Recent reviews by Acidace

An obscure indie game that went over society's collective heads, Going Under is a sharply written roguelite that's a genuinely funny satire on techbros and capitalism as a whole, all the way from its obvious industry parallels, the use of cryptocurrency as a gameplay mechanic, to even the art style itself.

While its gameplay isn't Hades ascendant level, nor is its length particularly long, its exceptional narrative, characters, and theme make its 20$ (or under) price tag not only a valid, but a recommended investment.

Oh, and its devs are pretty cool people. Cool enough to justifiably call me a boomer. Happy Birthday, Nick.

It's Aight.

New Year, new review. Since my friends hate me for playing this game again and Coronavirus has got me down, it's time for me to write a low-quality high-school essay on this game. If you agree with what I have to say, please vote this up to inform new players, or even devs, if they can really make a change, though I'm aware that the publisher is responsible for most of my critique.

If you haven't seen the steam reviews on this game, [spoilers](Spoilers: it's mixed)[/spoiler] this game is... in a weird place. It has enough players, or at least whales, to maintain a suprisingly large game, but its reviews, at least in North America, are all over the place, and for good reason.

Since this isn't the first time I've written a review for this game, I'll start off light and give credit where credit is due.
- Meta weaponry is no longer exclusive; some of the top weapons such as the AK-12, FN Fal, and AK-Alpha are explicitly designed to be side-grades to one another.
- A select few new weapons obtainable for free are competitive in the meta.
- The new class, the 'SED', is surprisingly balanced for the only new class to be released from launch. At least, for now.
- Permanent acquisition has been addressed: you can permanently buy market weapons with crowns, and there are opportunities (albeit infinitely rare and short) to acquire typically paid-for weaponry.
- Net Code isn't hot garbage anymore. Thank F*ck.

Now the game is, at its core, quite enjoyable. The shooting is rock-solid, as it should be. The audio and most of the animations put into the guns make them feel responsive and fun to shoot at others. Although movement is somewhat sluggish, this can be offset by equipment and constant jumping everyone does to peek. There are also dedicated PVE elements in the game from small town skirmishes to large-scale raids in a variety of locations, such as Chernobyl, Japan, and... Mars?

However, it's everything OUTSIDE outside of the actual gameplay that bars this game from achieving mainstream popularity outside of Russia. The most obvious culprit is the game's obnoxious business practices. You cannot argue with me on this, but the BEST items this game has to offer are all locked behind paywalls. From the AK-12 that has a 1.0x multiplier on ALL body parts, the Sig Sauer MPX that's one burst to kill, to the AX308 whose bolt-action and milliseconds of ADS time mean you can kill from virtually any distance, achieving supreme power in this game is as simple as opening your wallet to buy boxes to gain a CHANCE at getting these guns, at least, when they're not being sold directly for cash. I can already forsee people defending this, and here are my responses to the most common arguments.
Q: "Better guns doesn't mean you'll perform better!"
A: "Even if that is true, the power these items offer only serve to artifically shorten the skill-gap between players, either in TTK or utility, and god forbid you meet anyone with the same or better skill level than you.

Q: "Crown boxes and event offer the same guns for free!"
A: Temporary crown boxes are exactly what they are - Temporary. You first have to make an ungodly amount of time to grind for said crowns in PVE - Which has a completely different meta and gameplay, by the way - to gain a temporary ability to compete with the top guns in the game.
Permanent crown boxes, though implemented with good-intentions, fall into the same trap; absurd grind in one gamemode the playerbase is split over, as well as only being present from the gun's initial release mean that one has to make an absurd grind in gamemodes most don't play before a weapon's initial release to grasp a chance at getting that gun for the only week it's available for free.
...Aside that, events that offer such weapons for free deliberately release weapons that, while still powerful, are not the meta weapons the that the devs are aware about.

Now, what else from the Pay-to-Win weaponry makes the game unfun?
- The game contains a equipment repair system to limit your ability to buy items in the already-limited free marketplace, and not so subtly incentivize purchasing the two "VIP" boosters.
- Spawn System in "arcadey" gamemodes puts you so close together that living more than 10-20 seconds is likely due to some divine intervention... Or you're camping playing to survive.
- PVE matchmaking is slow and ineffective (possibly due to a low PVE playerbase?) on PC, and a good amount of those you find are new, unskilled players who haven't realised that yet. This effectively kills off Spec-Ops play unless you have a premade group.
- Speaking of premade groups, the premade group system is horrible. It brings you to a seperate, bland UI, restricting you to just that screen, instead of just bringing along your friends when you matchmake yourself.

The game's predatory monetization system corrupts the game at all levels. It lures you in the first few hours where players are unaware of this and at some point to keep the high going, you'll be hard-pressed to fork over some cash. If the publisher made the miraculous decision to offer paid weapons for in-game currency LIKE RUSSIA DOES this game would be... good.

Asides that, why would I come back in 2020, you ask?... I spent cash on a battlepass some years ago and I still need to craft that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ AK-Alpha.

10/10 one of the best game I've played in a while!

Pro:
- fun with friends
- still fun on solo
- can even have more fun with mods!
-fun fun fun!

Cons:
-Hard to set up private server

Everything went wrong when this turned into tf:go.
RIP 2007-2015