I want to like it, I really do-

But, this game needs to hire someone with dedicated experience with optimization and a person who can actually devise the mechanics of an AI- that feels like what they keep going on about, that your not 'the guy'.

Because everything the game screams right now, does not. The AI is simply too simple, and because what I assume is shortcuts to make the game optimized and to run more efficiently- the game suffers majorly from pop-in and laser focusing on the player character.


1st and major issue is the spawn, everything pops in around you. Sometimes literally on top of you. There needs to be hard funnel points that the NPCs spawn in and work their way through.

There's no planning, no waiting for the right move.. The AI will constantly track back and forth within the same area, an aggro to you even though you shouldn't be a threat... that or large units you can't possibly deal with stall out and break to be set pieces that may or may not oneshot you randomly -

So then it's just knowing the aggro range of specific units and running, praying that they either don't glitch and aggro to you through a object- or one of the larger one's doesn't snap it's head to you and fire a cannon round to immediately gib you because of the 'stray bullet' mechanic.



Your suppose to be the weak one, living in the rough of it, every time you go out is a challenge. I get that.



But with the setup it has now, there isn't enough actual character choice. You 'are the guy' because your the damn sun, and everything rotates around you. There isn't enough space nor mechanics to actually hide, and breathe, and wait for the battle to pass into another area because its always within or around you.

So you either cheesily farm on a level to get gear/money/progression, so you can survive- or just get enough upgrades and a mandatory silencer, so you can kill your way through till the AI breaks. Killing things that aren't straight up invincible and out spacing the enemies still they have their 'must of been the wind' moments.



For me right now, I feel and see the inspiration behind it. I want to support something unique that's trying to do something different. But unless they actually sit down and figure out what they want, and how they're going to do it-

In a way that 'feels' fair enough to actually be engaging or challenging to learn and get good with, I feel the game is going to build up too much on underlying issues to ever fix anything without completely scrapping starting all over.


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My suggestions for actually improving the game? An Ai overhaul that focuses on a moving battle on the map, perhaps growing or shrinking depending on who wins/loses or resolving just to start up in another location entirely-

Focused entry points or places NPC's come through- Even Airdrops from incoming ships would be better and more reasonable to react to then them suddenly spawning on you, behind a corner, or within a certain distance that you can obviously see.

Give me places to successfully hide- bins, piles of bodies, random debris. If I'm not suppose to fight and be 'the main character' don't force me to fight. Give me the option to be a coward and run or hide, to be tactical cuz the threat of facing people and these monstrosity head on is unrealistic.

Distractions, currently every gunshot that isn't suppressed causes a search of enemies in your location. Give me objects to interact with to cause chaos and subvert the enemies attention. Be the in the environment or something like grenades- flash or otherwise.




There are other frustrations, but it -is an alpha- and I am aware of that- It is why I left out the plentiful bugs or frustrations. Things like not getting quest rewards, losing large items you take in and successfully leave with, weapons not functioning properly or having effects that don't actually work, the character desyncing with the camera if your in game too long, your gun desyncing with the target reticle, large npcs getting stuck or camping the only exit, the fact you can't exit the way you came if things look too unfavorable, quitting losing all your gear as if you died without giving you warning of it doing so-

The inconsistency of options and sub-menu's not all having 'esc' defaulting to backing out or escaping even though it does in like a good 70% of the others.



Yep they're all there... But- for the love of god, the Grabber- Please, I hate it as it is, but why does it also spawn on the 'beginner' map? It can't be invincible, have full map awareness, never despawn, be extremely mobile, one-shot you, ignore silencers, and NEVER de-aggro from you as well.

If you going full Alien Isolation with this- you -have- to at least let it be distractable or be able to hide from it; within the map itself, it's a core part of that game for a reason or there's simply no counter play and that's not fun.

And- yeah. Hoping they really pull this off, but can't really nor would I recommend it to friends as it is.

Do NOT buy this game now if you want to play it, game is at early stage of development.

It's good concept of PVE "extraction shooter" with interesting game world, but game lacks optimization (perfomance not on top hardware is terrible), content, it has bugs and stupid realtime timer like it was in Icarus (if you ran out of time, you lose almost all game progress).

Leaving positive review only in hopes that problems will be fixed, if not - will change it to negative.

Would not recommend it at its current state