OPEN BETA REVIEW. i have played act 1 twice at this point. shelved since i don't own it and can't drop 80 bucks on a game rn lol.

current state, game's glitchy as all fuck and is probably going to be like that on release unless the poor devs are crunched to death, which i sincerely hope they are not. we literally could not play the finale of act 1 because the hoards wouldn't spawn (both times lol).

DESPITE THAT, the game is extremely fun. like, EXTREMELY fun. i like the card system a lot and i think it's implementation is smart - it matters, but not THAT much. your build isn't really going to make or break you or anything, at least not on normal. it'll just give you a little bit of an edge along the way. same with the character picks. in my opinion anyway. i can see certain ones being broken on higher difficulties (like mom's instant revive), but we didn't play any higher than normal, so.

the gunplay feels REALLY good. like, REALLY GOOD. it's not often you find an fps game where shooting feels as good as in this, honestly. the guns have a real weight to them and can seemingly jam, which sounds annoying on paper but is sort of neat to me honestly and generally isn't a huge deal since you just have to reload sooner than usual. i like that there are rarities of guns and that you can customise them with addons. i like that A LOT.

melee is a little lacking, but i can see them paying some extra attention to that later and fixing it up a bit. i can sort of live without it, personally, since i rarely go with melee in shooters lol. so any flaws here don't bug me that much.

i enjoy the characters a lot, can't really complain that they're a little one-note because the ones in l4d were too lol. i do think the dialogue is entertaining enough although there ought to be either more or less of it because hearing the same cues repeatedly does get tiring.

the game appears to be pretty well optimised and despite what brain poisoned graphics chuds online will tell you it actually looks really good.

a minor complaint is the tone of this game is a bit all over the place? it hasn't quite found its footing, writing-wise. turtle rock seem a bit scared to get too serious or too goofy with it. my personal preference would be leaning into the goofiness, but either way would clean up the tonal messiness a bit.

i do also think this game is overpriced. i'm really not sure why they're charging full AAA price for this (USD$60, CAD$80). i wish it was 20 dollars cheaper, at the very least. i think a lot of people would take a lot less issue with it if the game was, like, base USD$40. 60 is a huge ask for a lot of people.

anyway, i'll be getting it at some point, barring a horrible crisis with the game or the devs lol.