First of all: If strategic play and running through fields for times on end is a no-go for you, dont bother playing it even if youre playing via Gamepass.

Hell Let Loose is the more arcadey brother of "Hunt: Showdown" and I mean it in the best way possible. Lots of time will still be spent running around doing pretty much nothing but the amount of action is significantly higher (atleast once you learned how to use garrisons and outposts or get a good officer in your squad). Youll be getting your ass whooped for quite some time before you develop some game sense and Ill strongly recommend getting into the game with a friend (who preferably already knows some stuff so it isnt as painful). Yes it will be a time investment but the atmosphere is enough to keep you playing and once it clicks its one of the most enjoyable shooters out there. Running around a corner and standing face-to-face with a tank is scary. The dopamine rush you feel when artillery shells land right next to you and tear your comrade to shreds is hard to describe. If you have 2 friends to play with try and drive a tank. Might be a bit hard and technical at first but once you popped your first enemy tank youll see the appeal.

The community as a whole is welcoming. Be warned there is the occasional chronically online commander on a power trip unable to take the smallest bit of blame. In those cases youll need to be ready to stand your ground in the voicechat or you might be kicked as most players are trigger happy on the votekick. But thats just a warning and doesnt do the vast majority of players justice. Most are friendly and funny dudes with the occasional roleplayer who adds to the atmosphere.

Even though there are lots of developer studios credited for this game the updates are minimal and content is still rather sparce for a game that came out in 2019. Maps are pretty lackluster and glitchy at times and playing on community servers youll almost exclusively play the boring, similiar looking, french maps. Climbing over objects is still horribly buggy and has caused me to die numerous times now. But the fundamental flaw of this game in my opinion is its progression system. You can unlock different loadouts for your classes and thats it. Those kits are either unlocked very quickly or take too long to actually keep you playing for them as they provide mostly miniscule benefits.

Final verdict: Great game, best with friends, but youll need to put some serious time in or play with someone experienced wholl teach you

Really not as bad as people make it out to be. There is still lots of fun to be had, but man did they gentrify Overwatch. The changes made (5v5, removing a lot of shields and stuns) were mostly necessary but have been implemented in the worst possible way. Over time Blizzard stripped all heroes of their identity through reworks (e.g. Mei) or nerfs (e.g. Roadhog, McCree) to the point they all lack uniqueness. Their understanding of balancing overall is questionable at best as they mostly dish out nerfs but hardly ever buffs. This coupled with trying to remove hard counterpicks really makes me question whether they understand the appeal of their game at all. Monetization is obviously the only reason for this so called sequel and its implementation is bad. Collecting skins was an important part of the gameplay loop and a reason to keep playing and they locked pretty much all of it behind a battlepass. Having to unlock new heroes is arguably a monetization change as well and it negates the little counter picking thats left.

I dont know how they fumbled the bag this badly. Put this game out of his misery already