sucks to put down a game when it doesnt have many reviews on here but the wretched hour this stole from my one precious life on this earth is still sitting in my stomach like a rock
concept and setting excecuted so poorly i found turning all the music, dialogue, and even Colors off in the settings actually made the game slightly more compelling
and all you really need to know gameplay wise is that this is an arena shooter that penalizes you for moving with any urgency (or even JUMPING). and it's a roguelike. an exercise in tedium.

this is the true mecha experience, the hidden VOTOMS game adaptation that you need to have solid steel nuts like Chirico Cuvie to master. you play as a totally nameless soldier piloting a cruddy grunt mech that only gets outclassed as the story progresses, but it just means you can flex even harder on those gundam-piloting teenagers with your pile bunker and fighting spirit. this game is old-school tough as nails, awesome and has a sick story twist towards the end. too many games about mecha suck but this one will put some damn HAIR ON YOUR CHEST

after finally engaging with all the extra stuff in this I actually do think I just prefer the base game as-is, warts and all. these additions tend to stick out like a sore thumb and either feel completely superfluous (I never once felt the need to use alternate ammo during my entire hardcore playthrough) or just kind of annoying. After going through all the dlcs, too, I can safely say you arent really missing anything if you just mod all this chaff out and move on with your life, maybe now i can Finally move on with Mine...

feels more like an ambitious fan project than something actually cohesive honestly. the idea of Enshrining the Capital C Courier as some like Motive Force of Civilization just kind of feels like something out of a video essayist's and/or fanfic writer's google doc draft. anyway while the story is corny, the gameplay itself isnt really helping since it cannot stop jingling its keys at you at every opportunity to make sure youre Not Getting Bored. hard to have a long introspective "lonesome" walk to think on my status as an apparent Great Man of History when theres something i have to blow up every 10 fuckin feet

somehow manages to be both timelessly fun and engaging but also a magnet for some of the worst experiences you can have on an online game. you will encounter a bot or an insanely annoying guy or both in every game you play on valve official servers that claim to have everything under control with VAC banning every time you load in. also runs like complete dookie on anything more modern than the computers they shot up into space during the moon landing. just stick to the orange box version on xbox where everything was pure. everything was clean.

absolutely the high water mark for the dlcs when it comes to atmosphere and actually feeling like something that connects to the main story. Neat premise that is executed well for the Most part (stealth and platforming sections are just never going to play nicely in this engine). the classic move where they take away all your items actually clicked for me here too, IMO these games are strongest around the beginning where you really have to put everything you scrounge up to use, and that feeling of scarcity really sells the tension in this, especially with the constant health loss in hardcore mode. as with all of these it's a bit rough around the edges, but this is the only one that has a strong enough direction to see it through.