Recent reviews by BeerGuttBill

(TLDR)
Have you completed the main game and other challenge DLCs and want more of this game and it be more unforgiving?
If Yes this may be for you.
If not I would skip it and just play the main game over.

You have 2 more crew members for a total of 9 but that is fine as all the guns in the B-17 never need to have someone fetch ammo for them. So some people like your tail gunner will spend the entire flight in their position unless they get injured and need to heal. Great.

There is a lot less upgrades and the difficulty ramps up quicker as it assumes you have played the base game. This is also fine. However it can cause a problem....You can progress the difficulty way quicker than you unlock upgrades and this DLC REQUIRES a lot of grinding in the secondary missions for you even have a chance.


USAAF can be absolutely unforgiving and some cases unbalanced and unfair.

You get fewer bombs to drop so misses often lead to failing to complete your objective.

Some planes that you fight do so much damage it can cut your B-17 in half at the tail or wings in a single volley if you do not have strong enough fuselage. These same planes out-range your gunners even at max skill with max rank .50 cals and can fly at high altitude. Even if you have armour for your plane to survive, your crew will be downed inside if they are hit by only 3-4 rounds with the max possible armour they can wear. So unless you are very good at telling your pilot to dodge at the right time. These planes often result in a crewman or two being downed or an engine falling off your B-17.

Now that is just a handful of planes that do that but no matter how well you armour your plane your gear always have the same health and love to fall off the plane if someone has so much as nervous twitch near them. So even if you complete the mission you still have to do an emergency landing at the end which may still destroy the plane and kill crewmen.

"But isn't that just like normal Bomber Crew?" you ask. Yes but if you loose a plane even half way through the DLC you got to get really lucky that the secondary missions that spawn are the easier ones or your going to be pulling your hair out trying to complete end game difficulty missions with a starter plane.

This is also a problem in base game bomber crew but is far less pronounced because the difficulty ramp up is more gradual and there are way more secondary missions that can spawn that are lower difficulty to grind.

My first attempt went fine till about half way through my plane fell apart from a single volley, i tried to continue the campaign but the plane and crew would just die every mission and there was no way for me to recover. So I started a new campaign and I won't lie I save scummed with ALT+F4 any time i lost a plane or even crewman after a while because I was dammed determined to complete this DLC out of spite.

Sadly steam doesn't have a "Maybe" option for reviews. I did enjoy the different style that the B17 brings forth and having more crew to manage was neat but loosing a plane to a single volley downing 4 out of your 9 crewman and having that instantly snowball to your plane falling apart in less than 10 seconds was not fun.


If you like bomber crew and want the hardest it can offer USAAF is for you.
I honestly think that if it was stated all over that this is a challenge DLC that is meant to be unfair it would be way better received.

Hope this helped and enjoy the game if you get it.

Have ever wondered what space mining might look like in the next 100 years?

This would probably be it.

Delta V: Rings of Saturn is a 2D game about mining the rings of Saturn with all the technology that exists today. It looks very simple and at its core it is but if you give it a chance and be patience with it you will start to learn some of the complexities.

Even though you can completely ignore mining and instead become a pirate, bounty hunter, or even a ring racer every career does require a good amount of patience as travelling through the rings takes a lot of time if you don't already know of a good place to auto pilot to (fast travel).

So how does the game play loop go if you wanna mine? Well you make sure your ship is in order and then you hit launch. From there it will show you a screen of the rings and ask where you would like to launch to. Launching the the default point costs very little money but its the furthest point out on the rings. You can launch deeper but the deeper you start the more it costs to get there.

Why go deeper? Well there is a lot of other ringas (miners) in this area which leads to collisions, "Accidentally" shooting each other with your tools you use to break up them rocks, roasting each other with your torch (main thruster) and over all just being in each others way. As well as the rocks are not very dense and are mostly water in the outer ring so they are worth very little. However it is one of the safest places to start out.

So you learn the basics, blast some rocks, scoop up the resources till your hold is full then return home. Upgrade your ship with any spare funds you might have repair everything and go again. Of coarse there is more to it but thats the general gist of it.

A small bit of advice if you do decide to play, prioritise getting an MPU (Mobile Processing Unit) upgrade for your cargo hold. It processes your raw material at a loss but stores it in the ship rather than the cargo bay, letting you carry WAY more ore! Most MPUs also process water into ReMass (Reaction Mass, Fuel for your thrusters, torch and reactor.)

Once you got a handle on the game then you start delving deeper into the the rings and that is where the game starts to get more interesting. As you fly around you can stumble upon all kinds of things, ranging from stations, moonlets, old mines (the boom kind), pirates, destroyed stations, life pods, bodies floating in space, rogue AI cargo containers and even derelict ships you can claim for yourself to take back to the station and add to your fleet.

If any of this sounds interesting and you don't mind a slower game. Give Delta V: Rings of Saturn a try. If you don't like it but realise its well built unique game maybe don't refund it and show the creator some love by mentioning it to a friend.

I personally love the game but recognise its not for everyone. I may write a guide in the future for the game as there is a bit of a lack of info about it for those who are struggling.

Stay safe Ringas.

I got HardSpace: Shipbreaker during early access before the Javelin was in at all and before most of the bugs were fixed. Having just finished the released version of the game I feel comfortable recommending this game in its released state.

Gameplay is for the most part the same throughout with small challenges added on that over all slow you down. Some might even need some problem solving skills to get around. The biggest of these will be pressurisation of compartments in the ships. There are other hazards like fuel lines and electrical hazards yes but those (sadly in my opinion) have been toned down in the final release to be less likely to cause a full ship destroying explosion so a mistake or two will be costly (maybe even killing you) but unlikely to completely remove the value of the ship.

Pressurised sections of the ship though will provide some headaches as in higher tier ships you will very often find non functioning air vents meaning you will have to get creative in venting air. Now a cool way of doing this in the beta was tethering things from outside rushing in and making quick cuts. Causing the whole outer hull to launch into the processor. Now however venting near the outer hull will 9 times out of 10 cause that bit of hull to break into pieces which really slows things down as it is a royal pain to clean up.

At its core Hardspace: Shipbreaker is just a physics simulation with a goal and some hazards which makes for some real relaxed gameplay. You can also turn on Ace of Spades by Motorhead in the background and launch yourself all over the bay and through the ships with your grapple, cutting like a madman trying to finish a whole Gecko (one of the larger ships) in a single shift. Yes that can be done if your a good shot with the splitsaw and your tethers but my record on the early access was 2 shifts and after release 3. Over all its pretty open for you to play in what ever flavour suits you that day.

The Story is not some grand narrative. This I think works in the games favour though. This is not a story about one man fighting the alien horde to save humanity, its not a story about revenge, its not even about love. Its a story I think many a blue collar roughneck will know and resonate with somewhat. Its about people just trying to get by in a world where indentured servitude is a very real thing that happens.

You will see some say "the story is uninspired and boring". Well ya....most of our life stories are and I think that is what they were aiming for with this iteration of it. The bit that really nails it all together for me is the music and Weaver the foreman. The music is top notch for me but that is subjective and after over 100 hours of it I have grown a bit tired of it. But I will never skip that intro scene.

"Each day he steps into the yard, to earn his wages working hard. I pray to the stars and heaven above, to return my daddy to those he loves. If there comes a time he and death meet, bless the next cutter that takes his seat."

This is a prayer every wife and child of a miner, driller, fisher and every other highly dangerous blue collar job that makes our lives better say every day when they go to work. Even if no one else appreciates that thank you to everyone who worked on this game to put this tribute to the blue collar working man (yes and woman) in the medium I love.

An important note this really isn't a game that stands on story alone and if your not grabbed by the gameplay the story isn't going to be some grand amazing narrative that keeps you around. More like an extra helping of food you like, if you don't like the food to begin with the extra bit ain't gonna keep ya around.

I know a few people like Weaver, the old dog of their trade that do their best to steer the young bucks in the right direction and I believe both (the Dev and later the Pro) voice actors did a great job at portraying this. The other actors do pretty well too. Nothing that stands out as a bad in writing or voice acting to me. There is some things that hint to a different direction they were planning on taking the story but for now it seems they have abandoned that idea. I am sure we will see more to do with that in the future if the game sells well.

The few hiccups i did run into were only that the game freezes for half a second when switching to a fully upgraded scanner for the first time in a shift.

TLDR

What? you didn't read that? Really? I spent like an hour and some writing this for you.... and it takes like a minute to read.....two tops...go back and read it please? no?! Sigh fine. :P

The game is solid now with 99% of the bugs gone and the few that are there like double spawning is only a minor annoyance. It is good fun to boot up when you just wanna relax and cut up a ship for an hour, the story is a great tribute to the working man and the music/atmosphere is awesome.

$45 CAD is a bit more than what I payed and would most likely have payed if I didn't own it already but I don't think its completely unreasonable for the 30-50 hours you will get out of a single play through if your just taking your time. Right now its $35 CAD and that is a good price id say so if it looks interesting try it out.

Good luck Cutters.

Well MH:R was interesting to me do to mainly having friends that also have it, however by the time I was actually able to play it most of my friends were starting to hit early burnout so I can't say a huge amount on the Co-op Experience other than its an improvement. If you have played world you pretty much know what to expect from Rise.

I am going to leave this review as negative but only because steam doesn't have a "maybe" or "Meh" option, yes the bug soured my taste for the game a lot and thats how things go but otherwise its a fairly well put together game. I also prefer World's ascetic over Rise.

So I can't for or against getting Rise, if you got some bodies who want you to get it? Maybe ya its got a pretty nice co-op experience in the bit that I played. If your going to play almost exclusively solo and just want a monster hunter game? If you don't have MH: World I can recommend that, had a lot of fun with it and they play pretty close to the same so you should have some really good fun with it for less than it would cost you for Rise right now.

Have fun gaming all.

*Below is my struggles with the bug and my original review while affected by the bug*

UPDATE3: They have just released a patch that has fixed the game for me. I am thinking I will post a proper review later but keep the below bit attached for posterity. If you are having the bug still, verify your files and hopefully it updates, if not fallow the instructions in the game's news feed. I will keep comments and the discussion below active for about the next week in case any other people still have the issue.

Can't recommend buying the game until the they fixed the save game bug. Understand this isn't a loss of progress issue. You CAN NOT play the game at all if you are affected by the save game bug. Both my Desktop and gaming laptop are affected by this bug and currently as of posting there is no fix. If you want to gamble with your money that is your choice but personally I would wait to buy until this bug is patched out. If I find a fix that works for me I will attach a link to this review and will remove/change my review once/if they fix this bug.

UPDATE2: It would appear that the bug may only be related to certain hardware (mainly Acer) so if you are afflicted by this bug try on other PCs you have but before turning the game on turn off steam cloud saving on the new pc to prevent using the bugged save from the initial bugged PC. Capcom is looking into it (so they say).

UPDATE: I have fixed this bug on my laptop. It appears that the bug is caused by the game and steam cloud save not playing nice. I *THINK* this fix only works if you have the game on your main drive {usually (C:) } The way I fixed this bug was by turning off cloud save (stay with me those who are about to punch their monitor). This is under steam settings/cloud. Make sure "Enable Steam Cloud Sync..." is NOT checked. Close steam. Next go into Program Files (x86)/steam/Userdata. In there will be a file 191411892, copy that to your desktop for safety then delete the one in Userdata.

Once thats done restart your PC. Then start the game. Hopefully that fixes it for you. I also hear that the demo has its own number file so you may need to delete that too. If anyone else finds fixes to the save game bug post them in a comment below. I will keep this review here (negative) until this bug is patched by the devs. GL guys.

I love Kingdom Under Fire. There is no other game that blends hack and slash to RTS quite like it. I WANT to love Kingdom Under Fire 2.....But as an MMO it is terrible and as a KuF game its probably the worst of them all. First I want to talk about the things they got right.

First off the fact that EVERY model on the battlefield has stats and is calculated for is probably the most impressive demonstration on good coding there is in an MMO. If there is a unit with 10 models, and you swing your sword and hit 7/10 models and only kill 3 the units health reflects that as 30% of the unit's health bar is permanently lost. (Yes you can revive those units with spells but otherwise they ain't coming back). And yes even basic gaming hardware can run the game surprisingly well.

There statement of having over 10'000 units on screen all fighting and being calculated for is true.

The combat with your units in a giant battle does look and feel great and from level 1 - 25 (max level is 30) the game can be very satisfying to play.

The final plus is really only for KuF fans. The graphics and the look of the units are very much styled to the previous games which is a pleasant sight as a lot of MMO versions of games tend to depart from their established look. However the game seems to have lost its dark tone a bit sadly. Not every game needs next gen graphics so long as it doesn't look terrible and fits with the style of the game and I would say KuF2 accomplishes that.

But sadly that is the end of the good sides... Where to start on the bad? I don't even know to be honest there is a lot.
I think Blueside was so focused on the technical limitations that they completely forgot this was supposed to be an MMO which is already outside their scope of expertise and it really shows that they don't know what they are doing.

Lets start with the part I didn't talk about in relation to the gameplay: Commander only missions. You start of the game controlling only your commander (the player character) and a handful of abilities based on the class you picked.

Which class you pick vastly effects how you experience commander only areas of the game from 1- 25. I played up to 30 on both spellsword and berserker, but have played all the classes. Berserker struggles hard with the fewer tankier enemies you find in these areas. So depending on the class you pick vast areas of the game will be a slog.

There also isn't much skill to the abilities/attacks you use in a fight either, it really comes down to is it better for crowds or single target and then cycling the abilities you need through cooldowns. So you really begin to loathe commander only areas by the end. Finally you have 1 of 2 choices of "specialisation" for each class which for the most part break down to crowd damage or single damage. "Fun" choices...

OK so the commander only areas are not that fun. What about the areas where you command your merc army? Well thats were KuF shines and really the only part they got right as I said above but it has issues too.

Controls could be better for movement and other commands but are not terrible. Although if you move your ranged units and forget to set them to attack or defensive stance they will just stand there like idiots. Unlike previous games your character is not attached to a squad so a lot of people forget to even move them up to the fight.

RTS is kind bold statement for this game as there really isn't any advanced tactics in the game. Unfortunately there arn't many units that hard counter each other than spearmen vs cavalry but the funny thing there is that spearmen counter ALL melee units as they have a stance that makes a spear wall which prevents everything from getting into melee with them.

During your play through you will see a lot of other players using the same 10 kinds of units over and over. These units have some trait about them that makes them ridiculously strong and thus why everyone uses them. This I can see making PVP infuriating as it becomes a game of who has the more broken units.

In KuF2 you are a mercenary commander and thus you can command units from most factions in the KuF universe. Although not all units are the same. They come in 3 different qualities. White, Blue, and purple. Sounds great right? White units are the cheapest but the weakest units. Blue are the middle ground, and purple is the best of the best.

Well about that.....White units are near useless and purple units are almost required for end game content. As well as once a unit is level 30 and all their gear and abilities are maxed out that is as good as they can get and a white unit will get stomped by a blue unit 10 levels below it that has basic gear. These massive power gaps make around 75% of the units in the game just not even worth getting.

You also can't just buy most units from a merchant but have to get lucky to have them drop from missions. Making trying to get stronger in this game incredibly frustrating. I actually have a way to solve that too. Simply allow a Rank 5 level 3 unit upgrade in quality and be reset to level 1 rank 1. Thus allowing you to get white units and eventually train them into hardened veteran purple units. But as it is now you have to role the dice.

Did I mention that the loot pool in raids where you get a lot of purple units is shared? Meaning if your with randoms you have to role a Need against everyone else in that party for them.

You can also get special units such as scorpions, air units such as storm riders (giant hawks) and steam tanks. These units are powerful though and thus there is a limit on how many you can bring in. Usually 1 or 2 of each. This is plenty of slots as you can only bring a max of 3 units into a fight at a time.

However either as a bug or a MASSIVE oversight by Blueside this limit is PER PLAYER.....meaning in a standard mission with a limit of 2 scorpions you could bring in 10 scorpions and just spam their shockwave ability which had to be nerfed funny enough....

Remember how I said you can give your troops better gear? Well you don't actually "give" them better gear you just throw grindstones at it to level it up and make it better. So rather than this being an interesting choice of pros and cons its just higher level = better.

This is also the case for the players gear as well sadly....but you get 2 choices of sets which buff a few of your abilities. Exciting choices! You also need better gear to do end game content and I really do mean NEED. Towards the end of the game you will start getting gear with a GB score which stands for God's Blessing. Think of it as a power score....Issue is you will run into missions with a min required gods blessing score and if its too low you will not only struggle but everyone else in the mission with you gains a debuff.

This leads to you getting kicked from any group content you don't have the gear for. Inclusive isn't it.

Finally we have story: I kid you not don't even really remember any of it. It really isn't that interesting, is interspersed into sleep therapy worthy missions and delivered almost entirely in chat bubbles at the side of the screen or in conversations. None of which are voice acted. There are cut scenes which are but you can count them on both hands. Which is likely a blessing as the voice acting is....technically right? But you can tell that its a translated script and the voice actors just read it how it was written.

I could type a lot more on this game and how to fix some of these issues but I am hitting steam's word limit so I will end my review here.

Kingdom Under Fire 2. I want to love you but you have way to many issues. So until you deal with them this is where you and I part ways.

Buy the game if it seems interesting but don't expect it to be your main game for years to come. The current price of 13.99CAN is reasonable enough for the 20 or so hours of enjoyment you will get out of it. Maybe one day they will fix the game.