I was on the fence with this and leaning towards a positive review. I really enjoyed it and would consider it one of my favourite games, but it took a year in updates and fixes to get there.
I love the idea of cautiously walking through a rural town within a boreal forest in the 1980's while lazer death robots lurk about. The design of the enemies is beautiful and scary, and the survival elements add to the fear of being caught by these machines early on in the game. I've spent a little bit of time in multiplayer to know how good it feels to be in a group of other 80's teens where one of you throws a radio blasting synthpop across from a hiding spot, while another one struggles to hit a softpoint on a robot through a cracked scope on a dilapidated hunting rifle. This game feels like it's just about there and probably would have benefited from being in early access a little bit longer.
The good in this game all comes with some bad. The landscape is gorgeous and frightening, but also pretty empty and boring. The robots are well designed and can be pretty smart hunters, but also stupid things that get caught in walls or running circles. Your equipment is pretty minimal, rustic and it's fair to have cracks and swaying while trying to handle it, but managing these in your inventory is a headache.
A few months later, I finished both DLCs and highly recommend them (Alpine more than FNIX). I feel like a lot of the bugs have been worked out, the cooperative multiplayer is extremely fun (especially the end-game Rival hunting), it's challenge and enjoyable. It's really been the bug fixes that brought me over to highly recommend it, as I already enjoy the setting and combat.
However, I didn't enjoy this in my early-mid game. I found it very unfairly difficult, making me want to avoid encounters all together (it's a FPS, why would I want to avoid shooting things?). Since there's not much onboarding for the combat, I didn't realize that the shooting in this game is very softpoint dependent - meaning that all enemies have weak points that need to be targeted. This can make the difference between spending 10 minutes fighting 15 enemies, using 1000 bullets and 50 med kits - or spending 2 minutes fighting 5 enemies using 100 bullets and 2 meds, making it more fun and engaging that shooting forever at bullet sponges. Take this advice and have fun!
I love the idea of cautiously walking through a rural town within a boreal forest in the 1980's while lazer death robots lurk about. The design of the enemies is beautiful and scary, and the survival elements add to the fear of being caught by these machines early on in the game. I've spent a little bit of time in multiplayer to know how good it feels to be in a group of other 80's teens where one of you throws a radio blasting synthpop across from a hiding spot, while another one struggles to hit a softpoint on a robot through a cracked scope on a dilapidated hunting rifle. This game feels like it's just about there and probably would have benefited from being in early access a little bit longer.
The good in this game all comes with some bad. The landscape is gorgeous and frightening, but also pretty empty and boring. The robots are well designed and can be pretty smart hunters, but also stupid things that get caught in walls or running circles. Your equipment is pretty minimal, rustic and it's fair to have cracks and swaying while trying to handle it, but managing these in your inventory is a headache.
A few months later, I finished both DLCs and highly recommend them (Alpine more than FNIX). I feel like a lot of the bugs have been worked out, the cooperative multiplayer is extremely fun (especially the end-game Rival hunting), it's challenge and enjoyable. It's really been the bug fixes that brought me over to highly recommend it, as I already enjoy the setting and combat.
However, I didn't enjoy this in my early-mid game. I found it very unfairly difficult, making me want to avoid encounters all together (it's a FPS, why would I want to avoid shooting things?). Since there's not much onboarding for the combat, I didn't realize that the shooting in this game is very softpoint dependent - meaning that all enemies have weak points that need to be targeted. This can make the difference between spending 10 minutes fighting 15 enemies, using 1000 bullets and 50 med kits - or spending 2 minutes fighting 5 enemies using 100 bullets and 2 meds, making it more fun and engaging that shooting forever at bullet sponges. Take this advice and have fun!