Recent reviews by Justfitz

At present I haven't played a ton of Squad yet like some others who have left reviews, but I do have some experience with a couple of "genre competitors" for frame of reference.

Squad certainly has some things going for it. It's probably the most immersive mil-sim game I've personally played. Games like Hell Let Loose and Insurgency certainly have moments of high intensity, but rarely do they hit the cinematic high notes of Squad. The special effects and attention to detail on certain minor things do a ton of heavy lifting to sell you on a war movie like experience. It's been said that this game doesn't quite measure up to some others in the visual department, and while that may be true, you won't be getting top tier visual effects from those other games like you will here. These small things can often be the difference between total immersion and a video game that feels "video gamey."

The community is another of this games strengths. Of course this means you'll HAVE to play with a mic. This isn't Battlefield where you simply join a squad just for the convenient spawn point. People will be expecting to communicate with you, and there are good reasons for that. On the bright side, the community is strong. Even if you have no idea what you're doing, all you really have to do is say so. People generally won't hold it against you, it's a complicated game, and in my experience, any time I spoke up and said I was new, you'd have at least 3 other dudes saying "yea bro, me too, this is my third game so far." You'll still get the occasional dbag on voice chat, but no where near the rate of some of the industry giants. This is a grown mans shooter.

Unfortunately, there are some things I think this game just sucks at. People have expressed to me how good they think the tutorial is, and it is effective at teaching certain things, but it utterly fails at teaching the player about some of its specific yet critical systems. After several matches played, I'm still not totally sure how to read the map. It can be hard to even know what we should be doing, and to be honest, I've had squad leaders (who claimed to have 500+ hours in) give us orders and make decisions that were so completely arbitrary that it ended up wasting the entire squads game. A single miscalculation by a squad leader, or even yourself can be extremely punishing. You can end up stuck on the fringes of the map with no way to get back into the fight short of costing your team several tickets. Not many other shooters have the ability to waste your time quite like this one does.

On that note, I must say, while fully acknowledging my inexperience, I think the maps are just a touch too big. I realize that there has to be plenty of open space in order for certain things to work as intended, but you can literally get stuck walking for 20 minutes without a single thing happening. This is compounded by the stamina restrictions on sprinting. Like, I get it, we're soldiers carrying a lot of gear, but with the way they run, you'd think these soldiers never did PT in their life. A least put in an option for players to "jog" instead of full blown sprint. Moreover, I feel like the maps just have too many places to hide. It's not particularly satisfying to walk for 5 mins to get into combat just to be clipped as soon as you peak a corner by a dude that's been camping in a bush for half the game at 200 meters away. I know this game wants to stick to the spirit of authenticity, but I can't help but feel like some efforts could be made to make the maps flow a bit better.

Another constant issue is identifying enemies. Some maps have two factions playing one another where the only significant difference in each sides uniforms is that one wears protective eye gear and the other doesn't. This obviously wouldn't be a big deal if ally's had nameplates. Oh wait, they do.. But this has to be the worst possible implementation of ally nameplates I've ever seen. You have to basically aim at them for a second or so to even get them to pop up, but even then, it's basically a coin flip as to whether or not their nameplate will even pop up. It's mind boggling how inconsistent and janky this system is considering how important it is to be able to tell the difference between ally and enemy. I've heard the argument that "it's up to you to be able to identify enemies on your own, don't rely on the game to do the work for you." Ok, fair enough, then why even have the nameplate system at all? If you're going to have a system in place to help players tell the difference between teams, then do it correctly or don't do it at all. Commit to having it one way or the other, don't try to walk the line and then release something that is junk. Needless to say, you WILL be TK'ed in this game, A LOT. But, don't worry, you'll kill your teammates just as much.

The gun mechanics are likely going to be something that new players will have difficulty adjusting to upon playing for the first time. It can be hard to get a steady shot. And while I don't personally fault the game too hard for it's gun play, I think it could stand to be toned down a bit. You shouldn't have a situation where enemy soldiers can't land a single hit on each other at near point blank range due to suppression. I get that the situation is intense, but there's nothing authentic about missing all 30 rounds at 10 meters just because the enemy is shooting back. While you're at it, it wouldn't hurt to let players steady their guns a little quicker after sprinting. As it stands, a single player can take out most of a squad if they happen to be sprinting and his aim is already steady. It's just a bit too much of an edge. Oh, and it's also worth mentioning that suppression can sometimes be a bit too oppressive, even at range. If your whole body is behind a large wall and you haven't peaked yet, then a single rifle or MG probably shouldn't blur and shake your entire screen. Let the players play.

Just to wrap up, there are some great qualities about this game, I really want to like it, and I may continue to play just to see if my gripes can be overcome, but my initial impressions would have me recommending something like Hell Let Loose. That game has many of the positive qualities that this game does, but with far fewer major drawbacks. It is slightly more arcadey, but not by a significant enough margin that it won't scratch the same itch. The only thing of substance that separates Squad is its theme. If you want a mil-sim game but are over the WWII setting, then I can see why Hell Let Loose would be a tougher sell, but it really does do a much better job at integrating new players. Things just make sense in HLL, but that's not always the case here with Squad.

I hate to say it but this game is a step back from this developers previous "Souls" titles.

Now admittedly, it does have a boat load of content to keep you busy, but so much of it is uninspired regurgitated copy pasta open world fodder. People praised the game for its approach to open world game play and lack of hand holding, but once you dig beneath the surface you'll realize it's not much different from the Ubisoft nonsense that it's supposed to be a departure from. And although the game doesn't have 1000 way-points or map markers, you'll quickly realize it probably could have used a little bit of extra help in that regard. There really no reason this game couldn't have given you a quest log, especially given how illogical the side quests are and how easy they are to screw up, and typically once you screw up, you screwed up, you'll need to do a fresh run if you want to play out the content you missed.

But at least it still has the classic Souls game play we all know and love right? Eh.. Sometimes. There were a few new enemies and bosses that were legitimately a joy to fight and overcome. Although you probably won't be feeling that way anymore after fighting that very same boss for the 3rd time (if not many more). Sadly though, many of the bosses just don't seem to be designed for classic Souls players like myself. They heavily push you in the direction of co-op, AI summons, and/or ash summons, and even if you choose to play that way, you'll quickly discover that the boss AI is no better at handling multiple targets here than it was in previous Souls titles.

The boss design at times can be very questionable. I can't recall many bosses in the old games that would trigger a counter attack during an obvious opening when the player expects to be able to take their "turn." But in this game, there are a ton of bosses designed like this. This can often lead to players swinging at the boss and hoping for the best. This teaches terrible habits, and this might be the first time a Souls game ever taught me to be a worse player. These bosses can be straight up aggressive. After dodging like a dozen attacks in a single string and melting almost your entire stamina bar with little margin for error, you can still be punished for attacking the boss during their "downtime." What this often leads to is playing a hit and run style in which you do your best to build your character around hit trades. I can't help but feel like making your game with hit trading in mind is just poor design. It's extremely difficult as a solo melee build to completely master a boss to the point where you barely take hits. They are simply too unpredictable and way too volatile, and certain bosses are designed in such a way that if you're playing solo, you're basically funneled into playing a "meta build." Here we have a game with the most build variety and itemization choices of any in its genre, yet the boss design will force you into a box in short order. Only very specific character builds can truly be effective, and it's worse here than its been in any other Souls game. It's almost as if From Soft said screw it, we know people look stuff up about our game, so lets ramp up the challenge to the extent where they HAVE TO. Solo blind runs are straight up punished.

They also turned up the speed and flurry of attacks enemies will throw at you of almost all the enemies in the game. This would be totally fine if From Soft did what they normally do and compensated by making the player faster as well, but they didn't. Enemies will attack with more relentless intensity than they do in DS3, but without any changes or buffs to player movement of consequence. This is yet another reason players feel funneled into a meta build. The fundamental mechanics players are given to interface with just isn't enough to deal with the kinds of things they throw at you. Now, this isn't to say it's impossible to beat this game solo. I and many others have done it. But the question is, was it fun? Was the challenge rewarding? Did I feel like I learned to be a better player as a result of this increased challenge? The answer is no. If anything, it was the total opposite. I rarely ever felt like I mastered the mechanics of a boss. It was more like I simply discovered the best build to use against them and cheesed my way to victory. Totally unsatisfying.

On top of all this, prepare yourself for performance drops, super underwhelming graphics, an unmemorable soundtrack, a formulaic open world, mini dungeons that are comparable to optional Chalice dungeons in Bloodborne, and terrible level scaling of the enemies. It's kinda sad that the best parts of the game is the legacy dungeons. Some of them are really well designed. But it begs the question, if that's the best part of the game, then why not make the entire game like that? Much like Souls 1? That's probably what this game should have been. Another interconnected series of dungeons/areas without the open world, or at least much smaller open ended areas. As it stands the game is way too long and bloated anyway. They could have easily made this game half as long and it probably would have been better for it. And that's saying something coming from me, because I used to always say: "the more souls content, the better! I'll never get tired of this!" Well, I was wrong. They found a way to even hit my limits, largely because much of the content on offer was done so poorly. Think about it, there's like ~150 bosses or some crazy number like that in the game, but only like ~10 of them are truly unique. That's sad. They even reuse bosses that have no reason to be reused.. Like lore significant ones. Mind boggling.

It's worth mentioning that there are a few things this game does do well, though I'm not really sure it's worth bringing up since it's all been said already to the point of exhaustion. But I can't help but feel like a lot of the praise this game gets is probably from people who either haven't beaten the game, or don't have that much previous Souls experience to draw upon. Just know, the way things are in Elden Ring isn't the way things always were. It can be better. Way better.

5/10 - Very very mid.

It's been a rough launch for Halo Infinite. I dropped the game for awhile, but just decided to return after the recent update. I was interested to see the new maps they put in of course, but what I was really curious about was the buff to mouse and keyboard.

I always wanted to play Halo on PC with my mouse. That was the dream. But then MCC came out and it didn't take the entire PC community to realize how poorly mouse and keyboard performed compared to controllers. This imbalance carried over to Infinite as well. Controller became the dominant input method, and mouse and keyboard virtually became a meme.

I'm very pleased to report that with the recent update, 343 finally nailed the feel of the game on mouse. It can finally compete (and sometimes out-compete) with controller players. Thank God. All that's left is for the game to get even more content, cause content releases have been slow. Either way, might as well check the game out again regardless of how you prefer to play, it's free, and has a few new things on offer since launch.

Oh, and 343, bring the mouse and keyboard change over to MCC plz!