I think the popularity of this game says more about the GAPING hole in the multiplayer space after Esports took over than anything. Some non-competitive multiplayer gaming? What a novel concept we've barely seen explored in the last decade despite it once being a legitimately big part of the early internet days. We're all trained by social media to fight each other, and we're all meant to be stomping each other and fighting our teammates for not stomping good enough in online games.

Something a bit more uniting than that feels great right now, and the the cheesy over the top American propaganda set dressing sets the mood superbly. The gameplay has enough texture to it to remain fun for a surprising length despite how repetitive the game ultimately is. Specifically I'm a fan of how the aiming feels, where you're not simply hovering a reticle over enemy and clicking, your character is physically moving the gun around separate to the reticle. Kind of hard to explain but you feel it right away, and I think it feels really good and grounds the experience in a way that feels unique and polished. Helping that feeling is the disposable nature of you and your teammates. The player character feels very fragile, especially because of friendly fire being a major mechanic to worry about. It's another wrinkle that keeps the game feeling fun and engaging. Along with some other really cool ideas, like how every airstrike or support drop you call in has its own button combination you have to type in real time (Including respawn capsules to bring some more soldiers in after you accidentally blew some up). Or the real time-map showing how the battle against the communist alien scum is going. Every element combines in a really coherent way that makes the whole package feel really well thought out.

In the end I think if I really grinded this game out for another hundred hours and followed it extremely closely every step of the way for the next year, I'd come out a little less enthused. But what I was presented was still loads of fun. So many online games trap you in fomo loops and BEG for you to engage with it nonstop for as long as possible. And what's worse is it feels like if a game DOESN'T successfully eat up an entire year of our lives it's seen as a failure, a flash in the pan. I wouldn't be surprised to see player counts drop as there's not really a great amount of progression, what's there is mostly REALLY slow and most of the unlockable cosmetics are pretty unimpressive. In the current online gaming climate that's seen as the ultimate failure, to not milk the playerbase dry for an indefinite amount of time...But I truly hope this game can survive that and remain a game people can hop on and enjoy every once and a while for years to come. It's perfectly normal and healthy for a game to come out that DOESN'T demand you put 300 hours a year, climbing the ranks and hating yourself the entire time.

I could very easily come at this game from a more pessimistic angle, and say it's painfully repetitive and it's kinda hard to care about recapturing the same empty wastelands ad nauseum. I do think they really gotta add some more enemy factions and mission types to keep people engaged. But at the same time I'm not really a "content" guy. The core of the game is fun, adding in more stuff to repeat until you get bored doesn't really make the game better it just means you might be able to play it longer before getting tired of it, assuming you don't already drop the game before any major updates come out. Which is a harsh-sounding way to say it's okay for a game's hype to ease off after the honeymoon period. I worry people might turn on this game as just a fad. Similar to how people did after they got 300 hours of enjoyment out of Animal Crossing New Horizons.

Idk why I'm being weirdly defensive and trying to get ahead of the hate for a game who's flaws I could easily dig into myself. I just think the online game space is a little unhealthy for all parties involved these days and I'm struggling to articulate that in a non-rambly way at 1 in the morning. Maybe I'm just bitter because half of what I get into these days are dead on arrival online games who's biggest reason for being hate on is that they're perceived as dead for not reaching top of the charts. Also social media can't help but mock every flavor of the month game for a dropping playerbase no matter the context, as though people getting 50+ hours of enjoyment and moving on with their lives is somehow something to be ashamed of.

Anyway cool game, I hope this along with stuff like Lethal Company signal a shift in online gaming to be a little less miserable and more like the good old days back when Club Penguin existed. Will updates make this game consistently fun to follow? Maybe, maybe not, either way this slaps.