Lowland_
2021
This review contains spoilers
(REPLAY)
Ah Cruelty Squad, what a an amazing game you are! To be honest i decided to replay you purely because why not and yeah i enjoyed it again! I don't know how to do this but i guess i'll kinda say fuck it we ball! This one gonna be a lot more just kinda rambling than anything actual analysis so we go!!
GAMEPLAY:
Well Cruelty Squad is without a doubt one of the best immersive sims i've ever played, also one of the best Tactical shooters i've played ever too, the hard and quick tense quick thinking in an active gunfight to the slow and methodical and planning before missions and in between fights, it does the blend of quick thinking and slow planning gameplay so fucking well, it's hard to describe it via words, it's really something you have to play yourself to fully understand, but i'll try my best! So you load up the first level, you have to kill 2 targets for your company, Cruelty Squad, alright, you start with a pistol and an SMG and load in right next to the front door of the building, you walk in andddd likely get shot dead in about 3 seconds max and in your head will explode to deny that Cruelty Squad ever sent anyone to kill these 2 guys. So after that happened well time to think, you can go around the back into the back office or perhaps through a vent into the bathroom right next to one of the targets or you could perhaps go through the fight in the front of the building again but slowing and more tactically, holding corners and chokepoints and aiming for one shot headshots and quick reacting to the overwhelming numbers of security, that's the core of Cruelty Squad gameplay, then after your first mission you have a little cash so you can buy implants, these are pretty much your game changers, from armor to helmets, to speed upgrades, to jump boosts, to unlimited ammo, to more unusual implants such as the flower on your head that acts as a parachute to the all the biopunk styled implants full of the nastiness that Biopunk includes and it's great. All these implants act as your playstyles and how you can gain advantages in levels, to showcase, my playthrough on this replay was the equivalent of that kid in the bouncy castle that jumps really high and grand slams the other kids in the castle, with my bouncy suit and Icaros Machine combo, but most of all, Cruelty Squad pushes to experiment, the game wants to mess around and finds out what works for each level! that's the kinda tomfoolery you can get up to in Cruelty Squad and it's so much fun. The weapons is also amazing, they all hit the marks of meaty and hard hitting weapons, combat is fast in Cruelty Squad, a single shot can kill both you and the enemy instantly, and so the weapons reflect that! even the smallest pistol has a nice punch to it and can kill in a single shot! To the larger machine guns and heavy weapons that have a nice crunch and punch to them! And these a gun for everyone, with a large amount of weapons for any problem! On the enemy front we have a large amount of enemies, from basic grunts to the heavy weapon and armored Nercomechs to the swamp Snipers, to Shock Troopers, to the more weird ones such as Flesh Pigs and Golems! There's a lot of the things that can rail your shit and you need to work around!
Overall, this is one of most fun games i've ever played, while i like other games more than Cruelty Squad, i can't deny that this game is fucking amazing and just so much fun!!!
STORY:
Well the story of Cruelty Squad is uhhhhh, it's good, the overall story is mentioned only through talking to NPCs and the Handler mission overviews, and honestly, you could play the entire game without even knowing anything or caring about the story at all! That's perfectly fine, this is a game where the story doesn't really matter, but is more something you can look into at your own time! However to talk about it, Immortality has been found andddd life fucking sucks, for a month's rent you can just come back via flesh neruotransmitters, and the result of this is that everyone is just fucking bored and miserable and the cost of life was already low and after immorality was found, it's below the fucking sea level, and so death does not really matter anymore and death, and even more so company and Corporation death units, you, are hired for Cruelty Squad, a subsidiary company of Control, and you go do hit missions for this company. Once you reach the level "Idiot Party", you ain't on a hit mission, you are on a mission to set a example, you are here to kill the rich, acquire control, unlimited power. Right after you are sent to the level "Office" with the mission of "Pain" you are here to kill the heads of Control, but you will never break this cycle of pain, the heads of Control will just come back and the world will never change from of pain, so after this hard reset at Control. After this, you decide to head to the Archon Grid, the place between life and death, heaven and hell, you seek to disable the Archon Grid, to do this you fight and kill Abraxas, a god, or great Archon of the early Christian belief system of Gnosticism, the meaning of Abraxas and the reveals done here and the fact he is the god of this world means the world was always inherently corrupt and cruel and filled with this suffering and so you seek to disable it. After killing Abraxas you move into the inner Archon Grid and disable it. This is a short lived "victory" as death is just no longer a thing, and life eternal, so after a moment, you are back into this cycle of pain. A Entrapment. Unknown amount of years later however guessed to be 30 years later, you buy a house in a small village in a remote valley. Here you meet the Triagons, 3 gods, after fighting your way through them and the village you meet the targets, 3 people that are likely representations of the Triagons. The first Triagon is born of malice, grabs the flow of solar terror and the world and births a germ, it extends it's arms beyond the veil of the sun and power and took it's share and hold in the world, the disease spreads, it took control of all biological things and pumps and pulsate, life is born, the infection is final. The second Triagon is born from this life, and it seeks death it demanded calm, the feeding begins, it saw guts, decay, and metabolism, it started to process the glut of excess organic mass, to introduce limits, Chlorhydric acid, Existence became scarce, suffering was born, the Triagon pleased, Metabolic domination. The third Triagon was born of Death, it saw that the world was radiating excess energy, it wanted to put great things into motion, but greatness wasn't possible without value, the first transaction, It took its blade and cut a large hole into the boundary, creating a sudden flash of high volume transactional power, and just for a moment things seeped value into themselves, assuming souls, the second transaction, The hole was quickly mended, and the overpowering transmission of value was cut short, but in that moment the seed of primordial financial might was planted, and the world took on its transactional form, conflict and discord emerged, and the third Triagon was ecstatic, the third transaction. After this, your Hope Eradicated however your now Enlightened. You embrace the second Triagon, you embrace Death. Using your new enlightened status, you move to become the most powerful person on the planet, you have to kill the CEO of Cruelty Squad, after a hard won fight you kill the CEO and take his place. You are greeted with a wall with a face and the words LIFE. And now you are being spoken to from a unknown force. I WEEP. YOU ARE A ROTTEN HUSK. YOU OVERFLOW WITH BOUNDLESS POWER. YOU HAVE THE SOUL OF A EMPEROR. SACRIFICIAL HERO. BLESSED BY PRIMORDIAL LUCK. YOUR FRIENDS ARE IN HELL YET YOU SMILE. ONLY GOOD THINGS WILL COME TO SOMEONE LIKE YOU. SET GOALS. HAVE A TEN YEAR PLAN. INVEST. WAKE UP EARLY. CEO MINDSET. GOOD LUCK....Despite everything, despite being the most powerful person on the planet, your still human, you are no better off than when you were a simply hitman at the start of the game, but you can change it, reset it.
TRAUMA LOOP....You head into the Trauma Loop in search of the Cradle of Life, because only then life and the world can be reset. After painful and painful treks into the darkness of the Trauma Loop you finally reach of the Cradle of Life. The world breaks down, the world around you failing and collapsing, you lead legions of people towards DEATH, you feel and see a scene from your childhood, you abandoned your dreams. You are a high net worth individual, an expanding vortex of pathetic trauma. A beautiful fucking nerve ape. The value of Life is negative. The surface is full of cracks, a turgid light shines through. Fleshy primordial bodies sluggishly roll down the slope. Only you slide upwards, with a celestial step. You become beautified, a saintly figure. Your pristine idiocy reveals a safe path through the impenetrable fog of Life. Your dull sword cuts through the weak tendons and membranes of the garden of corruption. Sit on the throne of contentment and ferment. Inspect the eternal blue skies of your kingdom. You come to a realization. You pick up an onion and begin peeling. Onion layer one. Onion layer two. Onion layer three. Onion layer n^n. Aeons have passed and the onion is fully peeled. Nothing remains. It's perfect. You get lost in the point that remains where the onion used to be. Synaptic cascade, neurological catastrophe. The point becomes infinitely dense, the universe condenses into a unicellular being. It screams sin. It craves happiness. It's done with this world. It tries to commit suicide but fails. Sad pathetic mess. You feel pity and disgust but in a way only a being of pure grace can. In your violent mercy you terminate the worldlife. The living organism, in a situation determined by the play of energy on the surface of the globe, ordinarily receives more energy than is necessary for maintaining life; the excess energy (wealth) can be used for the growth of a system (e.g., an organism); if the system can no longer grow, or if the excess cannot be completely absorbed in it's growth, it must necessarily be lost without profit; it must be spent, willingly or not, gloriously or catastrophically.....You reset everything, everything back to a point where life and death are a thing, you bring value and worth back into life, you bring and usher in a GOLDEN AGE, where life is worth living and has value. You bring back a world worth living.
Overall this makes sound fucking insane but i can tell you the meaning and idea behind the story of Cruelty Squad is amazing and i love it so much, and i highly recommend looking into it.
WORLD:
cruelty Squad does a amazing job better it's world with almost purely side npcs and levels, you can tell the world is barely holding together and how cruel everything is. The game shows you how shitty of a world it is, from fact death units for companies are a thing, to the fact the companies are unchallenged and one dude proposing a 1% tax on companies makes him a target to companies says everything. The world looks rotten and broken and it perfectly shows this with how everything is. To the environments of each level looking very distinct and shows it personality of each level and each one looks good and amazing. To the more weird level, such as Archon Grid where the world is in between each other, or Trauma Loop where the Cradle of Life is actively trying stop you and throws everything it has at you. Amazing levels all around!!!
MUSIC:
UHHHHHH Music is uh, it's unique to say the least. It's good tho! But it's not something i would listen too actively tho but we got a lot good! Combat Cocktail, Rent Due, Divinity of The Office, GOLDEN AGE, Dance Room Beats!, and my personal favorite!, Sacrificial Mission, Each level does music well that suits each level!
OVERALL:
Cruelty Squad replay has made me realize, while it was one of the best games i've ever played, it's not in like the top 5 of my favorite games, but hey that doesn't mean i don't love it, i do! It's just i love some other games more! but still Cruelty Squad is fucking amazing and if you can get past the weird looks, you should 100% buy and play Cruelty Squad as it's almost unlike anything else! God what a game!!!
This was longer than i thought but eh i have a lot of love and enjoyment in this game so why not make it long!
Ah Cruelty Squad, what a an amazing game you are! To be honest i decided to replay you purely because why not and yeah i enjoyed it again! I don't know how to do this but i guess i'll kinda say fuck it we ball! This one gonna be a lot more just kinda rambling than anything actual analysis so we go!!
GAMEPLAY:
Well Cruelty Squad is without a doubt one of the best immersive sims i've ever played, also one of the best Tactical shooters i've played ever too, the hard and quick tense quick thinking in an active gunfight to the slow and methodical and planning before missions and in between fights, it does the blend of quick thinking and slow planning gameplay so fucking well, it's hard to describe it via words, it's really something you have to play yourself to fully understand, but i'll try my best! So you load up the first level, you have to kill 2 targets for your company, Cruelty Squad, alright, you start with a pistol and an SMG and load in right next to the front door of the building, you walk in andddd likely get shot dead in about 3 seconds max and in your head will explode to deny that Cruelty Squad ever sent anyone to kill these 2 guys. So after that happened well time to think, you can go around the back into the back office or perhaps through a vent into the bathroom right next to one of the targets or you could perhaps go through the fight in the front of the building again but slowing and more tactically, holding corners and chokepoints and aiming for one shot headshots and quick reacting to the overwhelming numbers of security, that's the core of Cruelty Squad gameplay, then after your first mission you have a little cash so you can buy implants, these are pretty much your game changers, from armor to helmets, to speed upgrades, to jump boosts, to unlimited ammo, to more unusual implants such as the flower on your head that acts as a parachute to the all the biopunk styled implants full of the nastiness that Biopunk includes and it's great. All these implants act as your playstyles and how you can gain advantages in levels, to showcase, my playthrough on this replay was the equivalent of that kid in the bouncy castle that jumps really high and grand slams the other kids in the castle, with my bouncy suit and Icaros Machine combo, but most of all, Cruelty Squad pushes to experiment, the game wants to mess around and finds out what works for each level! that's the kinda tomfoolery you can get up to in Cruelty Squad and it's so much fun. The weapons is also amazing, they all hit the marks of meaty and hard hitting weapons, combat is fast in Cruelty Squad, a single shot can kill both you and the enemy instantly, and so the weapons reflect that! even the smallest pistol has a nice punch to it and can kill in a single shot! To the larger machine guns and heavy weapons that have a nice crunch and punch to them! And these a gun for everyone, with a large amount of weapons for any problem! On the enemy front we have a large amount of enemies, from basic grunts to the heavy weapon and armored Nercomechs to the swamp Snipers, to Shock Troopers, to the more weird ones such as Flesh Pigs and Golems! There's a lot of the things that can rail your shit and you need to work around!
Overall, this is one of most fun games i've ever played, while i like other games more than Cruelty Squad, i can't deny that this game is fucking amazing and just so much fun!!!
STORY:
Well the story of Cruelty Squad is uhhhhh, it's good, the overall story is mentioned only through talking to NPCs and the Handler mission overviews, and honestly, you could play the entire game without even knowing anything or caring about the story at all! That's perfectly fine, this is a game where the story doesn't really matter, but is more something you can look into at your own time! However to talk about it, Immortality has been found andddd life fucking sucks, for a month's rent you can just come back via flesh neruotransmitters, and the result of this is that everyone is just fucking bored and miserable and the cost of life was already low and after immorality was found, it's below the fucking sea level, and so death does not really matter anymore and death, and even more so company and Corporation death units, you, are hired for Cruelty Squad, a subsidiary company of Control, and you go do hit missions for this company. Once you reach the level "Idiot Party", you ain't on a hit mission, you are on a mission to set a example, you are here to kill the rich, acquire control, unlimited power. Right after you are sent to the level "Office" with the mission of "Pain" you are here to kill the heads of Control, but you will never break this cycle of pain, the heads of Control will just come back and the world will never change from of pain, so after this hard reset at Control. After this, you decide to head to the Archon Grid, the place between life and death, heaven and hell, you seek to disable the Archon Grid, to do this you fight and kill Abraxas, a god, or great Archon of the early Christian belief system of Gnosticism, the meaning of Abraxas and the reveals done here and the fact he is the god of this world means the world was always inherently corrupt and cruel and filled with this suffering and so you seek to disable it. After killing Abraxas you move into the inner Archon Grid and disable it. This is a short lived "victory" as death is just no longer a thing, and life eternal, so after a moment, you are back into this cycle of pain. A Entrapment. Unknown amount of years later however guessed to be 30 years later, you buy a house in a small village in a remote valley. Here you meet the Triagons, 3 gods, after fighting your way through them and the village you meet the targets, 3 people that are likely representations of the Triagons. The first Triagon is born of malice, grabs the flow of solar terror and the world and births a germ, it extends it's arms beyond the veil of the sun and power and took it's share and hold in the world, the disease spreads, it took control of all biological things and pumps and pulsate, life is born, the infection is final. The second Triagon is born from this life, and it seeks death it demanded calm, the feeding begins, it saw guts, decay, and metabolism, it started to process the glut of excess organic mass, to introduce limits, Chlorhydric acid, Existence became scarce, suffering was born, the Triagon pleased, Metabolic domination. The third Triagon was born of Death, it saw that the world was radiating excess energy, it wanted to put great things into motion, but greatness wasn't possible without value, the first transaction, It took its blade and cut a large hole into the boundary, creating a sudden flash of high volume transactional power, and just for a moment things seeped value into themselves, assuming souls, the second transaction, The hole was quickly mended, and the overpowering transmission of value was cut short, but in that moment the seed of primordial financial might was planted, and the world took on its transactional form, conflict and discord emerged, and the third Triagon was ecstatic, the third transaction. After this, your Hope Eradicated however your now Enlightened. You embrace the second Triagon, you embrace Death. Using your new enlightened status, you move to become the most powerful person on the planet, you have to kill the CEO of Cruelty Squad, after a hard won fight you kill the CEO and take his place. You are greeted with a wall with a face and the words LIFE. And now you are being spoken to from a unknown force. I WEEP. YOU ARE A ROTTEN HUSK. YOU OVERFLOW WITH BOUNDLESS POWER. YOU HAVE THE SOUL OF A EMPEROR. SACRIFICIAL HERO. BLESSED BY PRIMORDIAL LUCK. YOUR FRIENDS ARE IN HELL YET YOU SMILE. ONLY GOOD THINGS WILL COME TO SOMEONE LIKE YOU. SET GOALS. HAVE A TEN YEAR PLAN. INVEST. WAKE UP EARLY. CEO MINDSET. GOOD LUCK....Despite everything, despite being the most powerful person on the planet, your still human, you are no better off than when you were a simply hitman at the start of the game, but you can change it, reset it.
TRAUMA LOOP....You head into the Trauma Loop in search of the Cradle of Life, because only then life and the world can be reset. After painful and painful treks into the darkness of the Trauma Loop you finally reach of the Cradle of Life. The world breaks down, the world around you failing and collapsing, you lead legions of people towards DEATH, you feel and see a scene from your childhood, you abandoned your dreams. You are a high net worth individual, an expanding vortex of pathetic trauma. A beautiful fucking nerve ape. The value of Life is negative. The surface is full of cracks, a turgid light shines through. Fleshy primordial bodies sluggishly roll down the slope. Only you slide upwards, with a celestial step. You become beautified, a saintly figure. Your pristine idiocy reveals a safe path through the impenetrable fog of Life. Your dull sword cuts through the weak tendons and membranes of the garden of corruption. Sit on the throne of contentment and ferment. Inspect the eternal blue skies of your kingdom. You come to a realization. You pick up an onion and begin peeling. Onion layer one. Onion layer two. Onion layer three. Onion layer n^n. Aeons have passed and the onion is fully peeled. Nothing remains. It's perfect. You get lost in the point that remains where the onion used to be. Synaptic cascade, neurological catastrophe. The point becomes infinitely dense, the universe condenses into a unicellular being. It screams sin. It craves happiness. It's done with this world. It tries to commit suicide but fails. Sad pathetic mess. You feel pity and disgust but in a way only a being of pure grace can. In your violent mercy you terminate the worldlife. The living organism, in a situation determined by the play of energy on the surface of the globe, ordinarily receives more energy than is necessary for maintaining life; the excess energy (wealth) can be used for the growth of a system (e.g., an organism); if the system can no longer grow, or if the excess cannot be completely absorbed in it's growth, it must necessarily be lost without profit; it must be spent, willingly or not, gloriously or catastrophically.....You reset everything, everything back to a point where life and death are a thing, you bring value and worth back into life, you bring and usher in a GOLDEN AGE, where life is worth living and has value. You bring back a world worth living.
Overall this makes sound fucking insane but i can tell you the meaning and idea behind the story of Cruelty Squad is amazing and i love it so much, and i highly recommend looking into it.
WORLD:
cruelty Squad does a amazing job better it's world with almost purely side npcs and levels, you can tell the world is barely holding together and how cruel everything is. The game shows you how shitty of a world it is, from fact death units for companies are a thing, to the fact the companies are unchallenged and one dude proposing a 1% tax on companies makes him a target to companies says everything. The world looks rotten and broken and it perfectly shows this with how everything is. To the environments of each level looking very distinct and shows it personality of each level and each one looks good and amazing. To the more weird level, such as Archon Grid where the world is in between each other, or Trauma Loop where the Cradle of Life is actively trying stop you and throws everything it has at you. Amazing levels all around!!!
MUSIC:
UHHHHHH Music is uh, it's unique to say the least. It's good tho! But it's not something i would listen too actively tho but we got a lot good! Combat Cocktail, Rent Due, Divinity of The Office, GOLDEN AGE, Dance Room Beats!, and my personal favorite!, Sacrificial Mission, Each level does music well that suits each level!
OVERALL:
Cruelty Squad replay has made me realize, while it was one of the best games i've ever played, it's not in like the top 5 of my favorite games, but hey that doesn't mean i don't love it, i do! It's just i love some other games more! but still Cruelty Squad is fucking amazing and if you can get past the weird looks, you should 100% buy and play Cruelty Squad as it's almost unlike anything else! God what a game!!!
This was longer than i thought but eh i have a lot of love and enjoyment in this game so why not make it long!
2019
This review contains spoilers
Alright this should be a short one! Amid Evil, great game! very fun and short shooter like the rest the of the New Blood shooter trio! Dusk and Ultrakill! However i don't know i didn't enjoy Amid Evil as much as Dusk or Ultrakill but that's not to say i didn't enjoy it, it's still a New Blood shooter and fuck it was a very fun time! Whelp let's talk for not that long honestly!
GAMEPLAY:
Well if you played Quake or DUSK or any other shooter of this kind, you'll be right at home with Amid Evil...for the most part, Amid Evil does not have the b hopping or anything that would make you hyper speedy but has the core feel and gameplay of Quake and such that makes it feel very smooth and nice to play. The weapons, oooooo the weapons, they are all very neat takes and twists on the standard shooter loadouts, by not making any of them guns and instead magic staffs and melee weapons is fucking fun as fuck and Amid Evil makes these so fond to remember with how nice they feel, from the staff Celestial Claw that grabs and shoots planets and that so nice SFX and impact, to the very powerful Axe of the Black Labyrinth. that can make short work of common foes with a nice loud clang, to the ice star of torment that launch enemies (very funny) into walls at Mach 8, to the room clearing power of the Aeturnum that wipes out almost everything in it's path. There's a nice amount of weapons and you'll be using all of them due to the classic ammo pickups and ammo carry, expect here it's mana, and weapons share the mana types so you have to mange that as you avoid being hit, but honestly i LOVE the way they feel and that alone makes them amazing!
There's a huge amount of enemy variety in the game, way more than i was thinking, with 8 hostile factions each having 6 or 7 enemy types, you'll never get bored of any of them, as they all stay their welcome at that's it! and each faction have their own style of attack and the enemy types within that faction all have their own way of attacking you within that faction's attack style, it's honestly pretty nice having so many enemy types done will in a game of this style.
8 main chapters or worlds each with 4 levels, 3 main levels and boss arena, not much to say here, just it's quite a lot of different areas!
Overall! the game feels and plays great and they'll be no getting bored anytime soon!, it is a bit awkward to speedrun tho, could just be me tho!
STORY:
Well there's not much to say here, you, The Champion, is the last hope for life against the Evil Force that has defeated and corrupted all the factions and you have to fight your way through them all to fight and destroy the Evil once and for all! Not much going on here, and that's fine! That's all you need! It's a simple story for a very fun game! Simply after you defeat the Evil, the Champion gets a place among the ancients and can rest easy...T boy champion btw!
WORLD:
Not much is said about the world of Amid Evil, however we are shown absolutely stunning and oh so pretty environments and locates. From the fortress of the Sentinels and their confusing yet set layouts, to the high rise desert mountains of the Solar Solstice and their stunningly pretty marble buildings, to the forges and machines and their rustic and hostile factories, to the AMAZING STUNNING Arcane Expanse, just it's hard to say, you need to see it for yourself, some of the prettiest levels in recent years, and to finally the chaos is king nature of The Void, with it's very alien areas.
Overall the world(s) of Amid Evil, while never really expanded upon, it's enough and honestly more than a enough for what this game is going out to do, so enjoy these stunning area and levels.
MUSIC:
Honestly, as always, there is a few standout tracks, such as Arcane Dirge, and Brothers of the Void, Achlyes, and my favorite, Finality, an amazing final boss track. Aside from those few songs, there wasn't much that stood out to me in the 2 hour long soundtrack, not to say it's bad, just not my style!, but as i said, some amazing standout tracks!
OVERALL:
Amid Evil is a great time and a very fun shooter, and very glad to have finished all of the New Blood shooters, they just don't miss. This game is a very fun take and twist on the Quake shooter style and very much worth the time! While i would recommend DUSK over AMID EVIL, both are well worth the money.
GAMEPLAY:
Well if you played Quake or DUSK or any other shooter of this kind, you'll be right at home with Amid Evil...for the most part, Amid Evil does not have the b hopping or anything that would make you hyper speedy but has the core feel and gameplay of Quake and such that makes it feel very smooth and nice to play. The weapons, oooooo the weapons, they are all very neat takes and twists on the standard shooter loadouts, by not making any of them guns and instead magic staffs and melee weapons is fucking fun as fuck and Amid Evil makes these so fond to remember with how nice they feel, from the staff Celestial Claw that grabs and shoots planets and that so nice SFX and impact, to the very powerful Axe of the Black Labyrinth. that can make short work of common foes with a nice loud clang, to the ice star of torment that launch enemies (very funny) into walls at Mach 8, to the room clearing power of the Aeturnum that wipes out almost everything in it's path. There's a nice amount of weapons and you'll be using all of them due to the classic ammo pickups and ammo carry, expect here it's mana, and weapons share the mana types so you have to mange that as you avoid being hit, but honestly i LOVE the way they feel and that alone makes them amazing!
There's a huge amount of enemy variety in the game, way more than i was thinking, with 8 hostile factions each having 6 or 7 enemy types, you'll never get bored of any of them, as they all stay their welcome at that's it! and each faction have their own style of attack and the enemy types within that faction all have their own way of attacking you within that faction's attack style, it's honestly pretty nice having so many enemy types done will in a game of this style.
8 main chapters or worlds each with 4 levels, 3 main levels and boss arena, not much to say here, just it's quite a lot of different areas!
Overall! the game feels and plays great and they'll be no getting bored anytime soon!, it is a bit awkward to speedrun tho, could just be me tho!
STORY:
Well there's not much to say here, you, The Champion, is the last hope for life against the Evil Force that has defeated and corrupted all the factions and you have to fight your way through them all to fight and destroy the Evil once and for all! Not much going on here, and that's fine! That's all you need! It's a simple story for a very fun game! Simply after you defeat the Evil, the Champion gets a place among the ancients and can rest easy...T boy champion btw!
WORLD:
Not much is said about the world of Amid Evil, however we are shown absolutely stunning and oh so pretty environments and locates. From the fortress of the Sentinels and their confusing yet set layouts, to the high rise desert mountains of the Solar Solstice and their stunningly pretty marble buildings, to the forges and machines and their rustic and hostile factories, to the AMAZING STUNNING Arcane Expanse, just it's hard to say, you need to see it for yourself, some of the prettiest levels in recent years, and to finally the chaos is king nature of The Void, with it's very alien areas.
Overall the world(s) of Amid Evil, while never really expanded upon, it's enough and honestly more than a enough for what this game is going out to do, so enjoy these stunning area and levels.
MUSIC:
Honestly, as always, there is a few standout tracks, such as Arcane Dirge, and Brothers of the Void, Achlyes, and my favorite, Finality, an amazing final boss track. Aside from those few songs, there wasn't much that stood out to me in the 2 hour long soundtrack, not to say it's bad, just not my style!, but as i said, some amazing standout tracks!
OVERALL:
Amid Evil is a great time and a very fun shooter, and very glad to have finished all of the New Blood shooters, they just don't miss. This game is a very fun take and twist on the Quake shooter style and very much worth the time! While i would recommend DUSK over AMID EVIL, both are well worth the money.
2020
This review contains spoilers
So i had a much longer, over 10000 words long but i forgot to save it and so it is lost to time, and so i will give a overview in replacement for it and live with with this lesson.
GAMEPLAY:
Iron Harvest is a fun and somewhat simple but fun base plot RTS, on the vein of Supreme Commander, Command and Conquer, Grey Goo. With 4 main factions, Polania, a fast mobile hit and run, long range faction, Rusviet, a fast, rapid, rush down faction. Saxony, a slow long drawn slug it out faction. And Usonia a highly adaptive and versatile force. While they all share units, they all have adjustments to suit the playstyle of that faction. So Iron Harvest is a fun and long and somewhat simple but highly enjoyable RTS with factions and playstyles for everyone. The mechs are really also a joy to watch and play with.
STORY:
So Iron Harvest story is split into 5 campaigns, each with their own characters that come together and form a genuinely compelling and enjoyable overarching story.
Polania story follows Anna and Lech Kos, and this serves to a start of a mystery and the post Great War world and some nice and neat world building.
Rusviet's story starts with a flashback and follows Janet Kos and Olga Morozova and Janet Kos is an amazing character and what really made fall in love with Iron Harvest's story. Here the mystery about what's actually happening and the world and the characters begins to unfold.
Saxony's story follows Gunter Von Duisburg, my favorite character, he is an amazing character and i love him, and here we get insights into the political world of Iron Harvest and the backstory into the Great War and the the answers and story about the mysteries and story pay off so nicely here.
Usonia being DLC, it's story is after the events of the base game. Here Usonia wants to make itself is a world superpower and so starts getting themselves into world problems and they are bastards, here we follow William Mason who actually does want to do go, and actual goes against Usonia to do what is the right thing, and honestly is a very good campaign, my second favorite behind the Saxony one.
Rusviet revolution, here we follow Olga again and the Tsar, and here it's clear that the DLC money went to Usonia but here is a still a good story about the Tsar wanting to better, but does not end well, with you actually losing here, neat.
Overall very good and genuinely enjoyable story and is what really made me love the game.
WORLD:
I'M A FUCKING SLUT FOR THIS WORLD. Iron Harvest does a fucking amazing job building this world and is a joy to find and enjoy. With the dieselpunk world being such a amazing joy, and the design of each Faction is so fucking cool as well. I had a much much longer part for this, breaking down the design of each Faction and mechs but oh well, i learned my lesson.
MUSIC:
The faction themes are amazing, each faction has their own music and is all such a joy to listen too. " Pride of Saxony", "Polania Victrix", "Mother Rusviet", "Ode to the Union" are all joys to listen too, there are other bangers, but these are the main ones i think of when i think Iron Harvest music, but there is a enough music that you won't ever get bored of one track.
OVERALL:
While i wanted to finish writing my over 10000 world review for this, for now this will do. One day i might come back to my full break down of Iron Harvest perhaps i will. Well overall Iron Harvest is an amazing RTS that does many many things right and i'm so glad to have played it. It's not looking to change the RTS genre but simply just add a new great game to a genre that hasn't had many large scale games in it lately.
One day i'll come back to the full breakdown of Iron Harvest.
GAMEPLAY:
Iron Harvest is a fun and somewhat simple but fun base plot RTS, on the vein of Supreme Commander, Command and Conquer, Grey Goo. With 4 main factions, Polania, a fast mobile hit and run, long range faction, Rusviet, a fast, rapid, rush down faction. Saxony, a slow long drawn slug it out faction. And Usonia a highly adaptive and versatile force. While they all share units, they all have adjustments to suit the playstyle of that faction. So Iron Harvest is a fun and long and somewhat simple but highly enjoyable RTS with factions and playstyles for everyone. The mechs are really also a joy to watch and play with.
STORY:
So Iron Harvest story is split into 5 campaigns, each with their own characters that come together and form a genuinely compelling and enjoyable overarching story.
Polania story follows Anna and Lech Kos, and this serves to a start of a mystery and the post Great War world and some nice and neat world building.
Rusviet's story starts with a flashback and follows Janet Kos and Olga Morozova and Janet Kos is an amazing character and what really made fall in love with Iron Harvest's story. Here the mystery about what's actually happening and the world and the characters begins to unfold.
Saxony's story follows Gunter Von Duisburg, my favorite character, he is an amazing character and i love him, and here we get insights into the political world of Iron Harvest and the backstory into the Great War and the the answers and story about the mysteries and story pay off so nicely here.
Usonia being DLC, it's story is after the events of the base game. Here Usonia wants to make itself is a world superpower and so starts getting themselves into world problems and they are bastards, here we follow William Mason who actually does want to do go, and actual goes against Usonia to do what is the right thing, and honestly is a very good campaign, my second favorite behind the Saxony one.
Rusviet revolution, here we follow Olga again and the Tsar, and here it's clear that the DLC money went to Usonia but here is a still a good story about the Tsar wanting to better, but does not end well, with you actually losing here, neat.
Overall very good and genuinely enjoyable story and is what really made me love the game.
WORLD:
I'M A FUCKING SLUT FOR THIS WORLD. Iron Harvest does a fucking amazing job building this world and is a joy to find and enjoy. With the dieselpunk world being such a amazing joy, and the design of each Faction is so fucking cool as well. I had a much much longer part for this, breaking down the design of each Faction and mechs but oh well, i learned my lesson.
MUSIC:
The faction themes are amazing, each faction has their own music and is all such a joy to listen too. " Pride of Saxony", "Polania Victrix", "Mother Rusviet", "Ode to the Union" are all joys to listen too, there are other bangers, but these are the main ones i think of when i think Iron Harvest music, but there is a enough music that you won't ever get bored of one track.
OVERALL:
While i wanted to finish writing my over 10000 world review for this, for now this will do. One day i might come back to my full break down of Iron Harvest perhaps i will. Well overall Iron Harvest is an amazing RTS that does many many things right and i'm so glad to have played it. It's not looking to change the RTS genre but simply just add a new great game to a genre that hasn't had many large scale games in it lately.
One day i'll come back to the full breakdown of Iron Harvest.
2023
This review contains spoilers
Well let's say i am very surprised how much i like this, honestly really expect to finish the story, or actively play it, now look at me trying to the savage missions. Hopefully this won't take too long to write but here's goes!
GAMEPLAY:
so fucking fun, that's the way i use to describe the gameplay, it's what got me hooked so bad in the first place, this game is so fucking fun, the Destiny gambit pvp combined by EDF level swarms of dinosaurs pve is a incredibly fun and unique experience, combined with surprisingly traditionally MMO styled raid missions with very fast, very non MMO just..everything else makes for a wonderfully different experience than just anything else i've played in a multiplayer team based class shooter. This is a team based, hero-ish shooter, with Exosuits fighting into different roles, Damage, Tank, Support, and even with a somewhat small amount of classes and 10 Exosuits, there's a amazing amount of variety of playstyles and picks to chose from for players to mess around with, from Deadeye's user friendly Call of Duty gameplay, to Zephyr's fast combo based melee combat, to Krieger's overwhelming EDF level suppression fire, to Murasame's counter based sword play, to Skywaves overwhelming crowd aoes, to Nimbus's hybrid dps/healer gunplay, there's a Exosuit for everyone here to mess around with and experiment with, you can even change Exosuit mid combat, resulting in very fast adapting and changing. Alongside the Exosuits, there's a pretty large amount of enemy variety here as well, from raptors and T.rex, to Sniper Neosuars and frost Neosuars, to the raid bosses such as Durban and Leviathan, with around around 18 enemy types, there's a lot of fun to be had fighting and adapting too. Highlight of the game is easily the raid missions, some of the most fun i had with a multiplayer game recently, there's 5 on launch and are wonderfully chaotic and hard and a such a breathe of fresh air, Durban's fight genuinely might stay with me for a bit because that 10 player raid boss is such a fun a neat fight, from his AOEs to Tankbusters to add phases, such a delight. My one main problem with this game, is that all of this stuff won't start getting interesting until maybe 15 to 20 matches in, and in that time you can easily just be thinking to yourself, "Is that it?" i can just think how easy it is to quit the game before it starts getting interesting, with doing the same missions and fighting the same dinosaurs over and over again for the first, say 5 to 6 hours, however if you can get through that time, you're rewarded with a wonderfully fun and interesting game.
STORY:
Honestly there's not much to say here other than we got an actual campaign story instead of this Titanfall 1 ass multiplayer story thing but still despite that i can help but enjoy this game's story, it's such a fun campy and positively over the top story i would only expect from Capcom. The highlight is the characters easily, they are so fun and just great. I genuinely don't know i would start explain the story but i'll try to do a fast but decent overview.
The year is 2043, Dinosaurs attacks are a common and honestly boring thing now, Exofighters control Exosuits to fight these hordes of dinosaurs. You the player "Ace" are one of these fighters, your crew "The Hammerheads" have been watching the island of Bikitoa, the place of origin of the dinosaur attacks. You crash land after a vortex of Dinosaurs appear and Ace is played into a time portal and now Leviathan has you, you fight your way through 2040 and meet Magnum a fellow pilot trapped in Leviathan's time loop wargames. You escape and soon find out Leviathan can just summon you whenever and now you have to find a way to destroy Leviathan while being stuck in the timeloop wargames. A few days later of constant wargames Magnum contracts you from another timeline and is shown to be his timelines version of you, Ace!. Magnum found a way to destroy Leviathan but he flew too close to the sun, and a figure enters his timeline and kills him, a so called Headhunter working FOR Leviathan. A setback, your now on your own. Abuis the company that makes the Exosuits and the vortexer tech that did time travel in the first place, is not that good, who would've guessed, Dr. Synes is the leader of what cause the outbreaks in the first place, after working on a so called golden goose, Leviathan and the Stratovator, a space elevator equipped with a massive Vortexer to collect the resource known as HI-xol, a weird oil like liquid that appears after a time portal is opened, highly sought after because of a fuel source, a single gallon of Hi-Xol is worth 720 KM, so very very sought after, atop the Stratovator is Leviathan. Well it didn't go to plan, Leviathan given the command to make the perfect Exosuit and being control of the Stratovator resulted in him hosting a new wargame, Exosuits versus Dinosaurs, which is how this all began. Your crew's chief, Lorenzo, his sister tried to shut all this down before it started due to her coming into conflict with Dr. Synes, and the dangers of Golden Goose, and thing she was died trying to stop, however before she died, she was making contact with a someone, through Leviathan she was making contact with someone named Yannick Nadi. Yannick Nadi is the start of everything, he is the origin, the Origin Suit, The exosuits were reserved engineered from the Origin suit, a Exosuit found in a Cretaceous era digsite. He is from a future where Abuis has maybe hundreds of Stratovators, and the world itself is breaking down and folding in on itself due to so many votrexers being online. Yannick Nadi went back in time to try and stop this, but went a little too far back and ended up in the Cretaceous and meet his end there, and the cycle started, in 2020 his suit was found and became the start of Exosuits and the Vortexers. His suit memory core and his consciousness was put into Leviathan, he is apart of the very thing he sought to prevent. He isn't Leviathan, but he is part of Leviathan, which is why, Lorenzo's sister was contacting him through Leviathan in an effort to destroy him, a effort that failed, but is now how you can destroy Leviathan, by going back to 2040 and helping Lorenzo
s sister and Yannick Nadi back in 2040 when they tried to destroy him alone. Throughout this the headhunter that killed Magnum is now working to kill you and recover the files YOU have about Golden Goose, so they can go help Leviathan. This Headhunter is named Durban, he is a another version of one of your crew members, Alders. So it's both a race to collect the Golden Goose parts and to hunt down Durban. Now the island of Bikitoa, the natives people had a goddess, Bikitoa, turns out she is also a Exofighter, she went back in time to do the very same thing Yannick Nadi tried, She is her timelines version of another one of your crew members, Maj. She is from a timeline that resulted in a full scale rebellion against Abuis and she went back in time to stop the first Stratovator as well, she went to far back as well, 600 years back to be exact and soon died alone in the ruins of Bikitoa. This doesn't serve much besides finishing up a loose end and the end of Maj's character arc and as a another reason to stop Leviathan. After tracking down and forcing Durban to retreat, he shows he has all that he needs and usher in a new era on earth through the help of Leviathan. So it's now or never, Lorenzo turns the plane into a time machine through the help of the Golden Goose parts you have recovered and go to fight Leviathan and Durban back in 2040, after the final raid mission and a fun final showdown, both Durban and Leviathan are dead and for the first time, the Cycle is broken, Yannick Nadi finally can rest and Lorenzo sister is alive, you are the cycle breaker. The crew and plane return back to 2043 and get a call from Lorenzo's sister, saying Abuis is going to hunt you down and so you to get some where safe, you and the crew strap in and fly off into the sunset, into a a world free from the cycle.
Genuinely i enjoy this story a lot, it's such a mix of fun and campy and serious and caring that i love and genuinely Capcom knocked it out of the park, it isn't like a masterpiece or anything, but it doesn't have to be it's perfect for this game and is so much fun and such a joy to go through, the characters carried and really made this story what it is.
WORLD:
Honestly most what makes to world fun has already been shown off in the story section of this review/thoughts. You have mostly ruined city environments that are fun to play on but we all seen ruined city before, however you have more neat areas such as ruins, fighting on a dam, fighting on the Stratovator, fighting on Leviathans platform, to even fighting in between the fabric of time, there's some neat things to see and look at, and even how the Exosuits look and interact with the world is neat to see as well.
MUSIC:
Well there is some standout tracks here, and so wildly different from one another as well. "Dino Swarm" and "Dino Outbreak" sound nothing alike and this variety in the soundtrack is really good and fun.
personal favorite tracks are likely "Dino Swarm", "Space Elevator", and probably "Uplink Control". The OST has some bangers but not like the most standout thing in the world. OH YEAH, the credit song "Exohuman" is a sung track and is very campy and fun.
OVERALL:
Exoprimal is a wonderfully surprising and unexpected experience and some of the most fun i have had in a multiplayer game in some time, which is saying something as i've played this game entirely solo, so the fact is fun and managed to keep me hooked solo is an amazing achievement.
I hope the game does well for the months to come, the game is a fun gem and i'll gladly support it, i help it does great!!!
GAMEPLAY:
so fucking fun, that's the way i use to describe the gameplay, it's what got me hooked so bad in the first place, this game is so fucking fun, the Destiny gambit pvp combined by EDF level swarms of dinosaurs pve is a incredibly fun and unique experience, combined with surprisingly traditionally MMO styled raid missions with very fast, very non MMO just..everything else makes for a wonderfully different experience than just anything else i've played in a multiplayer team based class shooter. This is a team based, hero-ish shooter, with Exosuits fighting into different roles, Damage, Tank, Support, and even with a somewhat small amount of classes and 10 Exosuits, there's a amazing amount of variety of playstyles and picks to chose from for players to mess around with, from Deadeye's user friendly Call of Duty gameplay, to Zephyr's fast combo based melee combat, to Krieger's overwhelming EDF level suppression fire, to Murasame's counter based sword play, to Skywaves overwhelming crowd aoes, to Nimbus's hybrid dps/healer gunplay, there's a Exosuit for everyone here to mess around with and experiment with, you can even change Exosuit mid combat, resulting in very fast adapting and changing. Alongside the Exosuits, there's a pretty large amount of enemy variety here as well, from raptors and T.rex, to Sniper Neosuars and frost Neosuars, to the raid bosses such as Durban and Leviathan, with around around 18 enemy types, there's a lot of fun to be had fighting and adapting too. Highlight of the game is easily the raid missions, some of the most fun i had with a multiplayer game recently, there's 5 on launch and are wonderfully chaotic and hard and a such a breathe of fresh air, Durban's fight genuinely might stay with me for a bit because that 10 player raid boss is such a fun a neat fight, from his AOEs to Tankbusters to add phases, such a delight. My one main problem with this game, is that all of this stuff won't start getting interesting until maybe 15 to 20 matches in, and in that time you can easily just be thinking to yourself, "Is that it?" i can just think how easy it is to quit the game before it starts getting interesting, with doing the same missions and fighting the same dinosaurs over and over again for the first, say 5 to 6 hours, however if you can get through that time, you're rewarded with a wonderfully fun and interesting game.
STORY:
Honestly there's not much to say here other than we got an actual campaign story instead of this Titanfall 1 ass multiplayer story thing but still despite that i can help but enjoy this game's story, it's such a fun campy and positively over the top story i would only expect from Capcom. The highlight is the characters easily, they are so fun and just great. I genuinely don't know i would start explain the story but i'll try to do a fast but decent overview.
The year is 2043, Dinosaurs attacks are a common and honestly boring thing now, Exofighters control Exosuits to fight these hordes of dinosaurs. You the player "Ace" are one of these fighters, your crew "The Hammerheads" have been watching the island of Bikitoa, the place of origin of the dinosaur attacks. You crash land after a vortex of Dinosaurs appear and Ace is played into a time portal and now Leviathan has you, you fight your way through 2040 and meet Magnum a fellow pilot trapped in Leviathan's time loop wargames. You escape and soon find out Leviathan can just summon you whenever and now you have to find a way to destroy Leviathan while being stuck in the timeloop wargames. A few days later of constant wargames Magnum contracts you from another timeline and is shown to be his timelines version of you, Ace!. Magnum found a way to destroy Leviathan but he flew too close to the sun, and a figure enters his timeline and kills him, a so called Headhunter working FOR Leviathan. A setback, your now on your own. Abuis the company that makes the Exosuits and the vortexer tech that did time travel in the first place, is not that good, who would've guessed, Dr. Synes is the leader of what cause the outbreaks in the first place, after working on a so called golden goose, Leviathan and the Stratovator, a space elevator equipped with a massive Vortexer to collect the resource known as HI-xol, a weird oil like liquid that appears after a time portal is opened, highly sought after because of a fuel source, a single gallon of Hi-Xol is worth 720 KM, so very very sought after, atop the Stratovator is Leviathan. Well it didn't go to plan, Leviathan given the command to make the perfect Exosuit and being control of the Stratovator resulted in him hosting a new wargame, Exosuits versus Dinosaurs, which is how this all began. Your crew's chief, Lorenzo, his sister tried to shut all this down before it started due to her coming into conflict with Dr. Synes, and the dangers of Golden Goose, and thing she was died trying to stop, however before she died, she was making contact with a someone, through Leviathan she was making contact with someone named Yannick Nadi. Yannick Nadi is the start of everything, he is the origin, the Origin Suit, The exosuits were reserved engineered from the Origin suit, a Exosuit found in a Cretaceous era digsite. He is from a future where Abuis has maybe hundreds of Stratovators, and the world itself is breaking down and folding in on itself due to so many votrexers being online. Yannick Nadi went back in time to try and stop this, but went a little too far back and ended up in the Cretaceous and meet his end there, and the cycle started, in 2020 his suit was found and became the start of Exosuits and the Vortexers. His suit memory core and his consciousness was put into Leviathan, he is apart of the very thing he sought to prevent. He isn't Leviathan, but he is part of Leviathan, which is why, Lorenzo's sister was contacting him through Leviathan in an effort to destroy him, a effort that failed, but is now how you can destroy Leviathan, by going back to 2040 and helping Lorenzo
s sister and Yannick Nadi back in 2040 when they tried to destroy him alone. Throughout this the headhunter that killed Magnum is now working to kill you and recover the files YOU have about Golden Goose, so they can go help Leviathan. This Headhunter is named Durban, he is a another version of one of your crew members, Alders. So it's both a race to collect the Golden Goose parts and to hunt down Durban. Now the island of Bikitoa, the natives people had a goddess, Bikitoa, turns out she is also a Exofighter, she went back in time to do the very same thing Yannick Nadi tried, She is her timelines version of another one of your crew members, Maj. She is from a timeline that resulted in a full scale rebellion against Abuis and she went back in time to stop the first Stratovator as well, she went to far back as well, 600 years back to be exact and soon died alone in the ruins of Bikitoa. This doesn't serve much besides finishing up a loose end and the end of Maj's character arc and as a another reason to stop Leviathan. After tracking down and forcing Durban to retreat, he shows he has all that he needs and usher in a new era on earth through the help of Leviathan. So it's now or never, Lorenzo turns the plane into a time machine through the help of the Golden Goose parts you have recovered and go to fight Leviathan and Durban back in 2040, after the final raid mission and a fun final showdown, both Durban and Leviathan are dead and for the first time, the Cycle is broken, Yannick Nadi finally can rest and Lorenzo sister is alive, you are the cycle breaker. The crew and plane return back to 2043 and get a call from Lorenzo's sister, saying Abuis is going to hunt you down and so you to get some where safe, you and the crew strap in and fly off into the sunset, into a a world free from the cycle.
Genuinely i enjoy this story a lot, it's such a mix of fun and campy and serious and caring that i love and genuinely Capcom knocked it out of the park, it isn't like a masterpiece or anything, but it doesn't have to be it's perfect for this game and is so much fun and such a joy to go through, the characters carried and really made this story what it is.
WORLD:
Honestly most what makes to world fun has already been shown off in the story section of this review/thoughts. You have mostly ruined city environments that are fun to play on but we all seen ruined city before, however you have more neat areas such as ruins, fighting on a dam, fighting on the Stratovator, fighting on Leviathans platform, to even fighting in between the fabric of time, there's some neat things to see and look at, and even how the Exosuits look and interact with the world is neat to see as well.
MUSIC:
Well there is some standout tracks here, and so wildly different from one another as well. "Dino Swarm" and "Dino Outbreak" sound nothing alike and this variety in the soundtrack is really good and fun.
personal favorite tracks are likely "Dino Swarm", "Space Elevator", and probably "Uplink Control". The OST has some bangers but not like the most standout thing in the world. OH YEAH, the credit song "Exohuman" is a sung track and is very campy and fun.
OVERALL:
Exoprimal is a wonderfully surprising and unexpected experience and some of the most fun i have had in a multiplayer game in some time, which is saying something as i've played this game entirely solo, so the fact is fun and managed to keep me hooked solo is an amazing achievement.
I hope the game does well for the months to come, the game is a fun gem and i'll gladly support it, i help it does great!!!
2020
This review contains spoilers
Gears Tactics...ugh, i tried to love this game, i really did, and to be fair! it does a good amount of things right, there is some fun moments to be had within this game. However there are both large major issues and many small issues that add up to make a very flawed and genuinely frustrating slog to go through but with moments of fun and greatness within, well let's get into it.
GAMEPLAY:
Well if you ever played the modern XCOMs or similar tactics games then the core foundation of Gears Tactics will be very familiar, the cover base, hit chance, small squad combat, all very familiar and done well, there's nothing wrong here and to be fair most of the gameplay is done well. The main thing Gears Tactics sells itself on is being a fast paced Tactics game, now i was wondering what this means and i'm sure many would be wondering what that means as well, well let me explain what that means. The classic Gears of War mechanic, executions are present here and here they are more than just flair and being flashy here they speed up combat, lemme explain.
Well before getting into what makes this game a "fast paced Tactics game", i have to explain some basics things, so turn based combat as expected, here each squad member has 3 action points or AP that can used for anything, you can have a unit shoot 3 times in a single turn or move halfway across the map with all 3ap or 3 abilities or a move than 2 shots, you have these 3ap to decide what you want to do with, this to also helps with the fact pace nature of the game. Now executions, much like normal Gears games, sometimes instead of dying, you and enemies can go down, and here, when you're in range, one character can spend a single AP to execute, it'll play an animation straight from the Gears games, and once finished, everyone on the squad but the executor will gain one AP instantly and there is no limit to executing and AP, meaning you can line up whole groups of enemies and chain execute them meaning you can a whole squad of mostly with 8AP meaning you just a long as fuck turn to just mop up the remaining enemies, meaning you can just finish certain missions types in under 10 to 15 minutes, in fact most missions can be finished rather quickly, most. Now the core gameplay and executions are all well and good, the classes as well are pretty fun, and play into their roles and sub roles well. The classes being Support, Vanguard, Heavy, Scout, Sniper, each with four subclasses that can be leveled into, for the most part these classes are fine each are fun to play around with and can have some pretty good variety in tactics you can do with them. Well that's about all the good, let's get into bad parts of the gameplay.
starting off, these classes i mentioned, how it's fun to experiment and mess around with, well for most part you can't, the game really really pushes into using you're main squad, made up of your Hero units, aka the main characters, and you're characters level up so slowly and by level 5 it's so hard to level up anymore to the point you kinda just get locked into the same abilities and play styles because of the game really pushing you into main characters. Well what about other squad members, you can recruit random generated characters, well you can't use them often, normally you can use 1 maybe 2 in a main story missions and up to 4 in side missions, yeah fine enough, well once you do a side missions the characters you sent onto that mission are now locked out of use again until later in the Act, meaning if you really wanna level a character because you finally got the class you wanted after waiting a few missions, (oh and we'll get to that) whelp you can't, cause the side mission you sent them on wasn't enough to level them up and now their locked until later missions, it's a weird choice personally. Now how about the process of getting new recruits, well it's fun gameplay feature called waiting...yeah, you start with a unit cap of 3 that is upgraded to 10 by the end of the game, pretty small but fine, well can you recruit new units by selecting what you want? no, instead after each mission you get a 2 or 3 units to select to recruit, a level below your lowest level main character, and has a pretty good chance of not being the class you want or even duplicate classes, making it rather hard to mess around with the classes and sub classes, especially when you're locked into 4 man squads per mission with 2 or 3 of those slots being main characters. Alright well how about upgrading you're characters, you have your level ups and skills, nothing bad here it's quite fun honestly the skills. Well what about equipment, armor and weapons, well there is no research trees or anything, makes sense as you are playing an already developed military, instead you have salvage, yeah makes sense as you are cut off from the rest of the COG, so you have to collect equipment to upgrade your weapons and armor, well how to do get this salvage, well crates and mission rewards, you have 3 random crates in each mission and one for main reward and a optional reward each mission, maxing out at 5 each mission, alright fine enough, well do you get spend these crates for resources or directly to what equipment you want?, nope RNG after the mission you can open the crates and it's random loot drops, random armor and weapon attachments, with each weapon having 4 attachments slots but each weapons has 4 UNIQUE ATTACHMENTS meaning it's very hard to get upgrades for something you WANT, and the color rare system is present here as, meaning you could get the weapon or armor you want buttt it could be rare while you need a very rare version to actually upgrade, meaning you are at the whim of RNG. This is one of the many things that started to bring the game down for me, having a tactics game in this style relying on RNG to upgrade the equipment of your soldiers is a choice all right, by the end i had dozens and dozens of just random armor and equipment i didn't or couldn't use because of the RNG loot system. Now the major major thing that brought this game down for me is Act 3, Act 3 is awful, it brought down the game so hard. So Act 1 is 7 missions long, Act 2 is 10 missions, Act 3 is 19 missions long. Act 3 is a slog, it's not only the length makes this eh, Act 1 and 2 take place in different areas so you have different environments to look at and different maps to play on, well Act 3 takes place in one area and so, by like mission 5 of Act 3 you start seeing the same map over and over again it get hyper grading and just makes it a slog, doesn't help that by that point who have seen all the mission types, all 5 missions types, doesn't help that the enemy types are kinda small in amounts and fill a lot of the same roles, farther adding to the slog that is Act 3. Overall It's a great gameplay brought down by Act 3 and smaller issues.
STORY:
Gears Tactics follows Gabe Diaz, a COG sgt. and tactically genius, taking place right before and after the Hammer of Dawn counterattack, a major event during Gears lore that we're seeing for the first time, Sid Redburn former New Hope research facility guard and COG veteran, comes to deliver orders directly from Chairman Prescott to hunt down and kill Locust High geneticist Ukkon, and our story picks off. Gabe being cut off from the rest of the COG starts picking up civies and COG alike to form a little army to fight this little fight, Civilians don't like the COG but work together to fight Ukkon, Mikayla Dorn, a Civilian leader, works with Gabe to track down Ukkon and they do find him, Mikayla puts a bullet into his head and boom he drops dead...then he stands right back up. They find that he can repair damage to his body far faster than a normal being, he retreats, and Gabe and the rest of the gang fight off Locust forces and regroup and Gabe and the civilians fully come to agreement and head off to Vasgar to hunt down Ukkon.
Act 2 is honestly a whole bunch of nothing, just more mainly a lot of small characters moments to flesh out these honestly, not hyper interesting characters, but they do find out that Ukkon is suffering from Rustlung a disease in Gears related to imulsion, and find a way to set a trap for Ukkon, by tricking him with old UIR meds to help treat Rustlung, traps works but as Gabe is about to lock up Ukkon, Sid bashes Gabe on the head and tries to drive off with Ukkon but is stop by Mikayla holding Sid at gunpoint, during this Ukkon notices Sid and taunts him for the time at New Hope, both of whom where there at New Hope. Ukkon escapes once again by tearing off his own arm, he escapes once again and soon Gabe and gang once again have to fight off Locust forces and regroup, they lock Sid up in a makeshift jail and head further into Vasgar to finally kill Ukkon.
Act 3 begins with them trying to question Sid but he's not answering, but Ukkon still needs to be found so they send troops out to go find him. After a few days when Gabe is questioning Sid again, Sid lashes out by saying he's protecting them and don't know what they're dealing with, Gabe calms Sid down and Sid explains what New Hope was and what the Locust really are and how the humanity made the very thing that is killing them all. After some hard proof about New Hope, Gabe calls and confronts Prescott about New Hope and about the Locust, call ends with Gabe giving false coordinates about where they are and Prescott promises "Reinforcements" few minutes later a Hammer of Dawn strikes on a nearby cliff and is now Gabe and the gang are now thought to be dead, but they still have to kill Ukkon so they fight on. After that they work on a way of countering Ukkon's self regen rate, and find that New Hope had some fallbacks incase Ukkon acted up back then, so they go track down the parts and supplies to make gas grenades' filled with this failsafe to stop Ukkon, now the problem is finding him, after many many side missions they so close in on a location of Ukkon's base lab thing, they free some prisoners first for not only a exact location but also for some extra firepower, soon after they arm and armor up for one last assault. They send quite literally everything they have at Ukkon's base and storm in, main forces hold off the main Locust forces while Gabe and gang chase Ukkon, ending in one final fight, that is the only good part of Act 3 btw, that ends with Ukkon hit by a gas grenades and left on the ground, in his final moments taunts them by saying his creations will outlive all of them that the Locust will rule Sera, ending shortly by a single shot to the head. They day is won, Ukkon is dead and most of forces routed, but the war goes on and Gabe Diaz and gang spends the rest of the war fighting on their own, away from the COG, roll credits.
Honestly Gears Tactics story is alright, like it's bad, but it isn't great either, it does stay faithful to Ukkon and his lore from the comics and stays faithful to Gears lore in general honestly, but the characters are rather flat but have fun moments and lines, the story of hunting Ukkon is fine enough and does have cool reveals and drops throughout but the length of act 3 genuinely made me forget that cause how much of a slog it was, Ukkon also isn't around much either so it doesn't really show how much of a monster he is either, the cutscenes are cool tho. Overall not bad not great, pretty alright!
WORLD:
Well the lore and world surrounding Gears tactics is neat, taking place right before and during and after the Hammer of Dawn counterattack is a cool place for a Gears game, it's our first time seeing this major event in Gears lore in a game!, the world itself past the Hammer of Dawn counterattacks is honestly kinda bland, they don't build on Vasgar or the UIR or even the COG, is it leaves it kinda lacking, everything with New Hope is already known, and Gears Tactics doesn't talk about Vasgar or the UIR at all, so it leaves just a whole lot of nothing there. Overall very good setting and backdrops but not expanded on at all.
MUSIC:
Honestly Gears Tactics, does have some banger tracks, like there are standout tracks, Such as "Asshole Factory" and "COG" there are tracks that standout. However you'll be hearing the same combat tracks over and over again, ACT 3 has the same 2 combat tracks over and over again, and it's really fucking just ugh, part of the reason ACT 3 is so grading. Still i cannot fault it that much for the good tracks.
OVERALL:
Gears Tactics is a great game at it's core brought down by some major and minor gameplay flaws, with only a passable main story to back it up, and fails to add to the world of Sera in any meaningful way aside from showing us the end of the comic character Ukkon. Best thing i can describe this game with is, "It's a fun game at it's core however i would not blame you for dropping the game by ACT 3."
Whelp that's it! My future game reviews and thoughts will now be here instead of Twitter!
GAMEPLAY:
Well if you ever played the modern XCOMs or similar tactics games then the core foundation of Gears Tactics will be very familiar, the cover base, hit chance, small squad combat, all very familiar and done well, there's nothing wrong here and to be fair most of the gameplay is done well. The main thing Gears Tactics sells itself on is being a fast paced Tactics game, now i was wondering what this means and i'm sure many would be wondering what that means as well, well let me explain what that means. The classic Gears of War mechanic, executions are present here and here they are more than just flair and being flashy here they speed up combat, lemme explain.
Well before getting into what makes this game a "fast paced Tactics game", i have to explain some basics things, so turn based combat as expected, here each squad member has 3 action points or AP that can used for anything, you can have a unit shoot 3 times in a single turn or move halfway across the map with all 3ap or 3 abilities or a move than 2 shots, you have these 3ap to decide what you want to do with, this to also helps with the fact pace nature of the game. Now executions, much like normal Gears games, sometimes instead of dying, you and enemies can go down, and here, when you're in range, one character can spend a single AP to execute, it'll play an animation straight from the Gears games, and once finished, everyone on the squad but the executor will gain one AP instantly and there is no limit to executing and AP, meaning you can line up whole groups of enemies and chain execute them meaning you can a whole squad of mostly with 8AP meaning you just a long as fuck turn to just mop up the remaining enemies, meaning you can just finish certain missions types in under 10 to 15 minutes, in fact most missions can be finished rather quickly, most. Now the core gameplay and executions are all well and good, the classes as well are pretty fun, and play into their roles and sub roles well. The classes being Support, Vanguard, Heavy, Scout, Sniper, each with four subclasses that can be leveled into, for the most part these classes are fine each are fun to play around with and can have some pretty good variety in tactics you can do with them. Well that's about all the good, let's get into bad parts of the gameplay.
starting off, these classes i mentioned, how it's fun to experiment and mess around with, well for most part you can't, the game really really pushes into using you're main squad, made up of your Hero units, aka the main characters, and you're characters level up so slowly and by level 5 it's so hard to level up anymore to the point you kinda just get locked into the same abilities and play styles because of the game really pushing you into main characters. Well what about other squad members, you can recruit random generated characters, well you can't use them often, normally you can use 1 maybe 2 in a main story missions and up to 4 in side missions, yeah fine enough, well once you do a side missions the characters you sent onto that mission are now locked out of use again until later in the Act, meaning if you really wanna level a character because you finally got the class you wanted after waiting a few missions, (oh and we'll get to that) whelp you can't, cause the side mission you sent them on wasn't enough to level them up and now their locked until later missions, it's a weird choice personally. Now how about the process of getting new recruits, well it's fun gameplay feature called waiting...yeah, you start with a unit cap of 3 that is upgraded to 10 by the end of the game, pretty small but fine, well can you recruit new units by selecting what you want? no, instead after each mission you get a 2 or 3 units to select to recruit, a level below your lowest level main character, and has a pretty good chance of not being the class you want or even duplicate classes, making it rather hard to mess around with the classes and sub classes, especially when you're locked into 4 man squads per mission with 2 or 3 of those slots being main characters. Alright well how about upgrading you're characters, you have your level ups and skills, nothing bad here it's quite fun honestly the skills. Well what about equipment, armor and weapons, well there is no research trees or anything, makes sense as you are playing an already developed military, instead you have salvage, yeah makes sense as you are cut off from the rest of the COG, so you have to collect equipment to upgrade your weapons and armor, well how to do get this salvage, well crates and mission rewards, you have 3 random crates in each mission and one for main reward and a optional reward each mission, maxing out at 5 each mission, alright fine enough, well do you get spend these crates for resources or directly to what equipment you want?, nope RNG after the mission you can open the crates and it's random loot drops, random armor and weapon attachments, with each weapon having 4 attachments slots but each weapons has 4 UNIQUE ATTACHMENTS meaning it's very hard to get upgrades for something you WANT, and the color rare system is present here as, meaning you could get the weapon or armor you want buttt it could be rare while you need a very rare version to actually upgrade, meaning you are at the whim of RNG. This is one of the many things that started to bring the game down for me, having a tactics game in this style relying on RNG to upgrade the equipment of your soldiers is a choice all right, by the end i had dozens and dozens of just random armor and equipment i didn't or couldn't use because of the RNG loot system. Now the major major thing that brought this game down for me is Act 3, Act 3 is awful, it brought down the game so hard. So Act 1 is 7 missions long, Act 2 is 10 missions, Act 3 is 19 missions long. Act 3 is a slog, it's not only the length makes this eh, Act 1 and 2 take place in different areas so you have different environments to look at and different maps to play on, well Act 3 takes place in one area and so, by like mission 5 of Act 3 you start seeing the same map over and over again it get hyper grading and just makes it a slog, doesn't help that by that point who have seen all the mission types, all 5 missions types, doesn't help that the enemy types are kinda small in amounts and fill a lot of the same roles, farther adding to the slog that is Act 3. Overall It's a great gameplay brought down by Act 3 and smaller issues.
STORY:
Gears Tactics follows Gabe Diaz, a COG sgt. and tactically genius, taking place right before and after the Hammer of Dawn counterattack, a major event during Gears lore that we're seeing for the first time, Sid Redburn former New Hope research facility guard and COG veteran, comes to deliver orders directly from Chairman Prescott to hunt down and kill Locust High geneticist Ukkon, and our story picks off. Gabe being cut off from the rest of the COG starts picking up civies and COG alike to form a little army to fight this little fight, Civilians don't like the COG but work together to fight Ukkon, Mikayla Dorn, a Civilian leader, works with Gabe to track down Ukkon and they do find him, Mikayla puts a bullet into his head and boom he drops dead...then he stands right back up. They find that he can repair damage to his body far faster than a normal being, he retreats, and Gabe and the rest of the gang fight off Locust forces and regroup and Gabe and the civilians fully come to agreement and head off to Vasgar to hunt down Ukkon.
Act 2 is honestly a whole bunch of nothing, just more mainly a lot of small characters moments to flesh out these honestly, not hyper interesting characters, but they do find out that Ukkon is suffering from Rustlung a disease in Gears related to imulsion, and find a way to set a trap for Ukkon, by tricking him with old UIR meds to help treat Rustlung, traps works but as Gabe is about to lock up Ukkon, Sid bashes Gabe on the head and tries to drive off with Ukkon but is stop by Mikayla holding Sid at gunpoint, during this Ukkon notices Sid and taunts him for the time at New Hope, both of whom where there at New Hope. Ukkon escapes once again by tearing off his own arm, he escapes once again and soon Gabe and gang once again have to fight off Locust forces and regroup, they lock Sid up in a makeshift jail and head further into Vasgar to finally kill Ukkon.
Act 3 begins with them trying to question Sid but he's not answering, but Ukkon still needs to be found so they send troops out to go find him. After a few days when Gabe is questioning Sid again, Sid lashes out by saying he's protecting them and don't know what they're dealing with, Gabe calms Sid down and Sid explains what New Hope was and what the Locust really are and how the humanity made the very thing that is killing them all. After some hard proof about New Hope, Gabe calls and confronts Prescott about New Hope and about the Locust, call ends with Gabe giving false coordinates about where they are and Prescott promises "Reinforcements" few minutes later a Hammer of Dawn strikes on a nearby cliff and is now Gabe and the gang are now thought to be dead, but they still have to kill Ukkon so they fight on. After that they work on a way of countering Ukkon's self regen rate, and find that New Hope had some fallbacks incase Ukkon acted up back then, so they go track down the parts and supplies to make gas grenades' filled with this failsafe to stop Ukkon, now the problem is finding him, after many many side missions they so close in on a location of Ukkon's base lab thing, they free some prisoners first for not only a exact location but also for some extra firepower, soon after they arm and armor up for one last assault. They send quite literally everything they have at Ukkon's base and storm in, main forces hold off the main Locust forces while Gabe and gang chase Ukkon, ending in one final fight, that is the only good part of Act 3 btw, that ends with Ukkon hit by a gas grenades and left on the ground, in his final moments taunts them by saying his creations will outlive all of them that the Locust will rule Sera, ending shortly by a single shot to the head. They day is won, Ukkon is dead and most of forces routed, but the war goes on and Gabe Diaz and gang spends the rest of the war fighting on their own, away from the COG, roll credits.
Honestly Gears Tactics story is alright, like it's bad, but it isn't great either, it does stay faithful to Ukkon and his lore from the comics and stays faithful to Gears lore in general honestly, but the characters are rather flat but have fun moments and lines, the story of hunting Ukkon is fine enough and does have cool reveals and drops throughout but the length of act 3 genuinely made me forget that cause how much of a slog it was, Ukkon also isn't around much either so it doesn't really show how much of a monster he is either, the cutscenes are cool tho. Overall not bad not great, pretty alright!
WORLD:
Well the lore and world surrounding Gears tactics is neat, taking place right before and during and after the Hammer of Dawn counterattack is a cool place for a Gears game, it's our first time seeing this major event in Gears lore in a game!, the world itself past the Hammer of Dawn counterattacks is honestly kinda bland, they don't build on Vasgar or the UIR or even the COG, is it leaves it kinda lacking, everything with New Hope is already known, and Gears Tactics doesn't talk about Vasgar or the UIR at all, so it leaves just a whole lot of nothing there. Overall very good setting and backdrops but not expanded on at all.
MUSIC:
Honestly Gears Tactics, does have some banger tracks, like there are standout tracks, Such as "Asshole Factory" and "COG" there are tracks that standout. However you'll be hearing the same combat tracks over and over again, ACT 3 has the same 2 combat tracks over and over again, and it's really fucking just ugh, part of the reason ACT 3 is so grading. Still i cannot fault it that much for the good tracks.
OVERALL:
Gears Tactics is a great game at it's core brought down by some major and minor gameplay flaws, with only a passable main story to back it up, and fails to add to the world of Sera in any meaningful way aside from showing us the end of the comic character Ukkon. Best thing i can describe this game with is, "It's a fun game at it's core however i would not blame you for dropping the game by ACT 3."
Whelp that's it! My future game reviews and thoughts will now be here instead of Twitter!