Recent reviews by //myth

I will start this by saying that I have never reviewed a game on Steam in the ~20 years I have had a steam account. HLL was special. Emphasis on "was".

This game went from having massive potential, to the original project being acquired by a company that has no business developing a game in this genre. This game used to be addicting. Competitive play (player-run, never really had support from devs) was engaging and fun to a level that I have never experienced before. Now, I can't bring myself to launch it because I know I will most likely get frustrated with the current game state/bugs that are present during literally every play session.

I had originally typed a lengthy breakdown covering a lot of what is wrong, but I don't think it will make a difference, so I'll save whoever reads this some time. Unfortunately, Team17 are actively ignoring the playerbase's negative feedback on their development decisions. If they actually listen and start fixing the base game instead pumping DLC out (currently planned DLC releases in every stage of their dev roadmap for 2023), I'll gladly change this review to positive. Time will tell, but unfortunately, I can't recommend this game in its current state to anyone unless you are just looking for delayed heartbreak.

If you are looking for a good representation of the quality of support T17 will be giving this game, go watch a Black Matter trailer from 1 year ago or prior. Keep in mind that BM were the guys that built this from the ground up after getting Kickstarted. After that, go watch the most recent trailer that was released titled "Devotion to Duty" (Team17). Then ask yourself if Team17 has any ambition for this game other than to take your money and run.

Please prove us wrong and fix this unstable, unbalanced (*map/side dependent), broken, buggy mess instead of releasing more DLCs and increasing the game's price even more (already did it once... it's only been a few months). Listen to the community backlash when you make bad decisions. It's a slap in the face to everyone that loved this game and devoted as much time as I have to it.

I hope to come back and change my review someday, but something tells me I won't be able to do that.



Update 09/16/23

Patch 14.3 has introduced an Ultrawide "fix" (their words) to combat an issue no one was complaining about. Ultrawide support was 100% working fine before. During the PBE (for players to test new patches before they release), it was brought to their attention that they royally screwed something up. That portion of the patch was unchanged and has now hit live servers.

Anyone playing on an ultrawide monitor now plays at a disadvantage. 16:9 users seem to be unaffected. This effectively means that Team 17 has tried to artificially change the experience on specific hardware with this patch without proper knowledge of the hardware itself. Player models look like ants, people are struggling to see enemies from 50+m away. Think of an extreme "fish-eye" effect. It's like I'm playing on 200 FOV now. The issue is even worse with tankers. Their discord is currently being bombarded with people begging them to revert to how it was previously.

A "hotfix" has been announced for tank view ports on ultrawides. This issue affects gameplay as a whole, whether someone is in a tank or playing infantry. They have not acknowledged the fact that this is bad for infantry as well.

This company does not listen to feedback. Stay far away. I would be surprised if anyone in their development team had an ultrawide monitor that they play on. It is clear they did not test this. They have told users to play at 90 FOV and the issue is "fixed". I guarantee you that is far from the case. Additionally, forcing people on a specific subset of hardware to play with specific settings because they are lazy is far from a solution. I have tried everything I know of to fix this and nothing works. Forcing black bars in Nvidia control panel, playing stretched, different resolutions, I've tried every combination of settings and the issue persists.

If they do not revert this change, I will be uninstalling this game due to it being unplayable on 3440x1440. I refuse to relearn a game I have played 2000 hours in and still be at a disadvantage if someone is on 1080p or 1440p.

This is not how you recoup your $40m purchase, Team17. You are going to alienate your entire userbase at this rate. It may not be in 1 update, it may take a while, but we already see that the game doesn't have a spike in daily users when the PTE is released like we did with Black Matter.