players. Bandages and first aid kits are common medical items, with water and food items to increase your health in a pinch.

Raids have been tweaked in a very unnecessary way, forcing a default timer on when you can actually leave the match. The "space gates", which are final points you have to pilot out to in order to leave now do not spawn unless 15 minutes pass in the game, or someone in the game decided to find a control panel and hit the button to summon them early, so if you waltz in and find a bunch of loot near your entry point and are ready to leave, you better hope someone hits that button.

TLDR: Game doesn't know if it wants to appeal to casual or more serious players, is visually bland, and gameplay unrewarding. Needs to offer more variety and feel more rewarding if it intends to keep it's already dwindling audience it's managed to grab for the early access price it's demanding.

CAN I GET A ROCK AND STONE?!?