Recent reviews by Unfortunately

Game's ruined, mute doesn't work.

Eh I should have just stuck with 2.

Was having trouble getting back into Vermintide but this helped

Not totally negative on this game, I was back and forth on it for a while but at this point I sign on, look at the missions, think about playing one, sigh, and close the game.

This game is very much in the vein of Payday 2 and Vermintide 2, both favorites of mine, and that comes with the following positives:
+Full, immersive world where the environment, voice acting, music, as well as the feel of the gameplay are all cohesive and contribute to the sense of a deep world, rather than a paper-thin set. I'd say the best aspect of this game is the way it nails the aesthetic of multiple movies in the Alien series.
+PD2-like weapon customization. While not nearly as wide or deep as Payday 2's massive weapons/mods lineup, you get to enjoy the same browsing, customizing, stat-stacking experience, with some added perks like stickers and of course awesome outlandish space guns. A lot of my time enjoying both these games has been spent, not in missions, but in the customization screens optimizing builds etc. If you're into that this game has a decently deep customization system for both guns and characters, more than enough to keep all but the biggest nerds happy.
+The guns are great too, with some real downsides. The shotguns are a blast, flamethrowers awesome but also a huge friendly-fire risk, handguns, snipers, DMR's, and also fun little burst SMG's and riot guns. Lots to play with, lots of power, also some real crap and some real challenges to overcome. I've seen this game criticized for having guns that are clearly worse than others but honestly I like the wide-ranging array, sort of a chaos to search through for your favorites. And with the customization system it's really satisfying to finally figure out how to make a gun work for you after you thought it sucked at first.
+Genuinely tense gameplay. Although the few missions do get pretty rote and predictable after a while, those first playthroughs, with the difficulty just a little higher than you'd like, are a real heart-pounding adventure of almost getting overwhelmed and being pumped if you make it through. It delivers on throwing a little fear into the FPS equation, aided by the whole otheroworldly Alien mood.
+There is no chat in game. Peace and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ quiet at last.

But there are some strikes too:

-Only 12 missions, and though typical RNG mission elements are employed, they don't add a feeling of variety. Now I will say the mix of missions is decent, there's some rehashing but not a lot. It feels like enough for a campaign, but not really for replays. The whole prestige system and intel unlocking feel out of place, as if this was supposed to be a short adventure game to play once and be done. The fatigue has set in and I'm just not interested in running anything AGAIN.
-Bots are garbage, especially with friendly fire. PD2 and V2 at this point have both upgraded bots by allowing players to set their inventories and builds, so even with poor performance you can tune them to be helpful. AFE's bots are permanently set to one class, don't perform very well, and seem to actively try to get hit by friendly fire. Playing with friendly fire solo, the feeling of annoyance with the bots stepping in front of your sights is the dominant experience of the mission. You're playing against your squad more than the mission at that point. I suppose they want your to rely on quickplay instead of bots but why.
-The story is truly crap. And unfortunately it's front and center quite a bit. There are twist reveals that were both obvious and lame, entirely pointless characters and objectives, and missions that in retrospect never should have been done at all. "Well, guess we could have skipped that campaign" is not what the writing is supposed to contribute to a game; the story should contribute to the urgency, not let the air out of it. And we end up with nonsense like the doctor continually telling you all mission long that he has no idea what anything is, or Santos lamely arguing that we HAD to send marines in, because the writers realized there was no reason to put anyone in danger to achieve the stated mission here. And stupid video game stories are ok, nothing wrong with that, but when you play up the treacherous mysteries and secrecy of the Alien franchise and use it in your worldbuilding, you can't mix it with this amateur-hour writing or your lame reveals just hurt all the more.
-The mission variety is lacking in a way that's hard to describe. The enemies don't spawn in exactly the same locations and timing in each run, but it feels a lot like if they did. It's as if there's a small, finite number of spawning scripts for each mission and though they're randomized, there are too few to feel varied. I'm probably feeling the contrast with Vermintide's "AI director" system here, in AFE there's just something scripted about everything that makes the gameplay go from heart-pounding to feeling like work in just a few runs of the mission.

Maybe the Pathogen expansion will turn things around.

Tricked me into thinking Warhammer is cool

The singular of stormvermin is clearly stormvarmint

i don't know why i thought they fixed it, still can't play with bots.

Fun with bots, garbage with humans

If gaming is where the developer moves the meta, and the players chase it, then i guess this is a game

Really revitalizes the main campaign with a challenge very different from the more static factions. I don't own the chaos or Beastmen packs, so it's possible this is more along the lines of their playstyle(s) but compared to greenskins, dwarves, empire, and Bretonnia, Norsca gives you an aggressive, conquest-focused playstyle that somehow combines with a surprisingly deep tech tree.

It's definitely on the easy side, but not as much as the dwarves, and the unit roster has more variety than the dwarves or bretonnia. Turn against chaos for a rewarding extra challenge!