Recent reviews by Melcx

(-)
Graphics are hideous after the huge downgrade (because of oculus quest), I've the feeling to play a mobile game.
I get freezes at the start of any game, really not enjoyable in vr.
Vignette effect could be added when moving.
Level design isn't really good.

(+)
Gameplay is quite good, offering interesting tactic possibilities.
Controls are okay, could be better.

I'll re-check the game later.

Cliché au possible mais très réussi.
Gameplay parfois un peu frustrant, mais ça fait parti du délire.
Super défouloir tryhard, très axé mouvement.

Si tu aimes les ambiances bien pesante, la coopération, la difficulté tant au niveau stratégique que tactique, et que tu as au moins deux potes pour partager cette aventure suicidaire, mais qu'attends-tu malheureux !?!

Sans déconner ça faisait des années que j'attendais un jeu de cette trempe.
Le jeu est en early access, il manque du contenu en termes de monstres et d'objectif (même si le jeu parvient encore à surprendre vers les 3 dernières maps), mais ce qui y est présent est très propre.

Je n'en attendais pas tant de ce jeu, mais il m'a très agréablement surpris !

+ bonne ambiance, expérience de jeu plaisante (sauf ces ptn de moustiques dans la zone de la jungle), un aspect un peu exploration (sans être un monde ouvert)
+ graphisme chatoyant, beau pixel-art, animations soignées, pas de bugs à noter
+ durée de vie correcte (~8-9h), un peu courte pour le prix non soldé (le jeu reste cependant d'une très bonne qualité)
+ une difficulté interessante, le jeu est plutot simple mais certains passages sont de vrais challenges
+ histoire plutot cool, un univers unique

- les enigmes sont un peu sous-exploitées, dommage

parfait pour détester ses amis !

Un jeu cool. Terriblement violent, difficile. Mais cool.

Tout est vraiment très bien lié et stylé au niveau visuel et sonore, les feedbacks sont super. Faut aimer les jeux de rythmes.
Juste 20€ je trouve excessif, je verrai plus 15€ max.

cannot launch the game, tested countless of fixes.

A pretty good game ! Not the best indie game of the year, but it was quite entairtaining.

+ The surviving mechanics are simple but do the job. you'll have to do choices to higher your chances of surviving or to save people (you'll get rewards if they finally get to their destinations).
+ Exploring is very addictive. Will I get what I need to save my passenger ? What the heck is this place ? What happened here ? Those are the question you'll often face in this phases. Then you'll get back in the calm of your train.
+ The story... Quite good, but very hard to understand, I needed to really think about it to reconnect all the pieces together to understand it (but I love it !). When you're transiting between station (where you get resources by exploring), you must maintain your train, so you can't just stay here to listen the conversations of the passengers, making you thankful when you hear something that helps you to understand what's happening.
+ very good ambience for a pixel art game, beautiful sceneries, nice transitions during train travel.

- Translations aren't always perfect, making it a little harder to investigate in the story (don't worry, their english is better than mine xD ).
- Sometimes "cliché" (the ending), but the overall story is good enough to forget it.

It's not very long to finish, almost 5h for me, but it wasn't a problem since it was good and never boring.

Pro :
- good game mecanisms, more accessible that older episodes.
- nice combat system and customization possibilities.
- good graphisms, not ultra HD textures, but the landscapes are wonderful, really good art in general.
- there is a coop, but...

Before Cons:
- game lower its resolution when fps are dropping, at 40fps (you can turn off this terrible feature, but it's enabled by default). Must be why so many people claims that graphisms are ugly / blurry.

Cons (mostly technical, I don't think they'll be solved in the future by the devs) :
- the coop system, the worst point of the game: you cannot just watch a cinematic with your mates, no, you must disband the group EACH TIME there is a cinematic, quit the mission, rejoin the group and then restart back the mission.
There is 3-4 ways to join your mate, and only 1 will actually work. They solved a lot of disconnect/joining bugs, they is almost not bugs anymore.
How should it be ? Like in every other good game, the players join a group, and can watch and play every bit of the game together. If a moment must be played solo for staging reasons, just make them play it solo, then wait other players at a "checkpoint".
- Performances... Meh, very CPU consuming (thx to the useless Denuvo ?). A lot of people are complaining about the performance, with my i7 2600k and my GTX 980XLR8 I got 60fps most of the time, going 40 or 90 sometimes.
- can't turn off motionblur,
- really bad AA. Seriously, in 30 min, I achieved to set up a better TAA in Unity (with a plugin) than they did in their game. The TAA only works on moving object. When the camera is still, their is just no AA (it doesn't collect samples over the screen, it collects just over time). FXAA is just ultra blurry, as always, no SMAA implementations.

Long story short : I would recommend it only for learning basic shader writing, but not for working with for game production.


Pro :
- intuitive, nice GUI, node system is good
- lots of functionnalities / possibilities
- high compatibility (platform, hlsl & glsl supported)
- fast & real time shader compilation
- model loading, procedural texture, auto normalmap generation, blurring shader.

Cons
- impossible to work with your own text editor (visual studio or notepad++ for instance)
- text editor is custom and not really good (bad selection behaviour, no "alt-drag" support, lots of bugs, and so on...)
- software is rendered at 60fps constantly, even when unfocused, can be annoying when you're working. It should be rendered when you click / move mouse, when a parameter or everytime when you have a realtime effect (with a pause option). The software juste use all your GPU.
- not really optimised / reactive, when you have too much nodes, the text editor is lagging >_<
- frustating lack of lots of nodes functionnalities : no way to change rendertarget size, can't redraw in the same render target (no scene node), texture cannot gives their sizes to next nodes, lacks of lots of math operations...
- no way to go from one render target to another, quite frustrating to compare color precisely (export to a file isn't fast nor productive, they should be visible and updated in independant windows).
- you cannot choose texture operation export format (blurring and normalmaps are RGBA8).
- software claim PostFX are fully supported, but you cannot resize render targets, which make descent glow impossible (no downscaling).
- only one camera possible.
- devs sometimes don't answer questions, I hope shadertool 2 will solve a lots of these problems (mainly the scene node and RT size).