SPICEBAG
2023
Across all Counter Strike games I've probably upwards of 2,000 hours. CS: Source was my introduction in 2008 and was the reason I made my Steam account. I wasted so much time playing Surf and Gun game specifically.
CSGO in 2012 was a strange experience that stripped away all the fun community aspects in favour of a console port. That then grew into an eSports focused version with little room for experimentation. This is where I played upwards of 600 hours, grinding out ranked matches all summer with my group of friends.
Now CS2 wipes the slate clean and gives us.. better graphics? Not much else. Lots of missing content, worse hitreg/netcode, questionable design choices and worse performance.
I feel like I have outgrown the gameplay loop of CS, that's a reflection on me, memorising spray patterns and playing the same 3 lane maps for hundreds of hours while Russians team kill me isn't fun when there are Ranked FPS games with much more depth and substance.
CS2 is a bad version of CS. No doubt in 3-5 years it will be in a better place but no one who has had their fun with CS will find anything novel here.
CSGO in 2012 was a strange experience that stripped away all the fun community aspects in favour of a console port. That then grew into an eSports focused version with little room for experimentation. This is where I played upwards of 600 hours, grinding out ranked matches all summer with my group of friends.
Now CS2 wipes the slate clean and gives us.. better graphics? Not much else. Lots of missing content, worse hitreg/netcode, questionable design choices and worse performance.
I feel like I have outgrown the gameplay loop of CS, that's a reflection on me, memorising spray patterns and playing the same 3 lane maps for hundreds of hours while Russians team kill me isn't fun when there are Ranked FPS games with much more depth and substance.
CS2 is a bad version of CS. No doubt in 3-5 years it will be in a better place but no one who has had their fun with CS will find anything novel here.
This is my original Steam review, updated in 2019.
DSII is the worst game in the Dark Souls trilogy.
Edit 2019: This game still sucks, especially so after sinking so many more hours into 1 and 3 since I posted this review. I can't honestly comprehend how people defend this game, nothing about it is fun, the entire ethos behind the design team must have been to ♥♥♥♥ up the formula as much as possible. Just skip it, it's not fun, it's not interesting, it's not worth your time or money.
It's not a bad game but it's got some really poor design choices that just make it such a chore to play compared to one and three. If you just finished playing one and you really want more Dark Souls skip right to three because two is incredibly disappointing if you're coming off the fun of the first game.
The first problem is input lag, the fact that mods are still coming out trying to fix it shows how bad it is. Regardless as to whether you're using controller or keyboard it's pretty common to experience input lag or even inputs not registering and it's incredibly infuriating to die because the one break you had in an enemy's pattern to heal is wasted since it took an extra second for your character to use their life gem. This isn't the worst problem in my opinion though, the introduction of adaptability is what seperates this game from 1 and 3 and is what makes it so unenjoyable. Adapability as an idea is awful, it makes most builds that aren't tanks or long ranged worthless unless you feel like grinding out a few hours just to get enough I-frames from adapability for it to not feel so unfair. My main build tends to be dex and strength but not an all out tank, I depend a lot on dodging which is fine in any other souls game but not 2. In other games I wouldn't go near sorcery at all but I found ranged attacks make this game way too easy, and why not exploit it considering that direct combat just isn't fun?
This game also lacks the feedback of the other souls games. I first noticed it when fighting the Dragonrider, I realised I had lost a massive chunk of HP and this kept happening but I couldn't figure out how or why. After paying more attention to my healthbar than the fight I realised his swiping attacks can just apparently ignore my dodges entirely (thanks adaptability) and do damage. That's fine I guess, except for the fact it took so much effort to realise this. There was no sound amongst the rest to tell me that was the moment I was getting hit, there was no animation, no jolt, nothing other than "oops your health is gone and here's a tiny splash of blood barely noticeable under the movements". Dying in this game is just plain frustrating. In the first game when you die it was mostly a learning experience, you realise where you went wrong or what can be done differently, in this game you just learn what ways the game tries to cheat you.
Increased difficulty also doesn't equal more fun. I've only played SotFS and I wish I could downgrade it, by all accounts the initial release is more tolerable and not so cheap. This isn't a game designed for fighting hordes or for balancing attacks from multiple distances constantly, DS1 knew this and made use of it by having compelling one on one fights or atleast manageable "hordes". DS2 just throws enemies at you constantly and expects you to be able to balance everything at once, which isn't fun, there's skill involved but luck plays just as big a role in surviving as you hope that fifth enemy that ran at you is just going to put his shield up rather than attack so you might possible have the opportunity to heal or roll away.
The health mechanic isn't exactly a great idea either, I don't hate it and I can appreciate they're trying to do something different but it doesn't encourage retries, it just makes tough areas even tougher which goes back to the point of more difficulty not being more fun and makes me want to stop playing when I have to choose between smashing my head against a wall or grinding for an hour for human effigies.
The atmosphere and world is probably the best part of this game, it doesn't flow as well as the first game but it's still as enjoyable.
Three takes what one done well and what few things two does right and improves upon them. Go play that instead.
DSII is the worst game in the Dark Souls trilogy.
Edit 2019: This game still sucks, especially so after sinking so many more hours into 1 and 3 since I posted this review. I can't honestly comprehend how people defend this game, nothing about it is fun, the entire ethos behind the design team must have been to ♥♥♥♥ up the formula as much as possible. Just skip it, it's not fun, it's not interesting, it's not worth your time or money.
It's not a bad game but it's got some really poor design choices that just make it such a chore to play compared to one and three. If you just finished playing one and you really want more Dark Souls skip right to three because two is incredibly disappointing if you're coming off the fun of the first game.
The first problem is input lag, the fact that mods are still coming out trying to fix it shows how bad it is. Regardless as to whether you're using controller or keyboard it's pretty common to experience input lag or even inputs not registering and it's incredibly infuriating to die because the one break you had in an enemy's pattern to heal is wasted since it took an extra second for your character to use their life gem. This isn't the worst problem in my opinion though, the introduction of adaptability is what seperates this game from 1 and 3 and is what makes it so unenjoyable. Adapability as an idea is awful, it makes most builds that aren't tanks or long ranged worthless unless you feel like grinding out a few hours just to get enough I-frames from adapability for it to not feel so unfair. My main build tends to be dex and strength but not an all out tank, I depend a lot on dodging which is fine in any other souls game but not 2. In other games I wouldn't go near sorcery at all but I found ranged attacks make this game way too easy, and why not exploit it considering that direct combat just isn't fun?
This game also lacks the feedback of the other souls games. I first noticed it when fighting the Dragonrider, I realised I had lost a massive chunk of HP and this kept happening but I couldn't figure out how or why. After paying more attention to my healthbar than the fight I realised his swiping attacks can just apparently ignore my dodges entirely (thanks adaptability) and do damage. That's fine I guess, except for the fact it took so much effort to realise this. There was no sound amongst the rest to tell me that was the moment I was getting hit, there was no animation, no jolt, nothing other than "oops your health is gone and here's a tiny splash of blood barely noticeable under the movements". Dying in this game is just plain frustrating. In the first game when you die it was mostly a learning experience, you realise where you went wrong or what can be done differently, in this game you just learn what ways the game tries to cheat you.
Increased difficulty also doesn't equal more fun. I've only played SotFS and I wish I could downgrade it, by all accounts the initial release is more tolerable and not so cheap. This isn't a game designed for fighting hordes or for balancing attacks from multiple distances constantly, DS1 knew this and made use of it by having compelling one on one fights or atleast manageable "hordes". DS2 just throws enemies at you constantly and expects you to be able to balance everything at once, which isn't fun, there's skill involved but luck plays just as big a role in surviving as you hope that fifth enemy that ran at you is just going to put his shield up rather than attack so you might possible have the opportunity to heal or roll away.
The health mechanic isn't exactly a great idea either, I don't hate it and I can appreciate they're trying to do something different but it doesn't encourage retries, it just makes tough areas even tougher which goes back to the point of more difficulty not being more fun and makes me want to stop playing when I have to choose between smashing my head against a wall or grinding for an hour for human effigies.
The atmosphere and world is probably the best part of this game, it doesn't flow as well as the first game but it's still as enjoyable.
Three takes what one done well and what few things two does right and improves upon them. Go play that instead.
2013
Rocksmith has been a really great tool for learning bass, but after almost 300 hours I find it more enjoyable as a means to relax. Most songs I can play to 99% but it's pure muscle memory, my brain sees things on screen and my fingers react accordingly, without RS I really can't remember how to play the songs, but I'm okay with that. It's a good foundation for if I ever want to put in the work to be good without it. It's very fun to just hop into it for an hour and bang out some good tunes and feel like you've played them yourself. I found the regular 6 string guitar very confusing on RS but bass guitar is wonderful for it.
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Initial review:
So far it's been a pretty good tool for learning bass.
The actual teaching elements of the game are kind of barebones, even the guitarcade stuff isn't great for learning but it's a fun distraction. Learn a song and Session mode are really where most of the experience comes from. My biggest problem when I first picked up guitar was mostly a lack of interest but RS14 provides me with a constant set of goals and a pretty decent library of tracks to keep pushing through with bass, unofficial listings make that playlist even bigger and more to my taste too. The ability to customise tones is fantastic too, it's not the same as investing in waa peddles, cabinets and heads, but it's as close to Dan Maine's set up as I'm going to get. The riff repeater and dynamic difficulty are key to what makes this such a good learning tool, being able to isolate a specific part of a song and slow it down and repeat it over and over without loading screens or fluff makes it easy to correct mistakes. I think most of my time in this game comes from 2/3 hours doing the same 20 - 30 seconds of a song over and over.
Only negatives are that the Realtone cable is actually pretty difficult to come by now and it's still really expensive, also DLC is quite expensive too. It's not bad when you consider you're getting a high quality, licensed song broken down into a format with dynamic difficulty but they always become dirt cheap during sales and it's kind of annoying to wait for that window. The tuner isn't always as precise as it could be and sometimes lower notes and especially chords don't register but it happens infrequent enough that it's forgiveable.
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Initial review:
So far it's been a pretty good tool for learning bass.
The actual teaching elements of the game are kind of barebones, even the guitarcade stuff isn't great for learning but it's a fun distraction. Learn a song and Session mode are really where most of the experience comes from. My biggest problem when I first picked up guitar was mostly a lack of interest but RS14 provides me with a constant set of goals and a pretty decent library of tracks to keep pushing through with bass, unofficial listings make that playlist even bigger and more to my taste too. The ability to customise tones is fantastic too, it's not the same as investing in waa peddles, cabinets and heads, but it's as close to Dan Maine's set up as I'm going to get. The riff repeater and dynamic difficulty are key to what makes this such a good learning tool, being able to isolate a specific part of a song and slow it down and repeat it over and over without loading screens or fluff makes it easy to correct mistakes. I think most of my time in this game comes from 2/3 hours doing the same 20 - 30 seconds of a song over and over.
Only negatives are that the Realtone cable is actually pretty difficult to come by now and it's still really expensive, also DLC is quite expensive too. It's not bad when you consider you're getting a high quality, licensed song broken down into a format with dynamic difficulty but they always become dirt cheap during sales and it's kind of annoying to wait for that window. The tuner isn't always as precise as it could be and sometimes lower notes and especially chords don't register but it happens infrequent enough that it's forgiveable.
2019
Boneworks is the best VR game I've played so far.
While I bought VR to play Half Life: Alyx, Boneworks has proven to be the game I enjoy the most. It has a barrier to entry however, you need to be accustomed to playing smooth locomotion games and you have to have a strong stomach, especially the first few times. When I got Boneworks first I played for 30 minutes and spent 2 hours feeling like I was going to throw up. After playing other smooth locomotion games and playing for a little bit here and there my motion sickness was gone. I've not experience sickness in any other VR game. It's unique to Boneworks because your player model is a physical item in the world, there's slight head-bobbing, small tilting and bumping effects on the camera, basically a bunch of micro-movements that makes your brain feel weird, more than most titles that have you as a disembodied head and arms.
If you can get into it though what you get is a very fun game, the combat is the best part. There is a huge variety of weapons to use, knives, axes, pistols, rifles, baseball bats, swords, etc. The guns almost rival H3VR for their weighty feel and action, especially the glock, I'd ignore everything else and just have two glocks on me at all times because it was so much fun to use. Melee weapons hit well and carry a good amount of weight, though the game could do with even a basic gore/dismemberment system. The biggest issue with combat is two handed weapons; I've yet to see a VR game do them right. Anything that requires two hands to hold feels too light and bouncy, the swings are inconsistent, aiming with a rifle can be a pain, ultimately I found one handing these weapons while not great was easier than using both hands. Another issue with combat is that there is not much variety in the enemies, they're great targets but that's it, nothing ever feels too challenging, I wish there were enemies that would try to flank you or hide behind cover, or enemies that had armour perhaps, it can get repetitive after a while.
The campaign is very heavy on platforming. At first I hated it, but as it went on I didn't mind it so much, what's disappointing is they hide ammo crates in hard to reach spots but I never felt like I had to try and get them, even collectables were never worth the effort, I'd rather just press on and get into the next fight. They need to make exploration more rewarding, especially for the amount of real world physical effort that goes into it sometimes.
The world is very bland in Boneworks too, I get the aesthetic they are going for and it makes sense for the games story but you could show me a screenshot from 5 or 6 different levels and I probably wouldn't be able to tell them apart. There is fun world building all over the levels but it just feels like a decoration you take note of and pass by. It never pulled me into the world.
The game still gets updates and a big one is due soon which hopefully adds more guns and levels. I may sound like I am pretty harsh on this game but it's because it's difficult to explain what's so good about it, out of all the VR games I've played it just feels the best and the most fun to run around in, there's nothing more to it than that. The issues I have with the game don't ruin it for me but I would like to see improvements. I would highly recommend it. Also Arena mode should be available from the get go, easily the most fun part of the game but it requires you to beat the story mode.
While I bought VR to play Half Life: Alyx, Boneworks has proven to be the game I enjoy the most. It has a barrier to entry however, you need to be accustomed to playing smooth locomotion games and you have to have a strong stomach, especially the first few times. When I got Boneworks first I played for 30 minutes and spent 2 hours feeling like I was going to throw up. After playing other smooth locomotion games and playing for a little bit here and there my motion sickness was gone. I've not experience sickness in any other VR game. It's unique to Boneworks because your player model is a physical item in the world, there's slight head-bobbing, small tilting and bumping effects on the camera, basically a bunch of micro-movements that makes your brain feel weird, more than most titles that have you as a disembodied head and arms.
If you can get into it though what you get is a very fun game, the combat is the best part. There is a huge variety of weapons to use, knives, axes, pistols, rifles, baseball bats, swords, etc. The guns almost rival H3VR for their weighty feel and action, especially the glock, I'd ignore everything else and just have two glocks on me at all times because it was so much fun to use. Melee weapons hit well and carry a good amount of weight, though the game could do with even a basic gore/dismemberment system. The biggest issue with combat is two handed weapons; I've yet to see a VR game do them right. Anything that requires two hands to hold feels too light and bouncy, the swings are inconsistent, aiming with a rifle can be a pain, ultimately I found one handing these weapons while not great was easier than using both hands. Another issue with combat is that there is not much variety in the enemies, they're great targets but that's it, nothing ever feels too challenging, I wish there were enemies that would try to flank you or hide behind cover, or enemies that had armour perhaps, it can get repetitive after a while.
The campaign is very heavy on platforming. At first I hated it, but as it went on I didn't mind it so much, what's disappointing is they hide ammo crates in hard to reach spots but I never felt like I had to try and get them, even collectables were never worth the effort, I'd rather just press on and get into the next fight. They need to make exploration more rewarding, especially for the amount of real world physical effort that goes into it sometimes.
The world is very bland in Boneworks too, I get the aesthetic they are going for and it makes sense for the games story but you could show me a screenshot from 5 or 6 different levels and I probably wouldn't be able to tell them apart. There is fun world building all over the levels but it just feels like a decoration you take note of and pass by. It never pulled me into the world.
The game still gets updates and a big one is due soon which hopefully adds more guns and levels. I may sound like I am pretty harsh on this game but it's because it's difficult to explain what's so good about it, out of all the VR games I've played it just feels the best and the most fun to run around in, there's nothing more to it than that. The issues I have with the game don't ruin it for me but I would like to see improvements. I would highly recommend it. Also Arena mode should be available from the get go, easily the most fun part of the game but it requires you to beat the story mode.
2018
I played Fallout 76 on Gamepass and still felt ripped off.
Leaving aside the numerous controversies surrounding this game and focusing only on the experience it offers, it's bad. Like, really bad.
Firstly, it's the same old Creation engine Bethesda refuses to dump, but now it's got the added complexity of multiplayer. That same old, plasticy, uncanny valley look that was outdated when Fallout 4 released is here again!
I could overlook that if the gameplay was fun, but it's not. What really turned me against this was the fact that you have to pay extra for a private server to play with friends, and you have to pay extra to enable friends to get unlocks and rewards from quest lines completed in your instance.
Utter contempt for players is the only way to describe it and after 2 hours I uninstalled. There is probably fun to be had somewhere but why market a multiplayer Fallout game then lock core MP features behind a paywall?
The recent wave of "oh wow they fixed this game it's fun now!" is entirely cope.
Leaving aside the numerous controversies surrounding this game and focusing only on the experience it offers, it's bad. Like, really bad.
Firstly, it's the same old Creation engine Bethesda refuses to dump, but now it's got the added complexity of multiplayer. That same old, plasticy, uncanny valley look that was outdated when Fallout 4 released is here again!
I could overlook that if the gameplay was fun, but it's not. What really turned me against this was the fact that you have to pay extra for a private server to play with friends, and you have to pay extra to enable friends to get unlocks and rewards from quest lines completed in your instance.
Utter contempt for players is the only way to describe it and after 2 hours I uninstalled. There is probably fun to be had somewhere but why market a multiplayer Fallout game then lock core MP features behind a paywall?
The recent wave of "oh wow they fixed this game it's fun now!" is entirely cope.
2019
Borderlands 3 makes me sad.
It is SO good. Gearbox nailed the combat in this one, killing enemies is satisfying, loot progression is just perfect, abilities and grenades are so fun, the core experience is nearly perfect.
What makes me sad is that every time I want to go back and put more time into it I am reminded of the writing. Borderlands 3 stands out in my head for having the absolute worst writing of any game I have ever played. The main antagonists are so incredibly cringe, they are meant to be (almost as a parody), but the game takes them so seriously that it fails in its irony and is just bad. They aren't the worst however, Lorelai gets that award. Lorelai is a character you have to endure for atleast an hour, and it's excruciating. If you've ever spent time around someone who thinks a coffee mug that says "don't talk to me until I've had my coffee" is a replacement for a personality then you've met Lorelai.
The writers also smoked crack and decided that Tannis for some reason is a fan favourite I guess because she has been around since the first game? She is bad. Her story arc is atrocious. I can't properly put to words how lame it is, it really feels like an 11 year old creating their Mary-Sue OC. I genuinely burst out laughing at the final cutscene when "That Girl Is on Fire" starts playing earnestly as what can only be described as a YA fiction GMOD scene happens.
All of this would be fine if it weren't for the fact you cannot skip any dialogue or cutscenes. If I could do that I would probably have upwards of several hundred hours in this game but the narrative experience is always (literally) slowing you down or blocking your progression for minutes at a time. I have very little gripes with the actual gameplay, except maybe exploration being boring and vehicles still being bad, but everything else ruins what would otherwise be a 5/5 game.
It is SO good. Gearbox nailed the combat in this one, killing enemies is satisfying, loot progression is just perfect, abilities and grenades are so fun, the core experience is nearly perfect.
What makes me sad is that every time I want to go back and put more time into it I am reminded of the writing. Borderlands 3 stands out in my head for having the absolute worst writing of any game I have ever played. The main antagonists are so incredibly cringe, they are meant to be (almost as a parody), but the game takes them so seriously that it fails in its irony and is just bad. They aren't the worst however, Lorelai gets that award. Lorelai is a character you have to endure for atleast an hour, and it's excruciating. If you've ever spent time around someone who thinks a coffee mug that says "don't talk to me until I've had my coffee" is a replacement for a personality then you've met Lorelai.
The writers also smoked crack and decided that Tannis for some reason is a fan favourite I guess because she has been around since the first game? She is bad. Her story arc is atrocious. I can't properly put to words how lame it is, it really feels like an 11 year old creating their Mary-Sue OC. I genuinely burst out laughing at the final cutscene when "That Girl Is on Fire" starts playing earnestly as what can only be described as a YA fiction GMOD scene happens.
All of this would be fine if it weren't for the fact you cannot skip any dialogue or cutscenes. If I could do that I would probably have upwards of several hundred hours in this game but the narrative experience is always (literally) slowing you down or blocking your progression for minutes at a time. I have very little gripes with the actual gameplay, except maybe exploration being boring and vehicles still being bad, but everything else ruins what would otherwise be a 5/5 game.
2021
if you want the campaign get it on gamepass and save yourself the money.
Most of my MP experience with Halo was splitscreen Halo 3 on the 360 and that was all. I don't really enjoy the slow TTK in Halo, the floaty low-gravity movement or arena-shooter map design but Infinite has really surprised me. The guns feel great to use, combat feels very fluid and although I'm still no fan of the slow TTK I enjoy feeling very big, wrinkly brained when I outsmart someone using a combination of equipment, nades and weapon swapping.
Tactical slayer is by far my favourite mode as it removes shields and lowers the TTK to a single burst of the combat rifle which feels more natural to play as someone who has put more time into games like CS:S/GO, CoD and Siege.
A complaint I have is the lack of variety. They are drip-feeding in new content but 343 are struggling with their battle pass and monetization when they should be focused on fixing big team battle which has currently been broken for nearly a week, adding new maps, improving desync/lag issues and generally building the foundation.
I find the maps in particular to be very weak, they aren't in any way memorable in a way that Sandtrap was in Halo 3, they don't feel particularly fun like Valhalla was, and they don't flow as well as they should for a game that really wants you to make use of its movement.
If I had paid €60 for this game I'd probably be bitterly disappointed at the lack of forge, custom servers, coop but given that I can get the campaign for €1 on gamepass and the MP is F2P I'd say it's a good deal.
The main reason I'm giving it a negative review is the performance - I'm running a Ryzen 1600 with a 1660 super, I can handle MP at 60fps, 1440p on low/medium settings. Campaign is very hit or miss. However hardly anyone else in my friend group is willing to play due to the poor performance even on systems that should be more than capable of running it. In one instance after the game crashed somehow the display drivers on the PC were either uninstalled or flatout broken. Most of my friends report hard crashes or PC reboots in every session. If they fixed this I'd say absolutely give it a go.
I can imagine this game will be something special in a year's time so maybe hold off until then.
Edit: April 2022
Yeah they still haven't fixed the performance, they added one new gamemode (then took it away), forge is still broken, custom matches don't work, the game is just dead in terms of actual updates. Can't recommend it at all.
Most of my MP experience with Halo was splitscreen Halo 3 on the 360 and that was all. I don't really enjoy the slow TTK in Halo, the floaty low-gravity movement or arena-shooter map design but Infinite has really surprised me. The guns feel great to use, combat feels very fluid and although I'm still no fan of the slow TTK I enjoy feeling very big, wrinkly brained when I outsmart someone using a combination of equipment, nades and weapon swapping.
Tactical slayer is by far my favourite mode as it removes shields and lowers the TTK to a single burst of the combat rifle which feels more natural to play as someone who has put more time into games like CS:S/GO, CoD and Siege.
A complaint I have is the lack of variety. They are drip-feeding in new content but 343 are struggling with their battle pass and monetization when they should be focused on fixing big team battle which has currently been broken for nearly a week, adding new maps, improving desync/lag issues and generally building the foundation.
I find the maps in particular to be very weak, they aren't in any way memorable in a way that Sandtrap was in Halo 3, they don't feel particularly fun like Valhalla was, and they don't flow as well as they should for a game that really wants you to make use of its movement.
If I had paid €60 for this game I'd probably be bitterly disappointed at the lack of forge, custom servers, coop but given that I can get the campaign for €1 on gamepass and the MP is F2P I'd say it's a good deal.
The main reason I'm giving it a negative review is the performance - I'm running a Ryzen 1600 with a 1660 super, I can handle MP at 60fps, 1440p on low/medium settings. Campaign is very hit or miss. However hardly anyone else in my friend group is willing to play due to the poor performance even on systems that should be more than capable of running it. In one instance after the game crashed somehow the display drivers on the PC were either uninstalled or flatout broken. Most of my friends report hard crashes or PC reboots in every session. If they fixed this I'd say absolutely give it a go.
I can imagine this game will be something special in a year's time so maybe hold off until then.
Edit: April 2022
Yeah they still haven't fixed the performance, they added one new gamemode (then took it away), forge is still broken, custom matches don't work, the game is just dead in terms of actual updates. Can't recommend it at all.
Sandstorm is one of the best multiplayer shooters available right now, PvP and Coop are both very fun. There's enough weapon customisation here to feel interesting without it feeling bloated. It's just solid right to its core.
I do have complaints though, number one being the map selection. In 9/10 games people in the lobby will always vote "Random" for whatever reason and without fail it will always be the worst map in the rotation followed by people complaining in the chat. It's not the devs fault but with how often this happens I wish they would remove the random option and force people to pick one of the six maps you can vote for at the end of a match.
What is the fault of the devs would be some of the maps not being fun - Bab is the worst offender in this case, the map feels too large and equally too small, it lacks the flow better maps like Tideway or Power Plant have.
I'll also use this review as my opportunity to cement my opinion that Ministry is one of the worst maps in the entire game and I have no idea why they chose for it to be ported over or why the community loves it. Then again the community still thinks shouting "yalla yalla" at the start and end of each match is the peak of comedy.
In short, amazing game, lame community, play with music on in the background.
I do have complaints though, number one being the map selection. In 9/10 games people in the lobby will always vote "Random" for whatever reason and without fail it will always be the worst map in the rotation followed by people complaining in the chat. It's not the devs fault but with how often this happens I wish they would remove the random option and force people to pick one of the six maps you can vote for at the end of a match.
What is the fault of the devs would be some of the maps not being fun - Bab is the worst offender in this case, the map feels too large and equally too small, it lacks the flow better maps like Tideway or Power Plant have.
I'll also use this review as my opportunity to cement my opinion that Ministry is one of the worst maps in the entire game and I have no idea why they chose for it to be ported over or why the community loves it. Then again the community still thinks shouting "yalla yalla" at the start and end of each match is the peak of comedy.
In short, amazing game, lame community, play with music on in the background.
2017
This is my review from 2022 when the Devs pushed an update for the five year anniversary.
I don't know why the devs are making such a big deal about this game's 5th anniversary, they launched it and basically abandoned it straight away. I actually preferred it to Insurgency in some cases, the guns feel more fun, the maps for PVE are really well made, the gore and sound is better than Insurgency's too. I've less than 30 hours in this because it barely lasted and even checking the player count now with NWI's song and dance about its anniversary the peak player count in the last 24 hours was 309. It isn't that no one wanted to play this, it's that NWI let it die. Maybe it was for the best given how fun Sandstorm is, they obviously put their effort into that but don't waste your money on this, at this point they should make it F2P.
I don't know why the devs are making such a big deal about this game's 5th anniversary, they launched it and basically abandoned it straight away. I actually preferred it to Insurgency in some cases, the guns feel more fun, the maps for PVE are really well made, the gore and sound is better than Insurgency's too. I've less than 30 hours in this because it barely lasted and even checking the player count now with NWI's song and dance about its anniversary the peak player count in the last 24 hours was 309. It isn't that no one wanted to play this, it's that NWI let it die. Maybe it was for the best given how fun Sandstorm is, they obviously put their effort into that but don't waste your money on this, at this point they should make it F2P.
2019
I've never closed the game thinking "wow I had lots of fun" but everytime I close it I immediately think "I can't wait to play this again".
The core loop is really samey and simple, stealth around, avoid noise traps, find clues, kill the boss, extract. The tension comes from knowing other players are doing the same thing and are trying to kill you. You can define your own win-state which makes the game as high-risk as you want it to be; you can try kill one or both bounties then extract, try wipe the server, try grind clues and grunt kills, or specifically hunt players and extract, all of which feels rewarding when you have permadeath characters.
I'm in love with the setting above all else, it's southern gothic in every aspect and while it does have paid cosmetics none of them break from the theme. There are some interesting weapons here too that wouldn't make sense in many other games, most of them have very slow fire rates, woeful iron sights, heavy sway and a steep learning curve. It's not easy to get kills in this game but when you do it feels hard-earned. Sometimes you'll get picked off from 70m away by a sniper without ever knowing where they were, other times you'll get into a 10 minute standoff that has more tension than anything I felt in my last 500 hours of Siege before I stopped playing.
I'd definitely recommend it so far and I hope to put more hours into it. The only complaint I have is that the game explains nothing and the tutorial is terrible, you'll need to read the wiki and check out beginners' guides online to come into this on level-footing. Only 60% of the playerbase have the first achievement and I can entirely understand why 40% of people just gave up if they relied on the tutorials only.
Having played quite a bit more here are some things that I don't like:
- This game is at it's most chaotic and fun in a trio, duos are still fun and solo is too but the best experience is a trio for sure.
- Trials are absolutely awful, they are incredibly hard which would be fine if it didn't feel like much of the difficult came down to RNG. The sniping trials are the most fun but even then they feel like pulling teeth, the speedrun and especially the wave trials are just plain mind-numbing, I hate that they lock worthwhile unlocks behind this grind.
- Event grind, I've so far only experienced the Traitor's Moon event and wow the grind is significant, there is a clear effort to coax you into spending money which is fine given it's an almost 5 year old game and they need support but it feels heavy-handed.
- General clunkiness; I've heard a lot of people say this game is janky and honestly I don't agree, for the most part it is well put together, animations work as intended however sometimes guns will fire a second shot instantly when you don't mean to, it's as if they queue your attempts to fire and they execute it straight away. That would be fine if it did not take so long between shots. Fall damage kicks in even if you land on a surface mid-way through the fall then fall again from that which is just broken. Sometimes reloading doesn't work and you need to spam the key. Some prompts don't worry, twice I've come across fences that required me to stand in very specific spots to be able to jump them. All of these with the exception of the shooting issue haven't been a common occurance however.
The core loop is really samey and simple, stealth around, avoid noise traps, find clues, kill the boss, extract. The tension comes from knowing other players are doing the same thing and are trying to kill you. You can define your own win-state which makes the game as high-risk as you want it to be; you can try kill one or both bounties then extract, try wipe the server, try grind clues and grunt kills, or specifically hunt players and extract, all of which feels rewarding when you have permadeath characters.
I'm in love with the setting above all else, it's southern gothic in every aspect and while it does have paid cosmetics none of them break from the theme. There are some interesting weapons here too that wouldn't make sense in many other games, most of them have very slow fire rates, woeful iron sights, heavy sway and a steep learning curve. It's not easy to get kills in this game but when you do it feels hard-earned. Sometimes you'll get picked off from 70m away by a sniper without ever knowing where they were, other times you'll get into a 10 minute standoff that has more tension than anything I felt in my last 500 hours of Siege before I stopped playing.
I'd definitely recommend it so far and I hope to put more hours into it. The only complaint I have is that the game explains nothing and the tutorial is terrible, you'll need to read the wiki and check out beginners' guides online to come into this on level-footing. Only 60% of the playerbase have the first achievement and I can entirely understand why 40% of people just gave up if they relied on the tutorials only.
Having played quite a bit more here are some things that I don't like:
- This game is at it's most chaotic and fun in a trio, duos are still fun and solo is too but the best experience is a trio for sure.
- Trials are absolutely awful, they are incredibly hard which would be fine if it didn't feel like much of the difficult came down to RNG. The sniping trials are the most fun but even then they feel like pulling teeth, the speedrun and especially the wave trials are just plain mind-numbing, I hate that they lock worthwhile unlocks behind this grind.
- Event grind, I've so far only experienced the Traitor's Moon event and wow the grind is significant, there is a clear effort to coax you into spending money which is fine given it's an almost 5 year old game and they need support but it feels heavy-handed.
- General clunkiness; I've heard a lot of people say this game is janky and honestly I don't agree, for the most part it is well put together, animations work as intended however sometimes guns will fire a second shot instantly when you don't mean to, it's as if they queue your attempts to fire and they execute it straight away. That would be fine if it did not take so long between shots. Fall damage kicks in even if you land on a surface mid-way through the fall then fall again from that which is just broken. Sometimes reloading doesn't work and you need to spam the key. Some prompts don't worry, twice I've come across fences that required me to stand in very specific spots to be able to jump them. All of these with the exception of the shooting issue haven't been a common occurance however.
2008
bethesda writing lore for obscure characters easily missed on a playthrough: :)
bethesda writing competent lore that doesn't retcon anything or isn't full of plot holes: :(
it's a bad game held together by spit and glue that was very dated even for 2008 however the lore it's working with (thanks interplay) provides good enough reason to deal with all the bad elements of the game, given it's been 15 years you probably know whether or not you like this.
the best way to play is via NV with A Tale of Two Wastelands mod. A recent update means that it no longer needs GFWL which is great but it makes it very hard to mod now.
If you want to enjoy this game to the max go download the save file that skips the prologue and immediately disregard the main plot, just go wandering.
bethesda writing competent lore that doesn't retcon anything or isn't full of plot holes: :(
it's a bad game held together by spit and glue that was very dated even for 2008 however the lore it's working with (thanks interplay) provides good enough reason to deal with all the bad elements of the game, given it's been 15 years you probably know whether or not you like this.
the best way to play is via NV with A Tale of Two Wastelands mod. A recent update means that it no longer needs GFWL which is great but it makes it very hard to mod now.
If you want to enjoy this game to the max go download the save file that skips the prologue and immediately disregard the main plot, just go wandering.
As of June 2024 I have almost 500 hours in MWII, below is my Steam review which includes edits from when I first began playing. TLDR, single player is bad, MP is fun when SBMM isn't ruining it. Ground War offers a better large scale experience than Battlefield has done in years.
Edit: 14/12/23 I have played a lot of MWIII through free weekends and early betas (for a preorder I cancelled). I feel I am going insane, the community loves MWIII compared to MWII but it's objectively a god-awful game. It's like they took the MWII code and just said "let's alter enough to be slightly worse". Everything about it is awful, the only good parts are the maps and they are from 2009. The TTK is horrid. The weapons are a clear step down. The UI is atrocious, somehow worse than MWII. It's all so terrible.
Edit: With the announcement of MWIII, I think it's fair to say I enjoyed this iteration of CoD a lot. Way more than 2019. It has issues, and if you listen to the vocal minority of the community you'd swear this game is somehow worse than Black Ops 4, it's not, it does a lot of things really well and the core gameplay is absolutely fantastic. IW has handled updates and content poorly, the perk system isn't good, the focus on Warzone is annoying. With all that said, it's by far and away my most played game of 2023 and for good reason. TL:DR is that single player is bad but MP is a tonne of fun if you can look last monetisation. Ground War here is a better version of what Battlefield would offer. Core MP is great fun when SBMM isn't ruining it.
edit: after 120 hours I can firmly say this is one of my favourite iterations of COD. Ignore the community, it's so large and never knows what it wants. MW2 is fun when everything is working as it should and so far that's more often than MW19. It's missing lots of content and IW are recycling old content/witholding content that is ready just for seasonal updates but apart from that I love this game. Here is hoping updates don't ruin it. Warzone/DMZ is getting all of the attention as is to be expected but MP remains working.
Warzone will forever make me feel like an old man who just doesn't get it. All of CoD's mechanics work in a fast paced MP with quick respawns but I don't see the fun in:
- Waiting 3 mins to get into a game
- 30 seconds to load in and land
- either die in 10 seconds or spend the next 30 mins hiding
- die to a sniper 100m away
- wait for 3 mins in the gulag for a match
- lose in a boring pistol only gun fight or respawn and do it all again
I don't see any fun to be had in this, it genuinely baffles me how people play this more than MP.
Guess I've been lucky to have no crashes in MP or SP, Warzone can crash occasionally but I never play it so it doesn't bother me.
Preseason opinion is that it's fun, there's a lot of good changes that have been made including the removal of bunnyhopping and slide cancelling. I also firmly believe that removing the red dots from the map when firing should have been in place as originally planned in MW19 and I am very glad it's here to stay in this iteration. The maps are solid (even THAT one, it's fun even if it's unbalanced), the equipment is more varied than MW19 with shock sticks and drill charges being amazing additions. Pistols are more powerful than ever and that's amazing, in MW19 you just took overkill and ignored pistols but here they feel viable even outside of hardcore.
Speaking of, there is no hardcore mode and there won't be until November 16. There's no gun game, no infection, no 24/7 map playlist, the weapon progression is completely whack, the UI is trash and I don't know who decided that perks should be wrapped up in packages and made needlessly annoying to set up. A lot of content is missing and a lot of changes have felt unnessecary. The starting guns are also garbage, even the M4 which tends to always be OP. This is made worse by the fact that in its current state there are no worthwhile attachments, literally none, the meta is to keep ADS up with 0 attachments, so you're gonna be grinding for a while before you get anything fun.
As always SBMM ruins the fun you can have with this game - I recommend swapping playlists, going between domination/TDM/invasion/one life modes, etc. to try and break it up. If you have one or two games where you do too well expect to hate the game for the next 5/6 matches.
The campaign is a mixed bag but a nice twist on things from the 2009 game, the missions are shorter than expected but full of the set pieces you expect. It's a stupid, action, military movie where you click heads essentially and I like that, you turn your brain off for 5/6 hours. I will say however this campaign has a lot of missions that suck even for CoD, the convoy mission, "alone" and the tank boss fight are all really boring and really badly done.
Performance-wise this is much better than MW19, that game ran fine for me at the start but after the first update I got constant CTDs, hard crashes, random disconnects, etc. MW2 has been flawless for me on a 1660 Super/Ryzen 1600 @ 1440p, high settings, solid 60fps+ at all times with only one crash so far.
This game isn't worth 70 quid if you're on the fence and even if you love COD this game is not worth 70 quid, it's an update to MW19 but if you're like me and feel like there's very little that competes with the MW grind, frustrations and all, you have probably already bought this. If you never played MW19 then it would be good to get at a discount.
No doubt in 6 months time the game will be unrecognizable from now, I can only hope the separation of Warzone and MW2 remains in place because IW abandoned MW19 and left it in a horrible state.
Edit: 14/12/23 I have played a lot of MWIII through free weekends and early betas (for a preorder I cancelled). I feel I am going insane, the community loves MWIII compared to MWII but it's objectively a god-awful game. It's like they took the MWII code and just said "let's alter enough to be slightly worse". Everything about it is awful, the only good parts are the maps and they are from 2009. The TTK is horrid. The weapons are a clear step down. The UI is atrocious, somehow worse than MWII. It's all so terrible.
Edit: With the announcement of MWIII, I think it's fair to say I enjoyed this iteration of CoD a lot. Way more than 2019. It has issues, and if you listen to the vocal minority of the community you'd swear this game is somehow worse than Black Ops 4, it's not, it does a lot of things really well and the core gameplay is absolutely fantastic. IW has handled updates and content poorly, the perk system isn't good, the focus on Warzone is annoying. With all that said, it's by far and away my most played game of 2023 and for good reason. TL:DR is that single player is bad but MP is a tonne of fun if you can look last monetisation. Ground War here is a better version of what Battlefield would offer. Core MP is great fun when SBMM isn't ruining it.
edit: after 120 hours I can firmly say this is one of my favourite iterations of COD. Ignore the community, it's so large and never knows what it wants. MW2 is fun when everything is working as it should and so far that's more often than MW19. It's missing lots of content and IW are recycling old content/witholding content that is ready just for seasonal updates but apart from that I love this game. Here is hoping updates don't ruin it. Warzone/DMZ is getting all of the attention as is to be expected but MP remains working.
Warzone will forever make me feel like an old man who just doesn't get it. All of CoD's mechanics work in a fast paced MP with quick respawns but I don't see the fun in:
- Waiting 3 mins to get into a game
- 30 seconds to load in and land
- either die in 10 seconds or spend the next 30 mins hiding
- die to a sniper 100m away
- wait for 3 mins in the gulag for a match
- lose in a boring pistol only gun fight or respawn and do it all again
I don't see any fun to be had in this, it genuinely baffles me how people play this more than MP.
Guess I've been lucky to have no crashes in MP or SP, Warzone can crash occasionally but I never play it so it doesn't bother me.
Preseason opinion is that it's fun, there's a lot of good changes that have been made including the removal of bunnyhopping and slide cancelling. I also firmly believe that removing the red dots from the map when firing should have been in place as originally planned in MW19 and I am very glad it's here to stay in this iteration. The maps are solid (even THAT one, it's fun even if it's unbalanced), the equipment is more varied than MW19 with shock sticks and drill charges being amazing additions. Pistols are more powerful than ever and that's amazing, in MW19 you just took overkill and ignored pistols but here they feel viable even outside of hardcore.
Speaking of, there is no hardcore mode and there won't be until November 16. There's no gun game, no infection, no 24/7 map playlist, the weapon progression is completely whack, the UI is trash and I don't know who decided that perks should be wrapped up in packages and made needlessly annoying to set up. A lot of content is missing and a lot of changes have felt unnessecary. The starting guns are also garbage, even the M4 which tends to always be OP. This is made worse by the fact that in its current state there are no worthwhile attachments, literally none, the meta is to keep ADS up with 0 attachments, so you're gonna be grinding for a while before you get anything fun.
As always SBMM ruins the fun you can have with this game - I recommend swapping playlists, going between domination/TDM/invasion/one life modes, etc. to try and break it up. If you have one or two games where you do too well expect to hate the game for the next 5/6 matches.
The campaign is a mixed bag but a nice twist on things from the 2009 game, the missions are shorter than expected but full of the set pieces you expect. It's a stupid, action, military movie where you click heads essentially and I like that, you turn your brain off for 5/6 hours. I will say however this campaign has a lot of missions that suck even for CoD, the convoy mission, "alone" and the tank boss fight are all really boring and really badly done.
Performance-wise this is much better than MW19, that game ran fine for me at the start but after the first update I got constant CTDs, hard crashes, random disconnects, etc. MW2 has been flawless for me on a 1660 Super/Ryzen 1600 @ 1440p, high settings, solid 60fps+ at all times with only one crash so far.
This game isn't worth 70 quid if you're on the fence and even if you love COD this game is not worth 70 quid, it's an update to MW19 but if you're like me and feel like there's very little that competes with the MW grind, frustrations and all, you have probably already bought this. If you never played MW19 then it would be good to get at a discount.
No doubt in 6 months time the game will be unrecognizable from now, I can only hope the separation of Warzone and MW2 remains in place because IW abandoned MW19 and left it in a horrible state.
2020
I am going to go against the grain here and say that this game has one of the most reasonable price models I've seen in a very long time. I know it's easy to have a knee-jerk reaction to a game that was once a buy-to-own product switching to a subscription/F2P model but hear me out.
The game is fantastic, it hits all the notes you want in a Trackmania game, if you've never played TM before then try it, if you have played TM before you'll probably enjoy it. My only real gripe with the game is I wish loading times were shorter, server queues were shorter and there was less downtime. In older games it felt like you could hop in and out of races much faster.
The biggest problem Nadeo had with TM was that they gave the community the tools to make an infinite amount of content, why would you ever buy any other TM related content when the community maps can keep the game alive indefinitely? This led to a FIFA/Cod style release plan of new game ever year or two to keep revenue up and unfortunately, also split the playerbase. Remember playing Canyon or Lagoon? Yeah, me neither, barely.
Instead, here you have a F2P offering that is very generous in what it gives to free players, thousands of maps for free, access to thousands more community maps, Royal mode, Ranked, the map editor, etc. €10/year is enough to give you 100% of the content you need to enjoy the game, anything over that is extra support for the Devs basically. What I really appreciate is that it doesn't use the same microtransaction techniques that full €70 games use, no "buy this skin now or it's gone", no sunsetting of content, no bundles, no map packs, etc.
Instead, Nadeo curate entire campaigns every 3 months, pick community made maps for daily tracks and championships and seem to genuinely engage with the community they have fostered. Best of all they don't split the community across several games anymore.
For the price of Trackmania Stadium, Canyon and Lagoon, you get 3 years of access to an insane amount of content with ongoing support for the next several years. For the price of nothing, you still get access to most of it. Unfortunately the studio still needs to make money to keep the game alive but this is the best possible way they could have done it. Oh, and if you stop paying for the subscription you get the keep all the content you received up to that point, which sounds like it's not a big deal but think how many devs would be happy to take it away from you if given the chance
The game is fantastic, it hits all the notes you want in a Trackmania game, if you've never played TM before then try it, if you have played TM before you'll probably enjoy it. My only real gripe with the game is I wish loading times were shorter, server queues were shorter and there was less downtime. In older games it felt like you could hop in and out of races much faster.
The biggest problem Nadeo had with TM was that they gave the community the tools to make an infinite amount of content, why would you ever buy any other TM related content when the community maps can keep the game alive indefinitely? This led to a FIFA/Cod style release plan of new game ever year or two to keep revenue up and unfortunately, also split the playerbase. Remember playing Canyon or Lagoon? Yeah, me neither, barely.
Instead, here you have a F2P offering that is very generous in what it gives to free players, thousands of maps for free, access to thousands more community maps, Royal mode, Ranked, the map editor, etc. €10/year is enough to give you 100% of the content you need to enjoy the game, anything over that is extra support for the Devs basically. What I really appreciate is that it doesn't use the same microtransaction techniques that full €70 games use, no "buy this skin now or it's gone", no sunsetting of content, no bundles, no map packs, etc.
Instead, Nadeo curate entire campaigns every 3 months, pick community made maps for daily tracks and championships and seem to genuinely engage with the community they have fostered. Best of all they don't split the community across several games anymore.
For the price of Trackmania Stadium, Canyon and Lagoon, you get 3 years of access to an insane amount of content with ongoing support for the next several years. For the price of nothing, you still get access to most of it. Unfortunately the studio still needs to make money to keep the game alive but this is the best possible way they could have done it. Oh, and if you stop paying for the subscription you get the keep all the content you received up to that point, which sounds like it's not a big deal but think how many devs would be happy to take it away from you if given the chance
2020
I'm definitely in the minority but the Doom remakes just never clicked with me the way they did with others. They have everything I should like in a video game but both 2016 and Eternal failed to hold my interest for more than 5 or 6 hours.
The game looks fantastic, the gore is great, the soundtrack is fantastic. I love the idea of all of it, but in execution it feels like a very outdated gameplay loop, and I get that's kind of the point to some extent.
People love to praise this game as super fast and reactive, but most enemies that don't charge right at you barely move from within a 2 meter radius. The gameplay comes to a grinding halt every time you need ammo as you need to perform a specific kill animation that locks you in place for 2-5 seconds. That wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact you need to do it very frequently. The animations are well done but you get sick of looking at them very fast.
The narrative here is also extremely off-putting. Drop me in, tell me there are demons on Earth and let me go hog-wild. I don't care about this prophecy stuff, or there being specific antagonists, or a fight between good and evil. All of it just makes me roll my eyes when I think of how hard this game seems to be taking itself seriously.
It's not at all a bad game, it's got praise for a reason, I just personally don't get it.
The game looks fantastic, the gore is great, the soundtrack is fantastic. I love the idea of all of it, but in execution it feels like a very outdated gameplay loop, and I get that's kind of the point to some extent.
People love to praise this game as super fast and reactive, but most enemies that don't charge right at you barely move from within a 2 meter radius. The gameplay comes to a grinding halt every time you need ammo as you need to perform a specific kill animation that locks you in place for 2-5 seconds. That wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact you need to do it very frequently. The animations are well done but you get sick of looking at them very fast.
The narrative here is also extremely off-putting. Drop me in, tell me there are demons on Earth and let me go hog-wild. I don't care about this prophecy stuff, or there being specific antagonists, or a fight between good and evil. All of it just makes me roll my eyes when I think of how hard this game seems to be taking itself seriously.
It's not at all a bad game, it's got praise for a reason, I just personally don't get it.
2021
I'm not a Battlefield fan, I have played several hundred hours across numerous entries and I've had fun with the series, though I've always found it inferior to other multiplayer FPS games. So, when 2042 dropped and was devastatingly terrible I enjoyed watching it being torn apart for the soulless game it was, a rushed project built from the remnants of a failed battle royale.
Years later after many patches I picked it up for €10 and I have to say there is fun to be found here. In a vacuum, this is a competent, large scale, MP shooter, with some OK ideas. If you forget it's a Battlefield game there isn't much wrong with it really, apart from the tiny map pool and some jank.
However, as soon as you compare it to BF1 or BF4 the flaws are immediate. This game has basically no destruction. The weapons are all incredibly inconsistent (LMGs do everything SMGs and Rifles do but better and with more ammo), the hero abilities range from utterly useless to "this should have been a weapon for all classes".
The biggest wasted potential here is Battlefield Portal. This could have been amazing. In my opinion, if they released Portal for €20/€30 as its own standalone game it would have done better than 2042. Nowadays though, it's dead, it's just used for XP farming and nothing else, good luck finding an actual playable server.
Grab it cheap, you'll get 30/40 hours of mindless fun out of it.
Years later after many patches I picked it up for €10 and I have to say there is fun to be found here. In a vacuum, this is a competent, large scale, MP shooter, with some OK ideas. If you forget it's a Battlefield game there isn't much wrong with it really, apart from the tiny map pool and some jank.
However, as soon as you compare it to BF1 or BF4 the flaws are immediate. This game has basically no destruction. The weapons are all incredibly inconsistent (LMGs do everything SMGs and Rifles do but better and with more ammo), the hero abilities range from utterly useless to "this should have been a weapon for all classes".
The biggest wasted potential here is Battlefield Portal. This could have been amazing. In my opinion, if they released Portal for €20/€30 as its own standalone game it would have done better than 2042. Nowadays though, it's dead, it's just used for XP farming and nothing else, good luck finding an actual playable server.
Grab it cheap, you'll get 30/40 hours of mindless fun out of it.