I’m horrified that this is the leading premiere hardcore PvE tactical shooter because its competition keeps fumbling the bag—this game SHOULD be the minimum standard, not the golden standard.

The game is just completely unfinished, in content and polish. Despite promises of a PvP mode and an SDK, the game spent two years in early access before “fully” releasing into a “1.0 state” with those things still not added. There’s also AI-generated art plastered all over the place so that’s really shitty! The suspect and civilian interactions are so fucking dull. Hell, there’s not even lip syncing for voice lines, and you’re gonna be hearing the same voice lines over and over again. The predecessor to this game had the gall to have civilians actively comment on their own situation. The suspects are especially depressing: they have all sorts of behaviors such as taking cover, hiding, taking hostages, etc. that you’re rarely going to see because the prime directive for these bots is to SHOOT YOU (very stupidly too, I must add), and you kill the people shooting you so you never get to see those interactions.

The game is just so vapid in its design. I literally played the entire campaign start to finish with the same loadout: an AP assault rifle, an HP sidearm, a taser, breaching shotgun, 3 flashbangs, ballistic mask, a heavy carrier, and ceramic plates covering all sides. If you use anything else, you’re just straight up gimping yourself because the downsides are very negligible in a game like this. The game’s levels never encourage you to switch things up at all. Wow, some guy has a gas mask in this mission? Guess what, that doesn’t fucking matter because you have a flashbang, and no suspect counters a flashbang reliably. Literally the only time something changes is when the mission takes place at night, when you either “need” to take flashlights or NVGs for convenience sake. I say “need” because the suspects don’t use flashlights or NVGs when they should be.

This game’s narrative is so fucking comical and takes itself wayyy too seriously. This isn’t SWAT 3 where you’re trying to prevent a global nuclear meltdown where cutting a wire before defusing the power causes the entire city of Los Angeles to disappear. Nah, you’re focused on real nitty gritty stuff, like drugs, terrorism, human trafficking, and CP. I cannot express just how much this game focuses on CP—there’s like four entire levels dedicated to it, and, like every other level in the game, say absolutely nothing about the subject matter. These levels are so exaggerated that there’s around 200-something bodies in a nightclub (unrelated but this level also happened to be release on the anniversary of the actual Pulse nightclub shooting!). I cannot take what you’re presenting seriously if this is how far you gotta tip the scales to prove your point.

Yet amidst this pile of horseshit, there’s a functioning “game” in here, something I cannot say for literally any other modern iteration of this genre. I cannot say that they’ll actually keep it functioning, given how badly they’ve managed the game in all stages of development, but it works. If you want a modern hardcore PvE tactical shooter that works, this is it, even if it’s a really badly designed and managed one. If you want this but don’t care the setting or realism, Helldivers 2 is more “tactical” than this.