Recent reviews by tejo.hr

I'm writing from just 15h of playing it, but I believe I can say what this game is about. It want to give us game "that used to be". Coming from over 20y old studio Housemarque that made too many PlayStation arcade exclusive games and teaming up with one of the biggest names from days of the arcade, Eugene Jarvis who made in 80's for Williams Electronics games like Defenders and Robotron 2084. And what this is is Robotron for 2017.

Controlling is basic twin stick shooter. Other then that there are just 2 more buttons - special weapon and dash which are quite self explanatory. Shooting is rapid and constant, so while aiming direction might seam most important stuff to worry about, your positioning and maneuver are what makes you win..

The world of this game is divided into 5 levels which are divided into rooms with final one on each level being the boss room. In the first mode called Arena, you are given an opportunity to clear the whole game's world in one go. There are several difficulties and you will clear the whole game on first go because you are immortal (infinite lives, but it's similar thing). Second difficulty gives you more stuff to do and worry about, but also giving you ton of lives which is basically immortality again, but it does teach you to get better at it and that each death means you get weaker. By the third option difficulty curve spikes up a lot since it gives you only 10 continues (one go is 5 lives). What gets more important here are power ups, which makes your character stronger. Not going too much into how power ups works, but by losing a life you might lose some power ups, so the goal here is not to die too often, especially too often on just one room, and getting strong enough that when you get to boss you are strong enough not to lose lose even more lives. The last difficulty is just 5 continues with highest difficulty.

While Arcade does look like main mode of the game, I would say Arena is even more important for you if you want to play good. The goal of arena is not to clear whole world at once but just level, so lives aren't important here as much as it is to know the level well and trying to get as high score as possible for online ranking and to get some reward currency for visual customization or achievement.

You can enjoy it in coop too, which was fun for me and my brother, but it is also simple as in the old days. Second character uses different color or bullets, same life pool as you do and his own power ups. The first thing is good so you know better where your character is placed, especially when you move apart and camera zooms out a bit. The life pool is not that great, considering player with less power ups might die more often and spend most of your lifes.

Last thing that I MUST POINT OUT is that the game doesn't have any randomness to it. Trust me that this is not the bad thing. Things are very meticulously crafted and having finishing something gives you sense of accomplishment from knowing it didn't involve any luck to it, you just got good and pulled it off. There is no permanent upgrades either, none of that rogue-like stuff that makes you grind. Later difficulty stages in any game mode will make you play at your maximum. When I finished Cuphead I never realized why this game isn't more popular among those who like that tough difficulty challenge.

While gameplay takes all inspiration from old 80's top down arcade shooters, graphics help to bring that vibe even more. Heavily influenced by Tron, with your main character driving a bike to get to the levels, and bringing all those bright neon colors into the action does look cool and it helps you distinguish everything apart. It also gives you a lot of that "virtual reality" vibe to the game which does make more unique. On my now a bit older PC it runs fluid enough not to give me any problems and is well optimized considering how much stuff happens. I wish to see it all in butter smooth FPS cause when so much goes in this game it's absolute wonder to look at.

I really don't know. Housemarque is well known to have their fan base. I follow gaming websites and all gave good coverage and even reviews were excellent (many giving it rare highest score). Developers said that the game commercially flopped and that they are done with arcade games with over dramatization that "Arcade is dead". But did we really lose interest is arcade games that once were part of our childhoods? Did we lost interest in retro games that are truly that, not just retro-inspired with heavy modern twist? I mean I love so many modern twin stick shooters and it's one of my favorite arcade genres, but this one just pops out as different and unique that it's hard to find it's competitor.

This games makes Binding of Isaac feels much older then it is. Great set of randomization without making your win or lose depend of too much RNG. Lern the rules, good and every session can end with victory.

First game I get to 1000h so let me try make a review.

**THE GAMEPLAY**
If you ever tried KF1 and didn't like it you won’t like this one either. The requirement for enjoyment it is pretty much the same - if mechanics of shooting and team play don’t click with you in first few hours then you won't be able to see yourself play this game in long run cause it’s basically same ♥♥♥♥ over and over and over again. KF2 brings pretty much everything from first one but it also brings some fresh changes to it. I won't count them all and you might like some and hate the others as I do too (FU versus), but overall it is really hard to make a case that is isn't big improvement from predecessor. Among quality improvements, quantity of weapons, enemies and maps is over what KF1 had. Around 50 weapons to choose from right now is already more than KF1 and that is not even counting different grenades, double wielding options, cross perk usage or KF1 paywall lock. 18 maps is still not close to 23 maps from KF1 but it will probably get surpass this year already looking at the speed of updates. Zeds got ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ more diversity, abilities and you finally get more than just one boss. Also there are more game types with endless coming pretty soon.

**LEVELING**
KF1 had 5 levels per perk, KF2 have 25, what gives? Well basically it will take you same amount of playtime to get it maxed, but you will get levels more often so you get you progress experienced more often. After every 5 levels you will get a bigger bonus as you get to pick 2 special perks to choose from to spice things up and make different builds. Some people get to play those awful grind maps from first game but I really see no point in it. You can probably level perk from 0 to 25 in 20h without even giving a ♥♥♥♥ about it and just enjoying the game. Survivalist is still kinda dead perk and firebugs are just a bunch of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ though.

**MICROTRANSACTIONS**
It's basically same ♥♥♥♥ as CS:GO. Visual upgrade for weapons and your characters. Whoever says that makes it worst, please shut up and remember that KF1 had many weapons locked behind the paywall as DLCs. KF2 is getting more and more weapons with time as a free DLC, so I don’t mind they getting their money from steam trades from people who can afford and enjoy visual customization then from direct purchase. I don't mind looking at someone with obnoxious mask in this game if that makes me shoot at big guys with double 3822s in the head. Not to mention you can do some daily and weekly objectives for extra non-marketable items. They might look like a paper bag cause there is a paper bag, but it’s free.

**COMMUNITY**
Can we all just agree on blaming chsignal?

**THE GAMEPLAY**
I'm a big fan of original R6s and early Tom Clancey games, but this is nothing like it. Old R6 was all about SP and/or coop. There is no story mode here and coop can barely pass as game mode. The biggest problem is that maps are just build around PvP combat and coop often simulate that environment unsuccessful instead of offering something new. It would be great if they did emulate PVP more closely cause it would give people nice "get to know" which this game needs. The upcoming new mode might bring something new to the game, but I'm positive it wont bring old feeling back.

The previous games were slow, realistic and tactical and only thing left in this game in PVP mode is tactical. The slow part is gone cause once the game starts you really don't have much time for anything. From 1st second you are tasked for loads of stuff especially if you are defender and matches are quite quick. Even movement and shooting is closer to modern shooters. Realism is gone mostly because operators have quite high-tech abilities but that is such a big flavor of this game that it is hard to hate on it. Also destructible walls and different operators really helps this game with replayability. You will never see same match twice. There is always that "meta" but unless you are one of those top competitive players you won't notice it that much.

So if you looking for Rainbow Six, you won't find much in this but you will find a unique MP shooter.

**TECHNICAL PART**
It's quite old engine and everybody hates on it, but for anyone with semi-potato PC it runs good and looks quite nice even on lowest settings. Servers are now on 60 ticks so you will really want to get 60fps and you can always squeeze it out. Matchmaking is fast (95% of time less then 30 seconds), but it can be unfair when it joins you to a game already ending just so it could even the teams. Also main menu could use a rework, it is a bit slow,and ranked is still kept in beta, mostly cause of ranking formula being just way too simplistic to be considered good.

**UNLOCKING**
Bought this game 2nd February 2017, so it's almost a year since I bought it. It was discounted so I grabbed it when price was 20€. For a popular FPS seamed like a good price. There is a Steam counter for how much you played but I believe it's better to use r6db since it counts real gameplay hours. 278h 30m played: 223h 58m is casual and just 54h 32m in ranked. That is around 5.346h per week and I'd consider that being popular for a game I had for one year but also quite casual for multiplayer game.

In that time I earned in-game currency worth all original, year one and year two operators, and be ready for next 2 new ones. Be warned that next year there will be 8 new operators so it will be harder to unlock everything with same play time. We still don't know if they plan to discount year 1 DLC guys which would be nice to attract new players and IMO if they make their price drop 50% I think it will be fair to new players. Also if you planing to buy starter edition, the price can get down to 7.5€ sometimes. It's cheap for a game if you just want to give a try, but don't bother with it if you plan to play this game more then few weeks or if you need to have every character ever unlocked.

**COMMUNITY**
It is really hit and miss. The game jumped significantly in popularity and with that everything bad becomes more apparent. Since the game is 5vs5 even having one friend with you means a lot and synergy can help a lot, so I would never recommend to playing it solo.

Hidden gem among all the indie games.

10/10 for box art.
HAHA GET IT IT'S SILLY CAUSE GAME IS ABOUT THE BOX SO YOU DONT KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT.

1/10 for my humor.

Best couch arena since Towerfall

I'll try to keep this review as objective as possible.

This game is multiplayer first person shooter. First that you will encounter is the classes that are shared among many games and can be basically described as light, medium and heavy. Apart from most obvious differences - selection of weapons, armor and speed, thing that makes it original is their visions. Each of those visions doesn’t give you a boost like some games like to call “special abilities” because it depends about how well you will learn to use them. Recon has a night vision, and in a world of gamma and brightness adjustments it’s most obsolete function, but so it had to be for a class than compensate it in other areas. Medium or as they call it assault have a motion vision. While it’s most useful of all visions, its grayed out colors are disadvantage for every non-moving enemy that could be lurking near you. Heavy class named support had a thermal vision which would be most useful if there wasn’t for one thing – the cloak which makes other 2 classes predator-like invisible (with a disadvantage of making big noise when turning cloak off/on), and even more often harder to spot with this vision turned on.

The maps are more into simulating real architecture angles then making battle more fluid. You will find a lot of corners, dark places, hard-to-reach-but-can-be-done areas and especially choke points which will encourage more camping and demand more twitch reflexes a la counter strike then target leading. It might even turn the game into more team deathmatching then capture the flag, which is a bit shameful since that part is centered a lot more on better movement and tactical decisions among teammates. It has to be mentioned that with capturing flag players in whole team are awarded for more points for unlocking weapons then by simple wiping out the other team, as it can award you for as much as 10 points (1p=1kill).

This game plays and feels like a mod. It has a lot of originality and personality that comes from smaller tighter developing teams, especially in its design of dystopian Ghost in Shell world, but it also shows areas for improvement (or to better put it – area for balancing) which could easily turn it from good game into great one which would be worth a few bucks, pounds or euros. As it is free, there is no need to complain about that, but free to play games are turning into more and more of a “thing” this days and it may get harder to draw new players on tight budget.

Now the subjective part:
The community has been amazing, you will meet most wonderful people here, from child molesters, serial killers to rapists, I really felt at home here and they kept this game alive all this years.