I was dubious at first. What's with 4-player co-op revival all of a sudden? This is just Left for Dwarves! But there's three elements that make this a special game.

The first is a phenomenal cave generator. It's not just about the excellent variety - it's quality. Most caves will have highly distinct, memorable setpieces that makes exploration exciting. The scale, terrain, and depth create awe-inspiring environments that repeatedly had my group saying "holy shit come look at this". These are fun spaces to explore with many moments of surprise and joy lurking around each corner.

Then there's the lighting. These caves are dark, and that's important for creating these moments of surprise. Specifically, the flare throwing mechanic is a constant source of delight - watching flares tumble around the landscape, seeing how far that hole goes down, or revealing enemies hidden in the crevices. You're throwing them constantly and it's a critical piece of the spelunking experience.

Lastly, the class skills offer just the right tools for exploration. Everyone's got their specialty and once everybody's gotten comfortable with their skillset, you feel like a well-oiled machine as you take turns building platforms, digging tunnels, setting up ziplines, and lighting up rooms. These mechanics feel good to use because of how great the cave generation is. That's the secret sauce of this game.

But it's not perfect. The sound design is frequently annoying; within the first hour I turned announcer + dwarf volume down to 5%. The enemy types are mostly uninspired - with a few BIG exceptions - but most of the time you're going to be fighting the same few crawdads. These issues are offset by good mission design and great randomized variations in cave hazards, which keep your focus elsewhere - but if you're looking for satisfying gunplay or tightly-tuned combat, that's not what this game does best.

My biggest issues are with the half-baked progression system. Seemingly half of the game locked out until you invest 20+ hours - and much of that is bound to individual character classes. The perks and skill/weapon upgrades feel like an afterthought. There isn't much customization to be done, even on the cosmetic front. You're always going to look and play pretty similar to the other dwarves, even with the dozens of beard types on offer.

Give it a few hours to warm up - find the class you like, unlock some of the basic skill upgrades and mission types, and then pull your buds together for a good time.

This game is like crack if it were a video game. Literally played this and had a hard time going back to other shooters. No other game has done that to me and to this level of succession. The thing I love most about this game is just how every single weapon can interact with each other. You'll just be freestyling, toss a coin and one day instead of shooting it with the revolver, you'll shoot it with the railcannon and be like "WOAH I CAN DO THAT?!" And then you'll integrate it into your normal playstyle. And then you'll discover something different and the loop continues. It's absolutely fantastic. The healing system in this game also encourages you to play with your balls constantly to the wall. You can only heal from the blood that squirts out from your enemies. Get up close. Be aggressive. Get better. By the end of this experience you'll have P-ranked every stage and boss and you'll be hungry for more. The level designs are never not fun, the environments are super unique for them all being in hell, and the music is an awesome hodge-podge of guitars and amen breaks. It makes you feel like a badass. Can't wait for act III and any content beyond. I recommend this game to anyone who just wants a fast paced, blood-fueled good time.