Recent reviews by odi

Lot of gameplay for the money; a fun experience worth the time.

Only played for 13 hours, but the weapons feel good and are satisfying to kill people with. The co-op mode is actually fun.

The larger and more detailed maps are a MASSIVE improvement over the former game's tiny, stale after 20 hours maps.

The commander call in air-strikes/helis and ♥♥♥♥ are annoying though. This seems to be a problem with every game NWI makes.

Overall, it's worth a buy.

TL;DR: BUY IT NOW.

One of the best games I've ever played.

Pulled 2 all nighters on a long weekend playing this, that's how fun it is.

The polish on this game is incredible, it surpasses most AAA games and it rivals even DICE's level of polish on BF.

Some highlights from first two days playing, just marvel at that hitbox porn:
https://youtu.be/FhqpLyPRxcs

Weapons feel ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ horrible.

Feels like a mod made by amateurs with no FPS game design experience, which is ironic since it comes from the devs of Red Orchestra and Killing Floor, which had great feeling weapons.

At $8 on sale, I still overpaid by $8.

Now I remember why I uninstalled after an hour during the free weekend.

Not to mention the 50GB install size. What the ♥♥♥♥ are these stupid devs doing?

Written from the view of a Competitive Player with 2,000 hours.

UPDATE #3:

July 8, 2019

Version: 14

*STILL DON'T RECOMMEND*

WORST NETCODE IN ANY FPS GAME EVER.

https://youtu.be/MSQDmXoH-3Q

Infantry combat is still absolutely terrible and unsatisfying. Just go play Insurgency: Sandstorm to see what combat should feel like.

The current FOB and HAB mechanics, buddy rally, anyone-can-revive, removal of dead-dead, give everyone optics!, etc all make no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sense and are antithetical to Squad's core game design and just end up diluting what makes the game great.

The game designers seem lost.

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UPDATE #2:

November 26, 2018

Version: 12 (over 6 months since the last major update)

*DON'T RECOMMEND*

TL;DR: Game sucks, I'm done playing it.

Squad V12 = Running Simulator + Michael J. Fox Simulator + Wish-I-joined-the-military-but-didn't-have-the-balls LARP Simulator + World of Tanks + Bad Driving Simulator + Slow, incompetent developers who don't even play their own game and ignore feedback from very experienced players.


The core game (infantry combat) is not fun and hasn't been for the past year, since the release of V10.

The gunplay (my general term for the feel of weapon handling and mechanics and infantry combat) is UTTER $HIT.

I re-downloaded V9 recently to compare the weapon handling versus V10/11/12 and it was apparent within the first 5 trigger pulls how much better the gun mechanics used to be.

Fast and immediate recoil which a player can learn to compensate for over time, V10-12 changed this to a slow & floaty even more RNG based recoil system with more sway at all levels of stamina. V10 also introduced HORRIFIC visual jitter when looking through optics as well as comically unrealistic levels of bullet drop.

I can't quite put my finger on it but there is something so much more fluid and responsive with the feeling of V9 movement, it doesn't feel like you're maneuvering a lethargic fatass like in V10-12.

Also, in V9 recoil values were logical and different for weapons which had different calibers, and foregrips actually made a difference. Since V10, weapon recoil makes absolutely no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sense.

Currently in V12, the M4 optic and AK74 optic both have the same recoil, the M4 aimpoint/ironsight and Ak74 aimpoint/ironsight have the same recoils, and foregrips make no difference. Tell me how this makes any ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sense, and also where are the muh immersiom milsimmers crying about this lack of realism?

In V12 suppression was added which makes your weapon randomly sway all over the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ place if you get shot at. Horribly implemented. Garbage players love it.

In V12 you can't sprint very far before having to stop because you have to keep your stamina above 80% in case you get into contact with an enemy and need to fire without having Dean Martin levels of sway.

HABs can now be disabled with 2 men in proximity. For devs who are constantly listening to feedback from bad players in the form of "nerf player-skill to artificially increase teamwork", this has had the ironic effect of decreasing teamwork.

This has also resulted in needing to put HABs/FOBs/Rallies even further away from objectives, which has further increased the amount of time running from a spawn location until you see any kind of action. Yawn.

The netcode still sucks, what else is new...

Tanks are fun I guess if you're with a crew of friends.

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UPDATE:

June 26, 2018 - Exactly 1 year later, by chance...

Version: 11.2

*DON'T RECOMMEND*

Played the game competitively for 1 year now.

Don't recommend the game, unless you get it on sale and are just looking for some ignorance-is-bliss-casual-immersion.

Gunplay is garbage. Completely random recoil. Not skill based. Sights sway all over the place randomly.

Netcode is utter trash and I don't think they will ever achieve the advertised 50v50 with acceptable performance.

Hit detection is garbage even on the best server hardware, with only 20 players in the server, with opponents who both have 50 ping.

Random recoil + swaying optics + bad netcode = FRUSTRATION

In this game you are not fighting the skill of your opponent, you are fighting the game design as well as sprinkling dice rolls on top of that ♥♥♥♥ sundae. This game should come with a microfiber cloth so you can clean the spittle off of your monitor after every session.

The devs, OWI, ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up the gun play in V10 to appeal to casuals/milsimmers/bad players - who just want to LARP that they are in the army - and it has never recovered despite extremely detailed feedback and constructive criticism.

OWI takes forever to develop anything and push out content, let alone pushing "hotfixes", because by the time they get released they are colder than Hillary Clinton's heart.

Stale maps, stale game modes.

It's a damned shame too, because the teamwork in this game is absolutely unrivaled - especially when played competitively - let alone pulling off a close win against a formidable team, but all of the negatives simply outweigh that.

This game COULD BE great, but I am not sure that I have faith in the developers to deliver.

Time to find a new game to get sweaty over...hopefully Insurgency: Sandstorm.


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Originally posted: June 26, 2017

Version: 9

I only play good games, and this is one of them.

Squad is one of the best multiplayer games I've ever played (AND IT'S ONLY IN ALPHA!).

I started playing during the last free weekend and haven't stopped (closing in on and blowing past 300hrs soon). It scratches the itches I've had since sneaking through forests in the original Ghost Recon back in the day and the camaraderie from playing in tight-knit squads in Battlefield 1942.

The level of immersion in this game is second to none. The sound design is fantastic and fantastically scary. Hearing the engines of an enemy APC charging your location and their massive guns firing near you is genuinely adrenaline inducing. Being pinned down by an enemy SAW gunner on full auto will make you instinctively duck your head down in real life, even if you know it's silly once you realize you're doing it, you just can't help it. Squad is so immersive that you'll often find yourself yelling over the mic to friendlies to get down or run from a grenade when things get hairy.

The community is great and the pseudo-requirement of having a microphone definitely helps foster community growth, interaction, and camaraderie between strangers. This game has the most teamwork of any I have ever played and I can't get enough of it. The in-game built separate voice channels for local proximity and squad wide communication is incredibly useful.

Squad is different from other FPS in that there is consequence to your life. It takes time to travel to your objective. It takes longer than most games to respawn. This gives meaning/weight to your life/death and consequences to the resulting gameplay. Vehicles require teamwork to operate properly and efficiently. There are even supply trucks that need to be driven and are an essential part of the game and the respawn system (doesn't sound fun at first, but it has its own enjoyment).

Squad already feels like a full-featured game to me, so it blows my mind that it is still only in alpha, when I am already so satisfied with the game. Yet to come are helis, planes, tanks, new factions, new weapons, new maps, team commanders, etc.

It seems like this game has an infinite amount of replay value due to the fact that you'll always have different squad leaders wanting to employ their own tactics, so this compounds when you put 4+ SLs on each team and then add in the crazy randomness that can occur during matches and then the subsequent adjustments to tactics on the fly, you always end up with a different game - no matter how many times you play that same map.

There is also a competitive scene and it is alive and well, and growing at that.

TL;DR: Buy it (if you like quality games with infinite replay value).

This is the ARPG everyone, who loved Diablo 2, has been waiting for. This is D2's true successor.

Grinding Gear Games is an awesome developer. Everything in the game is free and the microtransactions are all cosmetic.

The graphics are beautiful, dark, and gritty. The music is atmospheric and memorable. The combat is satisfyingly addictive.

I'll be playing this for years to come.

Easily the most atmospheric, interesting, and beautiful RPG world ever created.

Also there are mods that make the graphics better than Oblivion's even!