Recent reviews by Marzana

The good!

- Uh, this is a thing that does actually exist. Actually that's not good at all.

The bad.

- This exists.
- Also it claims to have 16 levels, but level 2 is unbeatable due to having no means of physically getting to the end. Quality.

THE VERDICT

Isn't worth any amount of money, but if you can somehow acquire it otherwise it is hilarious for about 5 minutes for all the wrong reasons. I think that's what its going for though.

Video first impressions: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/186747624

The good!

- Solid atmosphere, good audio cues (if not a bit too good at telling you exactly what's coming), and generally good at being creepy.
- Nice variety of enemies and events, and seemingly pretty solid randomization and AI. Not perfect, especially with regard to item pickups, but we'll touch on that in a bit.

The bad.

- Items are totally randomized, but each item is necessary to counter a specific threat that can also appear randomly with little notice. It's near impossible to spot what an item is from a distance, so this means you'll spend a lot of time running between them and praying you maintain at least 1 of each lest you face certain death.
- "Running between them" is a bit of a lie, because your intrepid survalist is actually an 800 lbs man that hasn't left his power scooter in decades and has a bum leg. He's capable of sprinting for about 5 seconds. Total, in the game. It recharges so slowly as to be almost irrelevent, unless you like standing around in safe zones for several minutes doing nothing on a regular basis. This is also a problem because one enemy type can only be countered by kiting them with short sprints, meaning all of your precious stamina has to be saved in the event they spawn on you. So, mostly, think Dear Esther in the dark with spoopy noises. And bear traps, because bear traps.
- There's really no indicator of where to go initially. I get that it may be intentional, but you really have no indication that there's *anywhere* to go apart from an also-randomly-spawning npc that directs you. He seems to be pretty generous with his appearances, but I did have a couple attempts where I was already battered and bruised before he showed and gave me any indication of what to do.

THE VERDICT

I'm super on the fence about this one. There's great potential, but in it's current state it plays more like an RNG rage game in the guise of a horror game than an actual survival horror. Maybe I'm just missing something since I was playing pretty quickly on stream. My opinion would flip quickly with a bit of balancing work on the random elements.

Video first impressions: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/186746859

The good!

- Uh, it works. Mostly. Sort of.
- It is technically, in some sense of the term, a game.

The bad.

- Enemies are everywhere and all except the main baddie just instantly jumpscare + damage you with no warning. The main baddie, on the other hand, is totally laughable and spends most of his time stuck on terrain or generally ignoring you. Unless he doesn't, in which case he's actually impossible to outrun and survive.
- The game is basically a pseudo-randomized scavanger hunt in the spoopy woods - basically Slender. Unlike Slender, you have to find everything in a specific order ... meaning, statistically speaking, you'll almost always find the wrong thing first and just get frustrated.
- Has actually the single worst jumpscare ever. Seriously I'm easy AF to jumpscare and I laughed at it. That is, however, the most fun I had while playing.

THE VERDICT

If you like bad indie horror games set in creepy forests just go play Slender, it's at least competent.

Video first impressions: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/186745822

The good!
> Absolutely fantastic out of this world atsmohpere. Seriously top notch, and hits all the right notes without going overboard. One of those games that only needs a light to flicker to get you scared.
> Lots of attention to detail in the environment. This is a good thing, because you're going to spend a lot of time stumbling around in the dark paying attention to little details.

The bad.
> You're going to spend a slightly absurd amount of time stumbling around in the dark. Maybe I'm just awful at navigating horror games, but this really is a particularly disorienting experience with very limited vision and few landmarks to navigate by. The flashlight also has a habit of lagging behind the camera and getting stuck in things, which only worsens the matter.
> The objectives aren't particularly clear. The map design is pretty linear, and for awhile you'll feel like you're making progress and getting into it. Then you hit a locked door. Locked doors are not opened by keys in this universe, they're opened by as far as I can ascertain literally walking back and forth at random through places you've already been to trigger other events. It's an ... interesting ... way to make the most of out your budget and map, but gets old quickly when combined with the disorienting atmosphere.


THE VERDICT

Honestly there's so much potential in the art direction alone I'm giving this game a thumbs up. The level of care put into that makes me think I probably just missed something obvious and had a rough time with the gameplay due to that, so this is a bit of an optimistic thumbs up but a thumbs up nonetheless. If nothing else, you'll have a hell of a 15 minutes wandering in the dark.

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I played this during a <$5 Steam Game stream. Video first impressions at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/186743964.

The good!
> Pretty good atmosphere and level design.
> Really unique mechanics. Respawn system is super unique and interesting.
> Nice sound design overall, which is obviously super important in horror.
> Generally good character design. Works very well within its budget, and makes up for not having FFXIV indivdually animated hair strands with genuine creativity.

The bad.
> Some puzzles are a bit more "find the specific little hidden thing the dev hid somewhere" than "puzzle." This is compounded by the fact that many objects can be clicked in multiple places with different effects. Think Amensia, but cranked up way past the point of reason. As in "not just the locked chest, not even just the lock, but specific parts of the lock" specific.
> The translation, while not awful by any stretch, has some issues. This isn't a big deal until your realize you're playing a puzzle/horror game and that the odd English can hamper your understanding of the puzzles. Definitely something that can be worked on throughout EA.
> The main inventory / objective interface is very poor. It's a physical object you hold in your hands, which while atmospheric and cool means it constantly moves around and can flail wildly if you're trying to use it while scared or taking damage ... thus preventing you from using the items that would get you out of that situation. The controls for interacting with the world are also a bit iffy, but not unbearbly bad.
> The objectives/quests are highly misleading. This is by far the most confusing aspect. Basic things like "find x" that seem to imply "look for x in this room" can in fact mean "go on a magical spiritual vision quest triggered by obscure, unlisted conditions y and z and then finally find x 3 hours later at the end."

THE VERDICT

It's pretty good, and definitely worth the price point if you don't mind fumbling around a bit. Really want to see the dev put some more work into this. Maybe not the scariest thing ever but an interesting trip nonetheless.

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I played this during a <$5 Steam Game stream. Video first impressions at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/186742977.

I've been following this game for years, but the launch product is ... quesitonable.

Pros ---

> Amazing visual atmosphere and lots of places to explore.
> Challenging to a degree that most games don't dare to be these days, and very rewarding to learn.
> Generally solid-feeling mechanical combat with nice audiovisual cues.

Cons ---

> You're going to be exploring that atmosphere, a lot. Mandatory objectives are more hidden than secrets and the map may as well not exist. Even as someone who knew a decent amount going in I spent my first 4 hours wandering the starting area trying to find a boss needed to progress.
> Basically every fight with mobs is a 3+ v 1, and even basic mobs seem to have a massive statisical advantage on you, with truckloads of hp, nearly infinite stamina, and almost instant hitstun recovery. This is compounded by randomly ocurring "minibosses" which are a great deal tougher and visually indistinct from regular mobs, so you won't know you've got one until it 2-shots you with jabs.
> The UI is minimalist to an extreme and tells you next to nothing. It's a good thing combat has such good visual design, because otherwise you'd never know what's going on. This is aggrevated by the fact that literally everyone is a dude in a mask and tunic, so good luck telling mobs / bosses / players apart until you start wailing on them.
> The tutorial explains intuitive things ad nauseum (ie, moving with WASD and attacking with the mouse), but doesn't bother to touch on things like the "mana" resource generation, combo / combo breaking mechanics, etc. that aren't so easy to figure out.
> ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ target locking is busted. You kinda just swing at random and re-target at random as well. Sometimes mobs just aren't "detected" by the locking system and can't be targeted at all, meaning they can murder you while you have no ability to respond.
> You're gonna fall through the map, a lot.

---

All that said, I'll probably keep it and boot it up from time to time. It's still very skill-based and rewarding in so many ways, just hindered by cataclysmically awful level design and a lacking UI.

That said, I got this game for the combat and the PvP, and so far that's been around 5% of my playtime next to the incredibly huge amount of wandering the landscape and scratching my head, so maybe I won't.

A fantastic 4X game and worthy successor to ES1, that's been plagued by a few technical issues.

If you enjoy turn-based strategy and can get it to run, you'll probably like it.

The game nobody wanted or asked for.

It's literally just BLC 2.0, except now the heroes have names instead of "classes." Most of them are just straight ports of BLC designs, with all the same balance issues that never got addressed in BLC proper.

Oh, and the art isn't so grimdark and edgy that it's actually possible (occasionally) to see things happening.

I guess in however long its been since BLC came out the devs at least figured out one thing they could improve on, but it wasn't anything that would make anybody care about their game.

A mediocre Smash clone with ugly pixel art that pulled characters from their pitful 8-man (now 6) roster so they could sell them instead.

First Impressions Review:

The Short:
A pretty good indie shooter with a definite focus on intense, high-risk firefights. Maps are large and generally well-designed with lots of opportunity for CQC. Graphics and audio are nothing to write home about but they get the job done.

The Long:
New World Interactive apparently wanted to make themselves a realstic, competitve shooter. Did they succeed? Well, in the competitive part, almost certainly if the game gets the hype it deserves. Their approach to realism more or less sums up everything you need to know about the game, so we'll go into that below.

Insurgency's style could best be described as a kind of "exaggerated realism," and it definitely serves to put a large gap between the experience of playing this game and a more run-of-the-mill modern shooter. Don't expect to run and gun or pull off crazy jumpshots or quickscopes or anything like that here. You'll get shot. In the foot. For 1000% of your maximum health. Yeah, that's where that "exaggerated" part comes in.

Insurgency is definitely trying to craft a more hardcore, teamplay-focused shooter and they've done a very good job of it. Nearly any bullet wound is fatal, generally for egregeously large sums of damage in excess of tens to hundreds of times your health. (If you play on a server with death recaps and get to see those numbers.) Even firing from a prone position with a stabilizer on your rifle you aim like someone with Parkinson's who's hyped up on Red Bull. And forget about doing anything like reloading or aiming down sights while you're moving or prone. That just isn't gonna happen.

Now, that's all a bit strange and hard to get used to, but after spending a bit of quality time with the game I have to admit one thing. It works. You most definitely have to rely on your team and communication is key. Kills are satisfying as hell. The maps are so expansive exploring them could basically be a game unto itself, although there aren't /that/ many to choose from. Given that you'll spend a long while learning them, though, that's not a bad thing -- and having so many corners to watch just makes the game that much more intense.

All that said, I wouldn't mind seeing some of the rough edges toned down just a bit. I'd love to see the developers experiment with more interesting ways of crippling the player after foot/hand shots than striaght up death, and maybe making some of the weapon attachments like stabilizers and heavy barrels a bit more noticable impactful could help out too. There's room for the game to grow, but it isn't in a bad place at present so that alone is saying something. They're just improvements to a very well-done base package.

Insurgency most definitely isn't a game for the faint of heart, but if you're a fan of shooters and feel like taking a break from the industry standard its a great one to check out. Just be prepared for some frustration when two guys firing SMGs across the map from you manage to get a stray bullet through six buildings, a stack of sheet metal, and 20 feet of solid concrete into your toe, which promply explodes and embeds bone shards directly into your eyes. Or whatever happens when you take thousands of damage from being shot in the feet. Once you start getting the hang of it though, it's an experience unlike any the genre has seen for a decade and a welcome change of pace. The exaggerated-ness of it only helps to build up that feeling.