Recent reviews by flea eater

Pretty fun game that's just like a more jank version of Arma Antistasi. If you don't know what that is--essentially you're just fighting alongside AI soldiers to take control of objective points on a map and when you capture enough of them you win the game. You get to do anything you want in this game, from piloting planes and helicopters to using mortars and artillery, and you can use tanks, command squads, and build bases.

I hope that the worst parts of this game get ironed out--like the buggy AI and how badly it stutters when loading new areas of the map. This game has a solid concept and is halfway there to being fantastic.

I never bothered to play this game very much after I first got it.

Boy, what a mistake that was.

Firefight is a fantastic lite strategy game that offers a realistic, methodical combat but with the simplicity of an arcade game. The concept is very simple. You can pick from one of the many premade scenarios and try to complete it to the best of your ability, or you can pick one of the maps and one of the four gamemodes with any nation fighting any nation in a custom battle.

The controls are extremely simple--everything can be done with just the mouse. The units are fairly autonomous and are generally capable of holding their own. You simply tell them where to go. They'll scan their surroundings, acquire targets, prioritize bigger threats, and take cover all on their own whenever they can. It is possible to do some light micro, but you cannot take manual control of any units in this game.

The AI is capable, but can be frustrating. I have to admit, watching my tanks refuse to advance because there is a lone infantryman hiding in an attic is irritating--and sometimes tanks like to do full 90 or 180 degree turns despite never being told to. I've lost some tanks to AT guns because of that.

This game is wonderfully realistic. Everything is slow and methodical. Infantry hardly ever moves faster than a light jog unless you tell them to, tanks have very limited visibility and have a hard time finding targets, and the ballistics simulation is surprisingly good for a game that looks as deceptively barebones as Firefight.

There's also a wealth of vehicles and unit types to choose from for every nation and for every year of the war, there's a lot of vehicles that I either never expected to see in this game or never even knew existed.

It's even still getting updates even after all this time. (I bought this game over, like, two years ago.) The only thing it's missing IMO is a co-op multiplayer mode.

It's well worth 15 dollars, even if you're not very good at strategy games (I am not). I'm having a blast.

It's not worth its salt as a videogame. I think, realistically, nobody is playing this game for more than a few hours--it gets dull incredibly quickly. There are, like, three levels in the game, and the different gamemodes really don't make it any more interesting.

But, like... c'mon. You know why people play this. If you're gonna buy this, just know there's not much of a 'game'. But I have a feeling that you're buying it for a different reason.

Amazing. I already sunk probably about a hundred hours into Receiver 1 between two accounts, and I loved its core premise.

Receiver 2 at its surface may seem like it's just a prettier version of Receiver 1, but it's much more. Beside the obvious graphical and sound improvements, their simulation has gotten better and more detailed, there's a far greater variety of firearms available to you, there is a greater variety of enemies, a greater variety of rooms to explore, and the world has been expanded.

The amount of secrets to find in this game is huge. I absolutely love the writing and this game has a lot of memorable quotes. It's definitely worth playing.

I want to like this game. I played the original free-to-play version of this game and loved it, and I can appreciate how much hard work has clearly gone into improving it, especially in regards to campaign. I mean, really, what a glow-up.

However... this game is wrong. It feels wrong. It embodies everything I hate in a game like this. The game has been made in such a way to encourage certain design principles--that--if you want to play optimally--you cannot stray from. This is incredibly frustrating because it hampers creativity significantly, and there is almost zero room for interesting gimmick designs, aesthetics, or designing ships that feel right to you. It almost feels like you have to design ships in regard to the developer's vision and not your own.

What I mean by this is: if you look at every ship that exists in the base game, almost all of them look identical and are min-maxxed to hell--especially the larger designs. Every single ship design in the base game--again, especially larger ones--are made of shields stacked closely together infront of massive armor walls with guns set extremely far back into the armor so that you'd need to bust through 6 layered shields and a genuine 15 blocks worth of armor before you could start damaging critical components. This draws fights out into slogs and it forces the player to build ships that can compete with these meta/min-maxxed builds. Min-maxxed builds inherently cannot be aesthetically pleasing or fit a gimmick because they put raw performance first and foremost.

As someone mostly uninterested in the campaign mode and instead interested on building interesting, themed, ships and pitting them against AI ships, this game can't provide. If you're more of a builder than a fighter, I heavily recommend not wasting your time. Building ships in Cosmoteer which do not follow the meta and are not ludicrous amounts of missile/flak/chaingun/hyperbeam spam behind 5 layered shields and inset behind 15 blocks of armor offers zero satisfaction and your end products will not be able to stand toe-to-toe with the min-maxxed vanilla ships. I am incredibly disappointed with the direction the game has gone, but respect the amount of work that went into it. Unfortunately I have to recommend against this game because it is just not fun.

EDIT: I've edited my review and shortened it so I can add a reply to the dev. At the top is the original (shortened) review.

This game has shown no improvement since its 2022 release and doesn't deserve its 'mostly positive' reviews.

It suffers from overly ambitious design that doesn't align with what the dev can realistically deliver. Despite a large map and several systems like a Tarkov-esque health system, they don't come together cohesively.

The game lacks polish, cohesion, and content. The dev keeps adding new systems without refining or integrating them properly.

It's barely a survival game, with empty, illogical maps, broken loot systems, and an overwhelming amount of items that don’t function as intended.

The map is mostly empty space with poorly designed interiors and random obstacles. Combat is simplistic, with zombies offering little challenge and guns being largely useless compared to melee weapons.

The graphics are poor, using a low-poly style with badly implemented lighting that hampers performance. Sound design is unbalanced and low quality, with irritating ambient noises.

The game relies heavily on pre-made assets with no sign of a unique vision or improvements, making it feel lazy and uninspired.

Overall, this is a poorly constructed game that I wouldn’t recommend, even if it were free, as it shows little sign of progress or improvement.

Reply to the dev:

Using premade assets is not inherently problematic, but in this game, they feel like placeholders that don't fit. Early Access should showcase a minimally viable product that provides a playable, albeit incomplete, experience. This game is not playable, just incomplete. The point about it being made in unity was just a guess. The engine ultimately doesn't matter.

The game lacks a functioning survival gameplay loop, primarily around loot spawning. Loot spawns illogically and there is too much bloat, including a an excessive number of useless items, base building components, guns, and vehicles, which all fail to come together to make something fun.

Development appears to prioritize quantity over quality, focusing on adding assets and features rather than fixing foundational issues. Advanced mechanics like a Tarkov-style limb health system feel out of place given the current state of the game.

The focus should shift to refining core systems and building a cohesive gameplay experience before adding new content. Reducing content bloat—such as cutting unnecessary guns, vehicles, and map size—would allow more attention to the game's essential mechanics.

Polished, functional systems are far more important than the originality of assets or the quantity of features. A cohesive, playable survival game should be the priority before expanding with new content and improved graphics. It doesn't matter if some, half, or all of the models in this game are totally unique of the game itself doesn't play well.

This game is amazing at inducing anxiety and fear. Seeing tracers fly past you as your commander screams, "OVEER! HE'S LOOKING AT US! SHOOOOOT!" as you can hear his voice breaking from the stress...

It's an experience unlike any other ground combat game ever made. Now, don't get me wrong. At the time of writing this; this game is basically just a fancy tech demo. However, it's a damn good tech demo. I think this game has some real potential. Pick this bad boy up and feel it out for yourself.

It's lackluster at best. Has the promise to be a fantastic game, but there's far too much micro. The friendly AI is incapable of helping you out at all and is incredibly stupid. The enemy AI is incredibly easy to beat. There are better games.

Fun game, but the levels feel a little same-y. There's not much here. Controlling squadmates sucks, too. Wish they just had actual AI.

I like it, but recommend it only a little.

I played this game for 16 hours in one sitting. It's only a little addicting.