Recent reviews by DreadPirateFury

Well Sony, I hope you keep your hands out of the soup from here on, you are not the chef.

find the lightswitch

I'll rescind this review when they update system requirements to coincide with the switch to UE5.

I've been grandfathered out and performance is garbage on a 2070 Super. It'd be one thing if they acknowledged it but to keep system requirements the same on the store page is nothing short of negligent.

For a one man studio, this slapped.

I've seen some truly atrocious reviews of this game lately in games journalism and from a few content creators. I cannot fathom why, even after listening to their nonsense.

I recommend tossing the FEAR comparison partially out the window, while this game clearly took inspiration from FEAR, Trepang2 is an entirely different animal. There are still some great horror set-pieces that manage to nail FEAR's ability to make you think "There's something a lot scarier than me in here." But these moments feel more like homage than adaptation. Likewise as long as we're comparing it to FEAR I'll risk it and say the narrative of Trepang2 takes a backseat against its spiritual predecessor. The story is by no means bad, in fact I was engaged with it throughout my time playing, it's just a lot less character driven and at times will feel more like set dressing than a plot. Towards the climax things will tie together and I think most people will be satisfied with what they got, especially if they're taking the time to explore and read the extra fluff found scattered around the levels.

The real content of Trepang2 is its gameplay, and it manages to feel fairly unique despite its inspirations. There's obviously FEAR's bullet time and melee, but there's also Crysis's cloak, weapon customization, and the ability to grab and throw enemies. How it all blends together makes a very high octane concoction whereby the player can really go anywhere they need to be and basically turn any man or set of men into meat crayons. You can slide into a corridor of tightly packed enemies ragdolling them, grab one out of the air, and toss him into his friends with his grenade primed. You can kick off of an enemies head or a nearby wall for a bit of extra air time. You can even use the dropkick feature to reach heights your normal jump alone wouldn't scale, so there's some advanced movement mechanics hidden under the surface if that's your taste.

The game is fairly short but it's also replayable. There are plenty of difficulty options, cheats, and wave based combat arenas to sink your teeth into. I was shocked to see cosmetic unlocks for your viewmodel (hands, arms, legs, and feet) which is so extra for a singleplayer FPS I couldn't help but smile.

Also Gianni Matragrano voices the cultists and come on, it's Gianni. It's gold.

Overall I'd say this is totally worth its asking price and an absolute must have on sale.

I like the game, but it needs time and I've got quarrels with it. Latter half sucked unfortunately, the entire game should have been more like the first mission (not the unskippable tutorial mind you, just Dead Hills colony). Instead it's very linear for most of its runtime and with half baked stealth mechanics and scripted sequences being the emphasis it turns a good 40% of missions into a chore on a second playthrough.

Welding doors, it's too costly for little benefit, it would be nice if we could somehow separate the cost for welding a door for tactical reasons and welding a door for rest. For rest it makes perfect sense, for funneling aliens and trying to maintain map control, it's a waste of a valuable resource.

Recon, your premiere don't get spotted class, has no way of breaking formation in order to take something out quietly, you also can't set them as the spearhead of the formation, making it extremely awkward trying to shuffle your guys around to pop a stealth kill off, and in that time you'll probably get spotted.

Linear levels, again, I have to emphasize just how hamstrung the game is because of it. The game is absolutely at its best when you have a large and open level with a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of objectives and not enough resources or manpower to do all of them in one go. Because the levels are persistent and the suite of passive tools at your disposal are also persistent, the game has this really neat strategic element whereby each trip you make with a bit of planning and forethought can improve your control over the map, making it easier to complete objectives and navigate the area. The problem is these levels devolved as the game went on, I noticed less and less interesting methods of getting from point A to point B and less opportunities for map control. It's like one camp of development wanted to make an interesting LV 426 simulator and the other camp wanted a sequence of scares and scripted events to drag you by the teeth and tell the story.

Sentry guns, like welding, became a bit of a disappointment in level persistence. Tools are too valuable a resource to waste on sentry guns, however the only way to pick up a broken sentry gun is to repair it first, this wouldn't be a problem if sentry guns didn't break on level transition. Even using an elevator in the middle of deployment will break all sentries that you placed, regardless of their location and situation. I put four sentries at the end of a corridor, took an elevator for a quick nab of ammo on the floor above, came back and all sentries were broken without firing a shot. I get the idea, the aliens got your sentries while you were away, but it doesn't make sense while I'm still deployed in the same area and it's been all of ten minutes, and it doesn't make sense that their ammo is at 100% when there is literally no way around them, not even a vent. It feels like creativity is punished just as much as it's rewarded, and it doesn't help that the levels themselves want you to go one exact way so often.

That brings me to the waiting game. You know what was tense the first ten times? Watching motion tracker contacts getting really close and waiting in a dead end room for them to pass by, hoping, praying they don't choose to check your room. Then it got boring, really boring. As the game progresses you get more tools for dealing with patrols without getting spotted, at first it's the motion tracker and its long range distraction feature, then it's landmines and sentry guns, and then finally you'll have the Recon class with a silent kill option and the Tecker with a dubiously useful drone (the distraction tool on this thing may be better than I'm giving it credit for, I'll have to do some testing). All of these with the exception of sentries and the drone require command points, it's like your mana in the game. Command points regenerate slowly over time, or you can spend one tool (This is one of the reasons tools are so important) in order to get a few points back immediately. Seems fine except it ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ blows waiting in a room for five minutes because you don't have enough command points to make a play at leaving undetected, or you didn't have enough command points thirty meters ago and now you're cut off in every direction with no means of distracting patrols. In these situations either you risk the hour long run and punch through, getting spotted with no CP left for combat. Or you do the optimal play, hide your marines in a corner and go make a sandwich so you can regenerate all of your CP and actually do something about it when you get back. I'd much rather most of these tools be a finite resource that require supply points to purchase and bring into a level via marine loadout, but sadly I think that's out of the question even in the future of the game.

I'm not even gonna touch on the story, it wasn't Aliens: Colonial Marines bad, but it wasn't Alien: Isolation good either. (Movie quotes out the ass, it yoinked me out of the game's atmosphere so many times.) It's really tough for me because I love what this game got right, and I love what they were trying to do, I just wish they went all in on its sandbox elements and didn't lean so hard into its linear maps and narrative.

I also ran into a litany of irritating, game breaking bugs, I'm just glad I didn't play the game in iron man, because I'd have tossed it in the bin over it.

Oh yeah and marine barks are either broken or they didn't have the means to re-record lines, motion tracker contacts almost always cause your marines to bark "WE'VE BEEN SPOTTED." despite well... Not being spotted at all, in fact the contact is 55 meters out and through several bulkhead doors, we're fine, chill Webb.

(As of June 29th 2023 many of the technical issues I experienced have been addressed in a recent patch, the review remains negative for the time being for my own subjective viewpoints, we will see how further development time and modder support affect this.)

As always, I'll keep comments enabled. If you have arguments to make in bad faith, want to tell me to git gud, or you generally want to troll, feel free to post below so that I can laugh at you. (If you're not a spastic I'll probably reply, my opinion isn't set in stone and I think the game will get better.)

Probably my favorite entry in the series, go in completely blind like I did, if you can, resist the urge to look anything up (I got stumped like twice with player driven goals, not even really on the main tracks of the game)

It is indeed short, I'm curious to see what the community can come up with when workshop support is fully implemented.

If you see me in this game, know that I am only having fleeting moments of enjoyment dog eared by terrible crafting systems and horrible business practices.

Experimenting with new builds that are viable at the highest difficulties requires a remarkably tedious time investment pouring over menus, re-rolling weapons, praying for RNG to save you from this hellish hamster wheel. When you're not doing that you're grinding the same levels over and over, and while the gameplay manages to keep them fresh in a way only a horde shooter can, it's not at all helped by the studio's GLACIAL pace at releasing new maps, or really much of anything meaningful.

While the levels that are there are certainly well made and immerse you in the world of 40k, there just aren't enough that are wholly original. Almost every map has a mirror version of itself with a few set-pieces added to make it ever so slightly different. The studio can conveniently claim it's a new level, but it's not. You're seeing the same scenery and often fighting in the same arenas with a couple changes, it's not enough.

Let's talk cosmetics, this is a Warhammer title, Warhammer nerds love their customization. Kitbashes, army schemes, iconic armor designs and aesthetics. It seems Tencent agrees, because the only way to look the part is to participate in the most scummy MTX marketplace I've seen in years. They put a rotating cosmetic shop in a paid, cooperative shooter. There's not enough free cosmetics for a customer who already bought the game to begin with. The majority of these are re-colors, with a very meager handful of unique pieces earnable through challenges. For those willing to shell out, they're unable to buy from a catalog and instead have to rely on a combination of luck and sad dedication to keeping up with a rotating shop in the hope something good shows up. Most cosmetics on said shop are actually pretty lackluster, but notably, there's always one or two standouts every rotation. It's almost like that's by design. Rotating cosmetic shops are already a set up to begin with, the customer is more likely to make repeat purchases if they can't see the entire catalog, if they could, they'd only buy what they really want, not just the coolest thing that's available right now.

Perhaps someday Fatshark will get their heads out of their asses. Right now, to at least make up for that god-awful cosmetic shop the game needs; new maps, at least one new class, new weapons (UNIQUE ONES, NOT VARIANTS), a way to earn premium currency, a crafting rework, a hub world overhaul, a pre-match and post-match screen overhaul, and finally some genuine ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ plot development. And maybe since I got myself going a new enemy faction. Until at least five of those happen I recommend to do as I say and not as I do, don't hurt yourself and buy this game.

You've already played this game before.

Very fun throughout its runtime, and with a healthy amount of longevity if you wind up liking it enough for New Game+. The story is serviceable, certainly bland at times, but its trying and its good enough when chalked up to the incredibly entertaining movement and combat. I will say that the pacing of the larger DLC 'The Following' wasn't quite as strong as the pacing in the main game, it ends rather abruptly, and for me, on a sour note.

Still fun to cover yourself in zombie guts and walk among the horde snapping necks though.