I've been a fan of the 40k setting since ~2000. It's my favourite sci-fi setting, by all rights I should be hooked on this game. And yet I can't get into it. Owlcat seems to think constant flowery, overly verbose writing is good writing. When there's a noble in his comfortable chambers trying to impress someone, or if it's narrative description, sure, that works. When a naval officer is trying to maintain order in a rapidly escalating situation and slowly, theatrically vomits up a stream of dramatic adjectives, it absolutely does not. All it makes me think of is a bottom tier writer being very impressed with himself because he blew way past the acceptable word count and married a thesaurus, which as one might suspect absolutely destroys immersion. That works hand in hand with the voice acting. Everyone is giving a very slow, theatrical performance. Again, that works for some characters and situations, but for most it does not. I don't blame the VA themselves for this, but whoever directed them completely missed the tone for nearly every character in nearly every scenario. And as a minor pet peeve: every single time the RT's family name is uttered Von Valancius the speaker emphasises the Von part, which is the exact opposite of how to use that word in a name. It also seems the writers mixed up 40k and Dune when describing Navigators. Maybe the lore was changed at some point but in my older black library novels every Navigator is described as a pale, frail human with a third eye. That's the only mutation any of them have in any of the material I've read, whereas in this game if they mutate like a particularly ambitious Chaos champion. These things together just ruin the narrative for me. When it comes to gameplay, well, it's Owlcat. Rather than easing you into a progression system you get a whole bunch of unexplained options at once and have to spend a good hour reading tool tips to get an idea of what you're doing. Personally I'm kind of done with that.
Let's discuss the elephant in the room first: the controls take some getting used to. Initially your movement is extremely limited; you can move forward at various speeds, pitch up and down and turn left/right. You can't strafe, roll (though there is a dodge roll), or move directly up or down, nor can you reverse. This is not Descent or Forsaken, and the first impression isn't great. Stick with it however and you soon get a different ship and acquire new Rites (movesets really) that give you more options. Very early on you get one that allows you to hold RMB to continue going in one direction while you can turn freely, and another to leap at enemy ships. The way that works is you target an enemy, hit a button, and teleport behind them. Again this takes some getting used to but once you do you'll find you don't really miss the regular strafing or vertical movement from the aforementioned older games. Story-wise, it's a tale of guilt and revenge. Maybe not the most original but it works well enough. I've seen some negative comments about the voice acting and don't quite understand them; Nara (the player character) can sound a bit dramatic at times but for someone carrying the burden of guilt of killing an entire planet and its population I think it's understandable. Graphically it's pretty impressive both out in space and in interior locations. I have no idea what kind of budget this game had but considering the price tag I reckon it's punching well above its weight in that regard. Sound and music are fine, neither really stands out whether positively or negatively. All in all it's quite a fun game and I'm glad I stuck with it despite the somewhat underwhelming first impression due to the limited movement early on. It's an arcade space shooter with a moveset that is rather limited at first but quickly turns into something quite unusual but powerful. Give it a try, and if after acquiring some Rites it still doesn't click you can always refund it.
just stick to text. Every voice in this game sounds AI generated so the entire thing comes across as a shitpost.
This is based off the demo which you can check out for free. In essence this is a 2D walking simulator with no narrative and no dialogue, text or context. You hold left or right and occasionally hit space to interact with something. If you're looking for gameplay, you won't find it here. What you will find is something resembling a laid back slice-of-life visual novel that gives you a setting that you create your own context and little stories for. It's by no means a deep philosophical experience but it works better than I expected. The pixel art is nice, the music is somewhat cheesy and not something I normally listen to but I think it fits quite well. I think €10 is a bit much but I'll pick it up on a discount. It's simple but relaxing, and again the demo is free so you can check it out and see if it's something you enjoy before spending anything.
A game like this lives and dies by its ability to immerse the player and pique his interest. Unfortunately Rebirth failed to do either. It halts you in your tracks every few paces either with a note that may or may not be read by a voice actor that cannot be listened to while moving, or a cutscene (mostly just some flashing images). The game chooses the worst ways to tell its story, as if nobody at Frictional noticed it isn't 2010 any more and never evolved. As for the story itself, I didn't get far enough into the game to see what it was about. Maybe it turns out great, but the game didn't give me a reason to care enough to find out. Maybe a less immersive, less interesting version of Dark Descent is what you're looking for. For me it's a disappointment and a refund.
On the surface this game has the right ingredients to be good. It has good variety in types of 'mechs and weapons, all the customizability you'd expect from a 'mech game, it looks and sounds good, and combat would be great if it wasn't for two major issues. First, the AI is terrible. Friendly AI doesn't check whether anything is blocking their line of sight, so they'll happily unload in the direction of an enemy regardless of whether there's something in the way. Friendly mech? Shoot it. A building you're actually supposed to defend? Shoot it. If any of your allies have a PPC you can be assured your sensors will go haywire every time they use it. At the same time they take absolutely forever to accomplish anything; order your lance to deal with a medium mech while you take on two heavies, and you'll be killing both heavies and that medium even if you took the lightest 'mech with the least firepower for yourself, because your allies are doing more damage to each other (and you) than to the enemy. If left to their own devices on a mission where you need to destroy some buildings they'll happily ignore enemy targets shooting at them, even light vehicles that can be blown up with one salvo. Makes me wish I could somehow import the AI scripting from MW2:mercs because that old game was miles and miles ahead of the joke that is AI in MW5. Second, enemies often keep spawning in faster than you can deal with them. Combined with the terrible AI that makes for incredibly frustrating gameplay because you basically have to deal with everything yourself while getting shot to pieces by enemies and friendlies alike. Apart from that there are other problems. I haven't experienced much crashing myself but it seems to be a common issue. RTX options are there but are barely functional; enabling ray traced shadows removes most shadows from the game, ray traced or otherwise. Honestly, you'll have more fun playing any of the older MW games. This one is broken and not getting fixed.
