Reverse Collapse was a game I was really looking forward to for a long time, now that it’s finally here I’m happy to say I like it a lot. But no game is absolutely perfect, and RC does have some flaws, which I’ll start with.

Stealth as a mechanic is interesting, the game allows you to use guerrilla hit and run tactics on some maps, or just stealth maps flat out. I really appreciate the variety but stealth in a turn based strategy game built off of AP usage is a little annoying. There will be turns where you can probably move 1 or 2 tiles per turn because being in stealth mode consumes an extra AP, and pretty much every tile that isn’t road just eats away at more AP too. Flat out stealth maps are very trial and error too, working more like puzzles with a single solution. Thankfully a lot of stealth maps can be done loud as well, but they are occasionally mandatory and I always find them a slog.

Secondly I find the balancing to be kind of wacky. Normal difficulty is unbelievably easy compared to challenging. This is because there is optional EXP grinding, but also because it’s just easier to S rank maps so your units will just naturally be higher levels over time. While challenging lacks any EXP maps AND you lose out on parts and EXP if you don’t S rank maps. You eventually just get to a point where your units and items are not strong enough to genuinely fight anymore, and I was forced to bring the difficulty down just to continue. Let it be known I nearly got up to chapter 3 on challenge but the last map was just too much. This balancing issue really comes out during chapter 4, where all my units are just too strong to really have any trouble. The player just slowly gets more and more options to the point where not a lot of problems can’t be fixed in one turn.

This game has a lot of items and they are not made equal, this isn’t too much of a problem on its own, but I do find it a little silly how one note a lot of them are. For example there is a sound emitter you can build to attract zombie enemies, this cannot be used against anything else. Same with the shockwave grenades that move zombies around. I’m glad that these items can be disassembled for parts, but I do think a lot more items could find uses if they thought things out more.

Lastly, I do wish the game had a bit more character interactions. We only really see Mendo and Jefuty interact during those cooking cutscenes. This is fine for the most part and I really like these, but I just wanted a bit more. Jefuty makes comments about how she grew attached to Jevon, Atena and Carl too, but we barely see her do anything but talk business with them. I guess it’s just supposed to be implied that she’s been fighting alongside them forever so she naturally began liking them more.

With those small gripes out of the way, I can get into praising what I really like about the game.

For starters, I love the general gameplay loop. Unlike something like Fire Emblem your cast of units is usually small. You’ll typically only have 3 units at most, with the most you can possible have being 6 at one point. This creates really desperate situations where you are always unbelievably outnumbered and on the brink of being overwhelmed. You need to be clever and a little lucky with placement and item usage. Items are your equalizer, from grenades to automatic turrets, to tear gas, they all do horrible things to the enemies to even the playing field. It’s really satisfying to set traps for the AI for a turn, and then watch like a psychopath with a massive smile as they trip every trap and get themselves killed. Enemy AI is pretty relentless and it seems like every map has constant reinforcements. You’ll wipe out a massive wave, and then two more will spawn. Units themselves are fairly unique and have a massive skill tree, with passives and actives to rely on. I think a couple skills are absolute dogshit, but other ones are way too good to pass up, and turn characters into monsters. Every unit falls into a role.

Mendo: Jack of all trades with strong survivability.
Jeffry: Glass cannon with massive range.
Arena: Agro tank and item spammer.
Jevon: I don’t actually know what to put here but he’s basically the most broken unit ever. Like absolutely unreal it’s so clear why they don’t let you use him too much.
Carl: Supporter and debuffer.
Lige: Melee burst and dodge tank.

These units all have pretty nice diversity in terms of what they do, and every turn you’ll find yourself setting themselves up and settling into their usual roles. I was nervous that things would feel too samey with such a small character roster, but I’m glad I was wrong.

The writing is pretty enjoyable. I do think the technical mumbo jumbo gets a little much sometimes, I’m a long time GFL fan so I don’t mind it, but people new to the series may not feel the same. Characters are all pretty likable and generally pretty rational too. There weren’t really any situations where I thought people were acting annoying or stupid. Enemies seem pretty one note at first, but there is some depth there as you get deeper into the game. I need to praise the tone for this game though, it’s pretty rare these days to play something that takes it’s tone seriously the whole time, never breaking for ironic jokes or whatever at any point. It’s corny to say but the game is very sincere with its premise and story, and it makes a lot of it feel really authentic. A lot of cutscenes have full Japanese voice acting too which definitely helps sell it.

Lastly, the art is top tier, along with the music. I need to praise the menus as well because the HUD is easy to read and quick to use.

Overall I do really like Reverse Collapse: Codename Bakery. Despite the ridiculous name that my friends make fun of every time I bring it up, I thinks Mica continues to craft one of my favorite fictional universes, the wait was absolutely worth it, and I’d encourage anyone to give it a try if they like strategy or GFL.

Just keep in mind this game can be really trial and error at times, play the game on normal first to learn the quirks and the mechanics, as it lets you reset every turn and save whenever you want.

My God. I wanted to play this game so badly for so long. I thought it was going to be a game where you use your powers to take down legions of soldiers, similar to FEAR.

After playing it, I cannot believe how quickly this game turned into crap. The start was so strong, you break out of containment and kill your captors. The voice acting is loud and intense, characters panic as they search the room for you, screaming out callouts as you brutally blast them all down with incredibly loud and powerful weapons.

Then the supernatural elements began to show more and more. Now I'm shooting weird goop zombies and then some engineered monster that just charges me and does the same attack over and over. This obviously comes from the FEAR inspiration there's just a small problem with that. The horror sections in FEAR are the worst part of the fucking game, why would you crank that element up even higher?

I shit you not, you're randomly transported to the backrooms for no reason, you have to run away from evil black clouds that jumpscare you if you get too close, and tons of other awful horror tropes. Most of this stuff is never really explained that well unless you take 20 minutes to read the logs you find. It's GMod horror map levels of not scary, and I really just rolled my eyes or even uttered a "Oh come on, really?" whenever this shit happened.

Whenever the game throws an enemy at you that isn't human, its the worst fight in the game. They're just bullet sponges that refuse to die or even react to your actions. It doesn't help that most guns do zero damage against anything with armor at all. I was playing on Very Hard and you either kill everything with a shotgun and assault rifle, or you die, simple as that. Explosives are good too but they are rare. Enemies do unreal damage as well, so you're super reliant on using your powers to really get around the battlefield at all. Any time you don't one shot a guy he's probably gonna one shot you instead. As the game progresses enemies get bulkier and better armor, which makes everything such bullshit since you can't even burst them down anymore, yet the game insists on being really stingy with ammo and never really letting you hold onto the good weapons for too long.

There's a really crappy weapon attachment system I barely bothered with, most attachments do nothing or just make the guns worse for no reason. Some are just nonsensical and make me think the developers never even played their own game. A minigun machine gun has an attachment that adds knives to the end of all the barrels so you can shread dudes in front of you. Issue is you can’t spin the barrel without shooting so you stick your high caliber machine gun in a dude’s face and he dies to the gunfire before the knives can even do anything. Oh should I mention that all attachments have ridiculously harsh downsides and that one in particular reduces the damage of the gun for no reason? Even though attachments are supposed to be hidden pickups to reward you for exploring? Let’s not even mention the fact that you barely ever hold onto guns for a long time due to ammo issues so there’s basically no point in equipping attachments in the first place.

Side missions are mostly just copy paste with a few small levels that just have you hacking things. These usually involve you being trapped in a small arena while waves of enemies show up. It gets old really fast, and by the later waves you’ll be getting one shot by DMR and shotgun users while you struggle to grab any ammo. Hope you like the low power SMG because it seems to be the only thing enemies carry. Most weapons drop almost no ammo. I think shotgun drops give you.. like 4 shots. Assault rifle drops give you about 12, not even a full mag. I don’t understand the stinginess with ammo, it’s not even easy to swap weapons out during combat since you gotta hold F for like 30 years while you’re being shot at.

There’s also a duel wielding mechanic, use it with the shotgun and nothing else. It’s awful, you chew through ammo and deal the same amount of damage, all the while being unable to control the guns at all.

The boss fights are stupid and the hit detection is spotty for any melee stuff. A boss will swing a sword where you were and you'd still take damage. Late game is pretty reliant on insta killing you for the challenge so you have to play like a boo hoo baby to get anything done. Your powers go from useful tools to the only reason you live ever, they are insane crutches for the horribly balanced difficulty.

And if all of this wasn't bad enough the game was really short too. Only about 5 or so main missions, I remember being really surprised when the final mission began, thinking I barely did anything. The story is mostly nonsense too, I couldn't care about it since the game insists on you stopping to read all this intel you pick up and it’s just filled with technical mumbo jumbo. I don't mind a deep and interesting story but you can't deliver it all through optional logs the player might miss. This is a high octane shooter why do I need my reading glasses every 5 minutes? It’s also so blatantly obvious that they didn’t know where to put a lot of this intel. You’ll find a bunch of it just placed around each other when you’re traveling in between fights. This game doesn’t have the atmosphere to have the quiet time FEAR has between combat segments so I usually just ran through them as fast as I could.

Smaller complaints include the boring map design. Early on arenas are pretty fun, but this disappears fast, hallways and massive rooms with no cover become the norm. Guns are hard to use correctly, with such insane fire rates you can't hit anything unless it's right in front of you. I fucking hate the main base and mission system. This game would have been a lot better if it was a continuous campaign. Once again, if FEAR is such a big inspiration why take the worst aspects and ignore the good parts? The visual noise is unreal. When you shoot at a guy sparks go everywhere, the reticle goes insane, your gun bounces around like your dude's shoulder is jello, and the enemy just freezes up and hardly reacts to the lead entering his body. It's hard to actually tell if you are killing dudes, they seem to just get up after you mag dump them. Stick to the shotgun and explosives and gib them, it's the only way to be sure they're actually dead. Lastly enemy snipers just delete you. Full stop. You're in their sights for a moment and it's over. Very fun and interactive gameplay! I really love how it's impossible to hit anything if it's more than 10 feet away from me!

Trepang2 could have been great, it get's the raw intensity very well. It's just a shame there's so much messy stuff mixed into it all. I hate to say it but I was happy to be done. I really did not like this game near the end.

After sinking close to 30 hours already I feel confident enough to recommend this game as I think I’ve seen everything outside the hardest difficulty.

Helldivers 2 is everything that makes videos games fun shoved into a nice 40 dollar box. All you need are three other friends and this game shines with the amount of funny and chaotic events going on. It’s so easy to get immersed in the raw excitement of the battlefield. Characters screaming voice lines while wave after wave of gunfire going off, explosions and artillery shelling the life out of anything as well.

The game is about you being dropped into battlefields as you complete objectives in the chaos. These can vary from setting off a missile to rescuing civilians, all the way to things like killing priority enemies or outposts. Despite the lack of mission variety, things never really seem to get old. Each planet seems to have unique generation for the battlefields, and while some can feel kind of similar, background modifications will change the type of enemies that are common, and the usual hazards you’ll have to deal with. I expect them to add more as time goes on to keep the game from getting too repetitive.

Now the shooting feels good. Weapons are loud and powerful, however they also take some knowledge to use correctly. Enemies usually have specific weak points to take them down. I think this aspect makes the early game especially challenging, as many players will just fire with reckless abandon at armored enemies when they should be pacing their shots better. Still I quite like this, hoard shooters rarely demand much more from you other than shooting at anything that moves, the fact that recoil control is very important as well makes for some fairly engaging combat. The reload system makes everything more engaging and brutal too. Each reload completely loses whatever you have in the magazine, encouraging you to fully use up a mag, even to your detriment at times, over a premature reload. This leads to you getting caught with your pants down needing to reload at the worst times, which I really love. Now I can’t praise the stratagems enough, any player being able to call in serious firepower leads to hilarious team killing and amazing visuals where enemy groups are refined into paste before your very eyes. It’s nice that the player has so much agency, the ability to call strikes down whenever and wherever you want, there is never a situation where the game tells you no.

It’s in the details where things really shine though, blood and dirt coats your character the longer you’re alive. Explosions kick up dust that makes the battlefield impossible to traverse after some time. And the way the dialogue is written in this game is hilarious, every voice line uttered by the Helldivers fills me with energy and makes me chuckle.

Helldivers 2 is a blast. After a couple games to get the hang of the difficulty and to figure out how to play, you’ll feel like a total badass as you take out legions of robots and bugs, and then you’ll die. You’ll die so much. But it will be funny. Everything in this game is funny. Orbital bombardment of your friend’s location to kill a bug is funny. Your Helldiver screaming their head off as they blast waves of bots with a machine gun is funny. Flattening an entire bug camp with overwhelming artillery is funny. And all of this is fucking cool too.

Despite all my praise I do have small issues with the game. Not enough to really criticize for, as many of these problems can be fixed with small patches. Weapon balancing is a joke, some weapons are straight upgrades or have features the game never really lists. I don’t mind weapons being strong, the real issue is how weak some of them are. The regular pistol is completely overshadowed by the machine pistol for example. Their damage differences are so negligible there’s not a single reason to ever use the pistol ever again. Then there’s the issue of weak stratagem calls like the laser canon or certain artillery assists. Many of these can be better if they have features tweaked, like a tighter spread, faster deployment, or better armor piercing. Armor is a weird one, some armor have special features that give you more grenades or stims, some augment your limb health or let you throw grenades farther. These bonuses are not made equal, and having more equipment is going to be the better option pretty much every time. Lastly some expensive upgrades feel pretty underwhelming. The ship upgrades are meant to augment your gameplay and make things you use better, but these upgrades are really not made equal, and people usually just skip the final upgrades because they’re so expensive and grant pretty much nothing.

Even with those complaints, the devs seem cool and definitely want this game to succeed. I can’t wait to see what upcoming updates will bring to it.

Play Helldivers 2 and become a hero to super earth, or die trying. Co-op shooters are pretty prevalent these days but this game has something going on that a lot of others lack. There’s an energy to it all, where you and your friends are constantly panicking and laughing as you deal with the overwhelming threats thrown at you.