Recent reviews by Piano of Pain

My review has changed to negative. I had a long spiel written out, but here’s the tldr:

The dev's balance philosophy leans towards making players weak and unequipped to handle the abusive spawn rate of boss-level enemies. (This is not only based on the recent nerf, But several other factors. Including their statements about intentionally making primary weapons suck, and the horrible performance of the “fixed” armor system.)

The devs doubled down, and actively insulted and belittled the player base for disagreeing with this philosophy, check the subreddit and discord if you want to see it for yourself. It got so bad, the CEO himself had to do damage-control and make them shut up.

The CEO is getting a little too much praise for his “transparency.” Yes, he’s responding a lot. But it mostly consists of word-salad and nothing-burgers. The generic, corporate “We hear you,” without actually addressing the core issues people are having with the game. People complain about the game-master: “This is a new dynamic and unique system that brings excitement to the game. Blah blah blah.” People complain about the horrible selection of weapons: “We want to ensure that weapons are both fun and in line with their respective roles. Please continue to give us feedback. Blah blah blah.” There is no decisive action to remedy these problems. Just chatGPT-syle statements meant to make you “feel” like your feedback is being listened to.

I can’t recommend the game in its current state. The main issue with live service games is still present here. You can buy the game today, and tomorrow, it could morph into something completely different than what you originally paid for. I’ll probably change my review back to positive if things improve. But the game is in a very dangerous place right now. The goodwill they’ve built with the player base is starting to crumble. And only time will tell if this is just a small hiccup or the beginning of the end.

This game has good potential, it's unique, has a surprising level of depth, and the core gameplay loop is really addictive....at least it would be if it worked.

I thoroughly enjoyed the tutorial case because I felt like it gave a great taste of what the game should be. But unfortunately, it's all downhill from there. I've encountered several bugs ranging from:
- getting soft-locked and forced through walls,
- cases generating without any information to start your investigation
- having accepted side jobs instantly fail because the phone only rings once,
- info cards not updating after gathering information,
- the target being a completely different person from the one the game told me it was.

But by far the most annoyingly-broken part of the game is the murder cases. I had no new cases popup at all after the tutorial, only to find out that it was because I needed to generate a new city after finishing it. (The game does not tell you this.) But even when you do get a murder case, things aren't much better. The police will beat you to the scene most of the time. They shoot you onsite and contaminate the crime scene, making it nearly impossible to gather any evidence. If the murder happens in an apartment (most of them seem to) Then there will usually be a huge security barrier that keeps you from accessing the crime scene until the police get there. That's right, even if you get there in time, the game punishes you by locking you out and making you wait. (you can try vents, but it's a maze, and most of the time they don't lead you to where you need to go.)

After 14 hours of gameplay, the only coherent case I could actually solve was the tutorial case. Once the procedural generation kicks in, it's over. The RNG isn't determining what cases you get, it's determining whether or not you get a case that you can actually complete. And 9/10 times, you don't. Nothing will make you angrier than having to throw away cases that you've spent literal hours working on, because of bugs, bad RGN, and poorly thought-out mechanics.

Pre-ordered the silver edition, so I was lucky enough to actually get to play the game before the day 1 server-pocolypse. The gameplay is actually pretty fun overall, though there are a few changes from pd2 that piss me off.

- Armor got downgraded to a chunky, non-regenerating healthbar, making the armor bag the only deployable worth taking.
- challenge-based level progression
- half of the skills suck
- most of the weapons kinda suck

But I will say that most of the heists are actually really fun to play. And once you start leveling, some of the game's faults are alleviated as you're eventually able to throw a loadout together that fits your playstyle. Unfortunately, none of that matters when the servers go down. Wanna do a private lobby with your friends to avoid the broken matchmaking? Too bad! Wanna just play offline, by yourself, to avoid dealing with the broken servers altogether? Think again!

EVERYONE warned them about this DRM ♥♥♥♥, but they went ahead and did it anyway. Meaning that whenever Starbreeze decides to take the servers down, you lose the game that you paid $40-$90 for. That's why I'm not recommending this game unless they remove the always-online requirement. I don't care if the servers are fixed in a week. This game just released and it's already on life support.

I want to start off by saying that I love Rimworld and this DLC. That’s why this is a “recommended” review. But I do have some criticisms of Biotech that I believe are important to know if you’re considering purchasing it. So let me tell you everything good, bad, and ugly.

The mechanitor system is very fun and has a unique and engaging form of progression, and it incorporates a lot of lore into the main game. But the progression system is part of the issue. In order to build mechanator upgrades and better mechs, you need parts from the new boss mechanoids. You will have to grind bosses in raids that rapidly escalate in difficulty for what feels like insufficient reward. There is also a mandatory cooldown between each fight. Overall, it makes progression and upgrading very slow and strenuous past a certain point. I feel that an option to craft these parts at the end of the research tree would fix this.

The Genetics system is super cool and spices up gameplay in a way that I don’t think we’ve quite seen before. Definitely the main draw for a lot of people. Unfortunately, this is the part of Biotech that I take the most issue with. Firstly, extracting genes has a very long cooldown per person (25 days) you can extract from them again sooner than that, but they die. The genes that you do extract are also completely random, Meaning that you will often get useless duplicates, and really good genes that are forcibly combined with really terrible ones. The best way I can describe it is “loot boxes on crack.” You can get genes from trading and quests, but this is still complete RNG. I still haven’t actually implanted a gene set into any colonists. Because I’ve yet to acquire a worthwhile set and because after implanting, you have to wait 2 years…let me say that again 2YEARS to change their genes again. I’m not saying that any of these balancing factors are bad on their own, but the combination really brings down the potential of this feature

Babies and reproduction are great and I do love the way the reproduction system is handled, I only have 2 complaints. I feel like this should’ve been a free base game feature. This is something that is fundamental to storytelling and colony simulation. People have been wanting this since alpha. It does feel a little cheap to lock it behind a $25 DLC. My second complaint is the growth vats. The growth process is extremely slow and consumes an offensively high amount of food. It will still take several in-game years to produce something useful. And The resulting colonist also comes out dumb and with no passions. The whole incentive for the vats was supposed to be “quickly producing soldiers and workers” but the whole process is much more costly and time consuming than just plain old prisoner recruiting.

The main problem is overbalancing. So much effort went into preventing the mechanics from being overpowered, that the end result comes off as lackluster. I think that just a few more sliders in the settings would make Biotech nearly perfect. Most of the issues I’ve mentioned have been addressed with mods, but I have to review it based on the content you’re paying for, not the content that you can get for free. So why do I still recommend the DLC after all of this complaining? Because I love rimworld, and this is a great addition to the game despite its faults. All of the great things you’re hearing about Biotech are true, but I feel that It’s important to talk about the things that aren’t so great as well. Hope this is helpful.

I really wanted to like this game. I was a huge fan of the first game and I was really looking forward to the sequel. But the amount of bull**** I've had to deal with while trying to play this game is beyond unacceptable.

-Firstly, new mechanics. I find the new stamina and parkour system to be much worse than the first game. You'll likely find that most of your damage and deaths will come from falling off of buildings. Either because your stamina drains while you're climbing during the early game, or (more frequently) your character will refuse to grab onto ledges and you'll plummet to the ground. And the inconsistent glider and landing controls will only save you half of the time.

-Next Nighttime. The new "infection timer" forces you to speedrun every building you visit and every objective that you try to complete at night. Because if you don't get to the nearest UV zone in X amount of minutes, you just die. There are upgrades and consumables to help with this. But it's still a permanent annoyance that doesn't add much value to the gameplay. The volatiles have also been (mostly) replaced with new screamer zombies. And in addition to being a cliché from every zombie game ever made, if they see you, you will get a gta-style wanted level where infecteds will start chasing you until you find a UV light source. If you fight them, they'll just keep spawning. If you run, they will continuously spawn in front of you, from rabbit-holes, no matter where you go. And if you don't get away in time, THEN it'll finally spawn a volatile to insta kill you. In short, the new nighttime is just one long, irritating race.

-RPG Mechanics. The new leveling system means that zombies and people can take an entire weapon's durability to kill (depending on where you go) The combat isn't nearly as grounded as the first game. Instead of strikes that feel weighted and brutal, it's been replaced with a Dead Rising level of cartoon slap-stick. Enemies go flying all over the place at random, and one swing will hit 5 enemies at a time and often cause them to do the same stagger animation in perfect sync.

-Not much to say about the story. It's not horrible, but it's nothing special. The whole "Every choice you make will change the world" was grossly exaggerated and it ends up just being your average choice-based game where nothing really makes much of a difference after the mission is done.

-And finally, bugs and crashes. I've had my monitors shut off and my pc hard crash several times within the past 2 days while trying to play this game. All drivers are up to date and it is NOT a hardware issue. Eventually, it got to the point where I had to cut my losses and uninstall the game. I usually don't review games, but this time I had to make an exception. Because I was willing to forgive EVERYTHING that I previously mentioned, but I can not forgive a AAA game that is broken at launch. You may experience the same issue, different ones, or none at all. But it's worth knowing what you're getting into before you waste $60 and play past your refund window.

If I could choose between playing this heist again or dragging my ballsack across a mile of broken glass, I would start crawling immediately. Reused assets, lazy objective design, abusive enemy spawn locations and volume, low framerate (even on the best PCs), snipers shooting through solid objects. Absolute trash

I'd like to start off by saying that I used to really love this game. I'd even say it was my favorite. And even through the sh*tty console ports and the abusive amount of DLCs, I stayed loyal. But everyone has their limits. With the introduction of these new cash-grab microtransactions, and the gun "rebalances," I must say that both this game and overkill truly disgust me.

They generated a lot of hype with this road to crimefest event, but just what did we get? A massive update full of unwelcomed changes, just to squeeze more money out of their so called "precious community." Yes you could say that this is a community driven game (at least it used to be.) But at the end of the day, Overkill is a business, and like with most businesses, customer satisfaction takes a backseat to profit. And as long as we're willing to pour our money into their game, they don't give a rat's @$$ about us.

Not to mention that this new update of theirs has completely destroyed the modding community. And this was by no means a coincidence. They have apparently removed the “lua script” Which most of, if not all decent mods were based on. This is ironic considering some mods are even “Overkill approved.” And obviously “approved” and “supported” Are two entirely different words. The content creators have been very patient especially considering the fact that Overkill has made no attempt to contact nor workout any sort of compromise with these people. This, of course, won't matter to some players because not everyone uses mods in their game. But that does not justify overkill's actions in any way. The modding community is just as important to the overall community as everyone else. These people worked hard to add fun and enjoyable content to this game; only to have it all destroyed by this selfish company.

If you're new to this game or haven't purchased it yet. You should know that things used to be different. Back when the community played a huge role in the game, before we were relentlessly pelted with cheap gimmicky DLC's and microtransactions. This was a much better game when the company actually cared for and supported its community. But Overkill has unfortunately succumbed to corporate greed and we are now left with nothing more than the shell of a once amazing game.