Recent reviews by Mark IV

Game looks fun, but seems like you would need to grind for 500 hours to unlock one single gun that was produced during the time the conflict takes place. Aint got time for that, and my previous experience with War Thunder's grinding system wasn't positive (you grind hundreds of hours to unlock barely decent stuff and still be always fighting people several battle ratings above you with far better equipment), so I shouldn't expect more from this game.

I did some calculations for fun, and in order to unlock all the weapons that you are given out for free on the first level of Medal of Honor Allied Assault (2001 game) - the M1 Garand, MP40, and MG42, you need to grind 300 hours. This is proof that gaming really is evolving backwards lmao

I played this game for about 10 hours around 2011 when the game originally went free.
Lately I decided to re-install it and dive deeper into it.
So, if you are some teenager new to Steam, or somebody that completely skipped this game for your entire life, let me tell you: It is, completely worth playing it today, even if you are used to it's clones that unsuccessfully tried to kill it.

This game is 17 years old. It's an ancient game. It was released during the BUSH administration, back when social media practically didn't exist, and the game STILL holds up to this day and looks great, thanks to it's amazing art style and silk smooth gameplay.
This is game is a masterpiece.

2 levels in and I can already tell this game is well worth the purchase, and when it comes to platformers, I am not easily amused.

This can be described as a mix of a story-heavy Megaman X level design with Metal Slug's run-and-gun, weapons, and vehicle mechanics, good cutscenes, and great music.

The game has left an amazing initial impression, and I think this game should be in the tens of thousands of reviews by now. It's a pity how niche it is.

If the devs still read reviews, my only criticism is the lack of an accessibility option to make the smoke and debris fire effects translucent. There is a lot of them, and all this thick smoke everywhere makes things confusing sometimes.

An uninspired modern shooter with a few good things here and there, but not much under the hood.

THE GOOD: Game is superbly optimized, even on my aging GTX 1660 I can run the game at 90fps on medium settings without issue. Great audio and visuals, solid gunplay, great weapon customization.

THE BAD: The game uses the most possibly overused and generic "near-future" setting. Soldiers with exoskeletons and 20th century weapons running around and "combat-slidding" *snores*. What this, Advanced Warfare all over again? Jesus, I cant believe that game already came out 11 years ago and people are still copying it, it was not even good.

We have a real war going on right now in the real world with more impressive stuff going on than this. Where are the drones everywhere droping bombs and pouring thermite from the sky like dragons? Where are the robot dogs? Thermobaric grenade launchers? Caseless/polymer-cased ammo? Electronic warfare rifles to jam enemy equipment? Ridiculous tanks with multiple guns and launchers and ridiculous caged armor,(or whatever the ♥♥♥♥ a BMPT Terminator is supposed to be)? Something like the goddmn HIMARS, 400k tungsteen balls shredding you like the Classic Doom BFG9000? No, we got... Girl with a Bow (super original design, plz do not steal, she's special and talks to the bow), and... uh... Literally Coach from L4D2. baby-faced Blonde man, and.... Gamer Grrrrrrrrllll.., and the one and only... Kyle with AK.. The game fails to be original in any way.

One of the most bizarre things is the operators. You would imagine that the default players would be faceless grunts full clad in armor, and you would need to pay or grind for the anime-looking characters. This game is the opposite, the forced DEI characters are the default, only one class has the faceless grunt, and he has to be unlocked with grinding.

These colorful operators would make sense in a game like Siege or CS, which you have 5x5 fights, and if you provided enough different operators. But no, this is a large scale combat game, so you normally end up with 10 clones on your screen of the same soft blonde boy with a 80s hairdo, and another 10 clones of the archer girl running around. To make matters worse, both teams shares the same operators. So you have several clones of the same guy in the same room fighting each other and you are just supposed to tell who is who with red markers above the enemies. This just an extremely bad execution.

At the end of the day, this is a free, better optimized and slightly better version of the latest Call of Duty slop, minus Nick Minaj twerking and Homelander flying around zapping everyone. If that's your thing, go for it. It's not for me, and I am tired of games of this kind.

Hopefully devs will improve the game in the future, add more content, operators, vehicles, gadgets, and an actual believeable world, because as of right now, despite having a great gameplay and performance foundation, this game has the artistic refinement and originality of some Roblox FPS that some kid assembled in it's bedroom.

Fun game.
Worst netcode I have seen in my life. Game is unplayable until the first 20 or 30 players die, sometimes Connection Lag freezes persists until the end of the match.
This happens even if I am playing in a server in my country.

Truly the best Call of Duty of all times. After almost two decades, game is still fun, there are still people playing online. Grab it on a sale and have old school fun.

Guns have erectile dysfunction. You need to aim your gun to the sky to hit a target 30 meters away. I know the "heavy bullets" meme is a recurring joke among Battlefield games, but this one took it too far. Throwing rocks would be more effective.

This game legit hurts the eyes to look at. The "High Dynamic Range" is just atrocious and impossible to disable. The sky shines like if the sun was 100 meters above you, while interiors and even some outdoor areas are pitch black. It takes like 10 seconds to get your virtual eyes used to the lightning, then you walk outside, and BAM you are flashbanged by the sun.
Feels like I'm playing a darker version of Doom 3. Even maps taking place in the middle of the desert can cause you eyestrain because of how dark it is. The very few moments when you can actually see something, there is that typical late-2000s/early-2010's brown and bloom filter everywhere.

Some levels, vehicles, and maps are cool, but the gameplay loop gets old really fast because of how bad the guns and visuals are. Just play Battlefield V agina instead.

>be an axeman
>join the hundred year war
>behead french men and sleep with their women
>loot everything in the battlefield like a vacuum cleaner
>train biceps and chest every day
>"The prince asks you to.." "tell the prince to f*ck off, I only answer to the kingdom of gains"
>become literally The Connan
>"looting corpses is really frowned uppon by..." SHUT UP! killing french men to get money to pay for the gym is not a sin. That's the way THE LORD intended, that's a virtuous life!
>my 100/100 Virtue says I'm doing everything correct JUST AS GOD WANTED
>knights, shield walls, everything falls to my axe
>win the war singlehandely, but the ungrateful lords don't want to work with me anymore
>continue life as a wealthy mercenary
>biceps and chest day everyday, then fun at the brothel and bathhouse, life is good
>start dating a nice girl
>commit genocide for her love
>gets married
>life gets complicated, turns out she is way too kinky for my own good
>the Spanish inquisition is now after me because of her, I should confront her about that
>she's smarter than I am
>gets imprisioned
>homies break me out of prison
>we escape to the middle east
>we join the crusades
>get paid retake a city
>sarracens horrified as they watch a mountain of meat and steel walking towards them
>didn't expect the sun to be this hot
>literally unable to move after 30 seconds of fighting
>sarracens spends several days trying to bash me with maces and trying to pry my armor open
>they give up and abandon the city
>I claim victory
>I explore the city
>degeneracy everywhere
>everybody has leprosis
>crusaders have gone mad from the sun exposure and plague, and now are pillaging everything
>decide I had enough, pay 1000 coins to get into a ship and ♥♥♥♥ off from this ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up country
>die in a storm
>ending 1 out of 11. Guess I still haven't seen a good portion of what this game has to offer.

10/10, would commit unspeakable war crimes in France again

Despite the apparent simplicity of this game, it's one of the most fun RPGs I have ever played. The amount of choices you have both in gameplay and history branching is simply glorious. I would rather replay this game multiple times over trying any new AAA Elden Souls Dogma crap.

A more realistic alternative to Left 4 Dead that didn't age well.

You can have lot of dumb fun if you can buy this game at the price of a beer at 90% off. Yeah, there is zero historical accuracy on this, but playing as a nazi japanese woman with a M1 Garand and a PIAT can be pretty fun. The sheer amount of different weapons and vehicles that are difficulty to see in other WW2 games allows you to turn your eye away from the game's lack of authenticity. When you get into a squad where everybody are either clones of M. Bison from Street Fighter or nazi women, things get so absurd it becomes an authenticity of it's own.

Also, singleplayer is also pretty cool, missions don`t feel railroaded like in previous games, and that they added campaigns that you can play as Germans and Senegalese Tirailleurs.

Interesting things to praise:
- They ceased with the pay to win bullsht, you start multiplayer with all weapons and attachments unlocked.
- It's pretty cool that they give away the game for almost free for the sake of keeping the servers healthy. I have no problem finding multiple full servers in very late hours of the night. Activision could learn with this (they still charging full price for CoD WW2 which is one year older than this and has 1% of the server population). This game peaked at 120k players on release, and still getting 60k players every day. This is absolutely insane, it's impressive. I have never seen in my life a game retain 50% of its player base after one year, let alone after 6 years. I feel like EA really cares about this game.

This game gives me hope that someday EA might improve as a company.