Recent reviews by Felldrizzle

Improving from launch

[Received as gift from a friend]

I suck at this game, I'm too old to hang with all the sweaty kids 20-30 years younger than me... but I keep coming back because even sucking at this game is the most fun I've had in a shooter since BF4 (and MW 2019, but I came to that 20 months behind release). I'm slowly getting better, just beware the SBMM because if you do well in one round, it'll throw you in with the sharks with $500 gamer chairs and other assistants that Ricochet AC has yet to detect and ban. Play poorly for a few rounds and you'll be back to your relative skill level. This could all be averted if they softened the SBMM, or better yet went back to a ping-based system with ranking. Warzone 2 and DMZ are incredible, if you're in to those. The campaign story is top notch Michael Bay action. And there's plenty of things to do as a solo or in single player that will still work towards your level, unlocks, etc.

If this game had come out when I was 7-10, I would have geeked the ♥♥♥♥ out kid-style, all drawing units and scenes from the game all the time, making my own t-shirt with the logo and some graphics printed on iron-on transfer, recreating the game with toys or kid-larping in the backyard with dollar store armor and weapons.

Replacing the game description at the top-right of the store page with a promotion for the sequel is dirty and stupid. Devs should not be allowed to do this if they are still selling earlier games in a series, or games not related to the current one they are using the description to promote. That's what the news and updates section further down on the page is for. Shame on you Storybird and LookAtMyGame and Plug In Digital. You're part of the problem of the perception that indie games are going down the toilet.

*FULL DISCLOSURE* I won a key for this game from orlygift.com


Collectible Card Games have a special place in my cold, black, gamer heart. Nanofights, however, is missing much of what makes a CCG fun and entertaining, you know, good.

Most of the card artwork is good. Some of it is very good, a few pieces of it are poor, and a handful are *ahem* closely resembling other copyrighted material (like the Ork Truck card for the Outlaws faction - Games Workshop™ might not appreciate that one).

Distressingly, there are several other areas where the game is simply mediocre to just plain bad.

The UI is atrocious. It functions, but it feels like a tacked on, overly-graphic layer sitting on top of a form page engineered for database calls, along with a chat window and players online (none to one, in my playtime). Organizing your deck isn't intuitive. The tools are there, but they aren't easy to use, and trying to see the cards you have without a lot of bulls**t getting in the way prevents you from building a new deck without a lot of time and hassle.

The gameplay is awful. The actual underlying cards and mechanics seem solid, if not tired and already done by better games (Mojang's Scrolls comes to mind). Again, the UI for card battles makes for an underwhelming and sometimes confusing experience. The sounds are terrible; I had to turn them off. Actual combat is resolved in turns too fast to see clearly what happened and why, meaning you really have to know all the cards in play and their effects and how they'll play out before turns end to grasp that round's results. If there was more substance and interesting effects going on, and slower turn resolution to allow you take in the round at a glance and enjoy it, the game would be much, much better.

In its current state, I simply cannot recommend Nanofights. The price tag is concerning, too. I didn't pay for my copy, but if I hadn't won a key from orlygift, I could have downloaded this game on my phone and played for free. And maybe on that platform, the game's flaws wouldn't have been such a letdown. On PC, though, they are far too glaring and distracting to allow for much enjoyment from this game for all but the most die-hard, IDGAF players of CCGs out there.

Game Score: 3 out of 10 Cosmic Dragons


*Update 1 year(ish) later*
Nanofights is still hot garbage. No surprise, really.