Recent reviews by Typedeph

I won't mince my words here.

The problem with this game is that it's a great proof of concept game with a poor follow through. The game's core premise is great, huge deathmatch military sim style arena, the problem is everything else. After the game concept's hype has worn off you'll get tired of things like: getting killed by random teamates, not obtaining chicken dinner because of 360 spinning map hackers with snap headshotting hacking, the overall lag that is noticably apparent throughout such as when falling from the plane onto the ground for the first time. You may even notice that you feel like there is plenty of room for other innovation that just didn't make it.

In my opinion the worst bit is the teamkilling that seems to be pathetically rampant. Just look up "sxk7 team killing" and you'll also note they have a no self-defense policy tolerance. That is, if you've vested 25 minutes in a game and notice team killing intent you can (ahem will) be reported for defending yourself. The best part of this joke is that you can then sign yourself up for another round of this ridiculous behavior. Particularly I've noticed this community's hunger for team killing or finding workarounds for getting you killed just to loot your body. In fact, you'll notice many times your teamates are watching and waiting to loot your body first after an encounter.

Take the above, mix it in with the fact that in the NA server you will almost never be assigned to an English speaking team, and you have a pathetic toxic Tower of Babel of an experience.

See here is the problem. There needs to be NOTICABLE mechanics to prevent such toxicity. For example, remove friendly fire, allow for a no loot friendly option in matchmaking, enable some type of post friendly fire vote kicking, and I'm sure there are many other direct alternatives.

This is the type of problem that primes people hop off this for the best next alternative to this battle royale genre.

TL:DR
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So here's the thing, if your not going to be playing with friends and you intend to play group fps matches, don't buy this game. You vest to much time per round only to get it stolen by ridiculous problems. To be honest, with the rampant hacking your probably better off not buying this period.

The game is solid. Its got great mechanics and a system that will keep you engaged enough to continue playing.

What do I mean by the system? The customability of everything. This is one of the few games (are there others?) where you can switch out the major defining characters of your gun. For your main gun you can swap out the following (with a few exceptions to particular guns - I'm looking at you tactical smg): receiver, muzzle, barrel, magazine, scope, stock, weapon tag, camo. In this case the only one's that really make real impact are the first 6 not including the scope. From that you can change any characteristic of your gun: recoil, range, damage, spread, ammo, reload, firerate and run.

Ever wanted a game that let you see what a machine gun with a sniper barrel looks like/does? this is it. A sniper riffle with an assualt riffle style barrel and a silencer? this is it. The amount of customability in this game is just like that.

Although this game is great I have to give a couple of personal cons. Some items are blantantly superior than others when trying to obtain a particular spec. For example, the vulcan r19 rift muzzle vs the armcon two-step am22 when trying to obtain highest damage and low spread. The difference 1 dmg with less spread all over. The best examples of this though would be your gear. Your first gernade is inherently weaker than the he gernade because the he gernade has that much more radius yet has just as much impact if not more. This is to the extent of you see an he gernade you know you died. Even worse than this would be the combat knife you start with. It's called combat knife mk 1. Really. The reason for this is because you can later unlocked combat knife mk 2 followed by a (faster and higher damage) machete.
What do all of these items have in common though? the better version is a higher level. I don't have a problem with developers providing early access weapons, its a great way to make money and leave things free to play. It keeps the developers paid and the players with more loot opportunity to support the developers. The problem I do have with this is that these items take more time to obtain for absolutely no reason. In a competitive game I don't understand why better items aren't just default rather than available and by default what I mean is that you don't have to learn to play with an inferior product just to obtain a better one.
What makes a balanced game is that everything is unique. I feel that these mmo starter style items are killing parts of the game.

Aside from all those negative aspects I feel the ends justifies the means. The game is great. Especially when you obtain higher levels and have been able to unlock permanent items. Everything is unlockable from in-game play so it is a true free to play game. The only things not unlockable are some camo and heroes which are template gear and weapon setups with a skin. Everyone should definitely at least give this game a chance.

I really can't wait to see what else PWE can do with this customability in future FPSs.