Recent reviews by Zabo4

It's been a long time since I've had the opportunity to play a strategic first person shooter that wasn't trying to extract microtransactions from me. It seems to do a good job of balancing the strategic and immersive elements with being fun to play.

At the 1.0 release (now) it could still use some polish but the core gameplay has been entertaining for a while and more than anything that's what makes a game fun to play.

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Above was at ~80 hours. Now at ~300 hours I'm still enjoying this game - the developers have done a thing that is very important: made a game that's still fun to lose. In any PvP game the best you can hope for is winning 50% of the matches so you had better make a game that's just fun to play and this game certainly does just that - you can have some great games that end badly.

Best if you have a microphone or otherwise use squad chat generously but if you are looking for a game where communication is key and you're communicating you'll likely find a good time.

It's just 21 levels with 3 different mechanics and then it abruptly ends. This feels more like a proof of concept or a demo.

Dead game, tried to play with another friend but we couldn't get connected. Was luckily able to refund it. Really too bad because The Ship is still playable after all of these years and you can get a bunch of friends together.

I was hoping I could do it with this but it seems to expect an online community (that is long gone) and has since been abandoned.

Don't pay more than $1 but it's a fun game to play with friends.

There are enough unfixed exploits that you'll quickly run into griefers and exploiters in a public match. Even if you're the host of the server you can't kick them.

The UI seemed fairly well done and the photography is excellent. Unfortunately, the story itself seemed to have been a script for at best a B-movie that was then tweaked to have some branching elements. In addition, it felt emotionally flat. I think this is partly to allow for scenes to be ambiguous so that you don't end up with the wrong atmosphere given a set of choices.

I debated playing again to try some other choices and maybe see some more endings but I realized that I was just going to do so for the sake of completion and I really didn't care enough about the story/world/characters to bother when all I'd really be getting out of it would be some cool screenshots of well framed scenes with snazzy lighting.

I think the most important thing for a BR game is achieved: it's still fun when you don't win. There's plenty to enjoy even if you're not the best, the game rewards you for playing and doesn't taunt you with the loss.

You don't need to pay or grind to get a fun gameplay experience: most of the things requiring payment are cosmetic. There's no need to grind for upgrades/attachments/etc. as you progress through a match the same way as everyone else does. The one exception is to unlock other characters with different (but not more powerful) abilities you'll need to either grind ~30 hours per character or purchase a pack.

A criticism is that the same currency used to unlock characters is also used to reroll a daily challenge. This means that you might have a daily challenge that requires you to play as a character you haven't yet unlocked or set yourself back on the path to unlocking the character in order to change that challenge for another.

From the performance some tuning is needed; there can be stuttering even with overpowered machines. I've found I need to stop other background even when I'm not maxing my system. In addition high jitter on my network will cause rubber-banding. After a period of experimentation with graphics settings, reading forums, and patience I rarely experience issues - but the experience was not seamless.

It's most fun with someone you know but playing with random other people is still enjoyable.

If you bought it for the multiplayer wait 6 months. I'm not sure which is more broken the factions or the matchmaking.

It's not much fun to have no challenge from the other side as some player on your team cleans them all up while you're trying to get into the fight nor is it any fun to be obliterated the moment your spawn.

Somehow they have decided that the way to balance teams is to put one good person with 4 new people and hope for the best. If there were such a thing as private servers that handled balance like games used to back in the 90s and 00s then maybe it wouldn't be so painful but as it is now "trust us we'll put you in a match" then failing to do a good job of it makes for a poor multiplayer experience.

I regret purchasing this game.

Edit: I'm enjoying it more but it still facing some major issues in Multiplayer matchmaking with games that are wildly unbalanced (either direction).

Edit: Still playing it because friends play it, still finding it frustratingly poorly executed. But it's only been a month, so maybe after 5 more.

It's silly but satisfying. This is one of the few games that consistently brings me joy.

Still very enjoyable if you can get a group together but otherwise you're playing with bots. You'll need to use Steam's server browser (check the discussions for instructions) rather than the one in-game. Otherwise you can still host your own game and invite over Steam.

If you catch it on sale it's worth trying out.

I didn't expect to like Warframe. I thought it would be some kind of grind aimed around making you pay to win but so far I'm enjoying myself. It feels like it was built around being fun and interesting. The voice acting right away is engaging: you want to listen to the characters and learn the story. The tutorial missions do a good job of introducing complexity one thing at-a-time. Failing a mission or having other setbacks doesn't feel punishing - it feels like you are always making at least a little bit of progress.