Recent reviews by Steanford

Great game so far but when I was first playing my mouse was automatically set to 4kHz Polling and it was ultra freezing and lagging loads and I was getting weird graphical issues. After some investigation I figured out it was my mouse's rate. Putting it back to 1000hz fixed it all.

Thought I'd write this up quickly just so people can see it and hopefully fix it for you too!

I've removed my "Well Done" post and indepth review of the game because they just do not care to hear the community at this point.

They have increased performance but I don't know how they did it but its definitely not the correct way.

Main issues with the game

It's a blurred mess. The game looks like you've just woken up and your vision is still smeared and blurred. Then when bullets are shot any where in your vicinity, you are blinded by blurring.
Then there is a DOF effect in the game which makes everything... Yep you guessed it. Blurry.
The entire game looks like a blurred smeary mess. I am definitely thinking it is either to do with the fact that the game runs at a down scaled resolution or it is something to do with the DOF and amount of blurring mechanics in the game. Not to forget that you are forced to play with some form of upscaler like DLSS and you can't just turn it completely off. You have to choose one and there is no options to remove AA either. So that also contributes to the game looking blurred. I play on lowest FOV as well and shouldn't struggle to see the details of someone at 20m away. But you cannot see any detail. It's blurry and the textures just look over exposed or smudged into one another.

The game is "better performing" but it feels like your character has extremely bad vision issues.

Other issues to fix:

- Remove the mechanic of the camera forcing you to look down when reloading. It's extremely annoying.

- Stamina is so painfully low, everyone is playing a military man with an extreme case of asthma.

- Arm Stamina could do with a slight increase also.

- MUTE THE DAMN EATING AND DRINKING SOUNDS. IT'S DISGUSTING. Who ever the f*** recorded that and decided to install it into the game needs firing. It's obnoxious. Eating and Drinking is louder than shooting a gun.

- The Heli Pilots blow your ear drums out. Again, another volume issue. Either give us the choice of turning it down or just off completely, just like the eating.

- Yet again another audio issue. Give us the option to turn down or turn off the heart beat and extreme heavy breathing. Because 50% of your uptime in this game is hearing those annoying noises. It's like the damn soundtrack to this game at this point and it is so unnecessary and causes hearing fatigue.

- Stop wasting your players time. You are going to efforts to just move objectives further away than they originally were and only make a lot of missions doable by night time, just so it takes longer to get through missions for no reason at all other than making the game "feel like it has more content than it does".

- Respawn timers on enemies (more specifically the bosses as well) is too long. This needs a rework. Playing with friends where they all have to get 20 kills, the objectives aren't shared per kill. So it can take up to 6 hours to complete one mission of 20 kills because you have to wait for them to respawn, which takes ages.

- Add an auto run button because the amount of running in this game is obnoxious. I am pretty sure you had one in alpha but ironically during a "QOL" patch you removed it. You do realise if you don't want that to be a thing. People can just use macros. So just add it back.

Also Devs... Do not ask me to change my review to an upvote again if you're not going to fix these issues in the next 2 years. These are very simple issues (apart from the blurriness. I don't know wtf you have done there) to fix.

Great game for sure, but they still haven't fixed or amended issues that make it either unplayable or just extremely annoying the higher difficulties you go:

- Stun Locking and Ragdolling. Ragdoll is funny the first hour you play this game. After that. It is just extremely annoying when it comes to Atomatons. You spend 50% of your time on the floor unable to do anything and your inputs are meaningless, so you are just watching the game not playing it and just guessing if you're going to get killed on the floor or not. Because for some reason you get ragdolled from behind cover, regardless of if a rocket or big bullet hits you.
Then there is the stunlocking. It is relentless on Atomatons. You non stop get stunned from taking fire. More namely the Devastators with shields. You can't shoot, stim, run, dive.... Anything. So it's just like the ragdolling. You are just watching the game wondering if you will die this time or not. So you're not playing it. Extremely annoying. Makes the game unplayable completely if one person gets spotted (which everyone does) and decides to go loud. Your aim is shoved right up your own ass so you won't be able to kill what is doing it to you either until a 1-2second wait and watch gameplay again for the recoil recovery. Just stupid gameplay. I would like to play my game not watch it for 50% of it.

- Auto Vaulting and Mantling. Good f***ing god this has enraged the community since the beginning. TURN IT OFF AND MAKE IT TOGGLE-ABLE TO EITHER MANUAL OR AUTO IN MENU FOR GODS SAKE. It serves ZERO purpose in gameplay to AUTO mantle, other than getting you killed because your character grabbed a ledge or wall and decided "F YOU... I DO WHAT I WANT" then puts you into open area to get blasted and ragdolled for the next 10 seconds. (See above and read that again and again and again because that is the gameplay in a nutshell with Atomatons).

Some minor issue are:

- Hit reg is very hit and miss, more notice'ably on Atomatons again because you needs to hit precise shots and areas and most of the time doesn't count even when the scar or burn mark is left over their face.
- Spawn rates even when using the Spawn Reducer perk sometimes just get ridiculous. We had over 12 drop ships drop over 30-40+ enemies just because on bot spotted (not flared) one of us and it was a massacre which ended our game immediately and drained all 20 of our reinforcements. They need to have a good think about that because that is the kind of stuff that leaves a very bad taste in peoples mouths when they immediately quit the game from then on. You want people to keep playing. Not leave the game and not want to play it again because it is next to impossible without ultimately sweating just to achieve level 7-9 stuff because most people don't sweat it. I however love to put passion and energy into my games, but this game doesn't reward that.
- Armour still doesn't feel that effective the higher rating you go. Medium is more viable now but why use heavy? Don't. Its just suicide ironically.
- Some of the guns are pointless. have absolutely no purpose what so ever. They keep releasing new guns that do next to zero damage or have zero usability because of bad aiming mechanics and accuracy and low bullet count mags etc.

Other than that. The game is still very very fun but these are the things that kill off peoples want, to keep playing. The new Warbond has just been released but I have no passion to play because it just seems the atomatons, even though they have been nerfed to be more playable, have too many errors to play against. Mainly the spawn rates, swarms and hit reg issues. Yes there are tactics to play against enemies that make it way easier. But when are you going to have a committed 4 stack to play for hours with each other and not have to rely on randoms. Because randoms, even at high levels, will just slaughter anything and cause the mission to be x10 difficult. Maybe add a new difficulty for ultra strategy, or if that is what Helldive is, then add a note to say that this will require strategy and skill, not just having a load of randoms jump in your missions and picking up their magnum and start blasting. I do blame the community for a bit of that but most of the issue is the devs side of it because of the errors that get overlooked so much.
Either increase sharpness and responsiveness of shooting mechanics and hitreg to help combat higher difficulties, or lower the errors and stupidity of higher difficulties.

Good luck to them. If they keep overlooking these things, the game will just plateau soon and not really exceed a more devoted community. But regardless, they have done a phenomenal job. It is just, as a devoted gamer and passionate Hellidver, I don't want to see another game publisher become complacent and just go stale.

I used to love this game but it seems the hit reg is getting worse and worse each patch. Then there is the controller players. They have buffed them so strong that they have zero recoil to deal with so every weapon is a lazer beam. Either that or they are using scripts/chronos. But I have seen over 7 separate controller players with zero recoil and auto tracing. The tracing is ultra smooth and pin point accurate. At this moment. I will not recommend the game because it is turning out a lot like COD Warzone where Controller players have no brain and still profit while PC players need to have reflex, good aim, good movement. It's just brain dead gameplay and stupidly unbalanced. I've noticed that using a controller also has a lot of magnetism on shots too. They can fire 1ft away from you but it will still register as a hit reg. I have low ping and I am playing in my own servers and this happens. So it is not a matter of our side of gameplay. It's their terrible tick rate/servers/mechanics/programming. It wasn't this bad last patch.

For explination, I am an aim enthusiast. I train aim everyday in a lot of games of the FPS genre. I have mained FPS games for over 15 years. I have never used a controller for FPS games since the PS2 era. I plugged a controller in for a few matches and used the default settings. I was getting the same scores... If not better.... With my controller. The screams words for the state of crossplay. I can compete at the same level of aim enthusiastic skill, with zero skill, by plugging in a controller and keeping all of the aim assist settings turned on. That is a complete embarrassment when it comes to the title of "FPS Competitive Gaming". So from now on I am turning Crossplay off permanently, or until they get rid of auto tracking and the moronic zero recoil while aiming at someone, and don`t forget the aim snap and lock of snipers. The console players can fight among themselves with their aimbot-assistance. That is not what I call skill based gaming.

The fact that they are allowed to have a game that includes money in any form, revolving around it, but allow it to be this ♥♥♥♥ and openly invite cheaters to their game, is a disgrace. They should be massively fined for having an economy centred around this game and allowing the core reason of the game to be controlled by cheaters. Valve is a bad excuse of a company. We have been saying it since CS:GO.
CS2 is the worst iteration they have produced. Another one to mark on the list of the worst games in the world. All the pros and content creators have quit it too, and you can see why if you play it for more than 30 minutes. Absolute rat infested game and company. As if people weren't wishing for the downfall of Valve already. This just tops it off.
Not even mention the fact they are falsifying their player count numbers too. Apparently since this Cheater Infestation has gone crazy, they have had over 300k more players join and play CS2 everyday. What a load of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Just like their cheaters, they don't even bother hiding it. This game should be shut down at this point. Give them an actual reason to stop fingering their own arseholes in group meetings.