Recent reviews by Karl

It is clear that this release was bought forward as the developers saw an opportunity to gobble up the Tarkov players jumping ship and this is pretty much reflected in the current state of the game, it is somewhere between Alpha and Beta states.

They have taken inspiration from Tarkov and you can see the similarities in every aspect of the game, although with their own twist, I very much like the idea of the zone which you enter via helicopter with attempted seamless loading, it honestly beats waiting 5+ minutes to spawn in a raid on Tarkov.

I've only really done PvE atm as we never ran into any other PMC except friendly, gunplay seemed pretty decent, sounds could do with some work and I seriously worry that this will become a snipers haven, with PMC camping enemy spawn locations from a distance and there will be nothing you can do about it.

The game is graphically stunning, it looks great, the atmosphere sounds great, there are a lot of distance culling issues as well as missing features like bullet splashes in water, animations are a bit janky, AI is pretty bog standard dumb. Noises from local wildlife needs to be tonned down, frogs an insects should go quiet as you approach, I don't want to hear bee's or mossies in my ear, actually had a lil freak out when I spawned, thought some bigass bee was in my room and the mossies sounds are just horrible.

Performance wise was average, a lot of complaints in reviews but on medium settings with a 3080 in 1440p I was hitting 60fps average DLSS on whatever setting it came out the box. Will tweak in the next few plays to see if it can be improved but given the game is really early there can only be improvements from here on out.

If anyone picked up this game thinking it would compete head to head with Tarkov they are thicker than two planks of wood. It has a lot of potential and i'm looking forward to see how the game grows. I would recommend the game to those who enjoy extraction shooters and as anyone who played Tarkov from the early days can understand, it takes time to polish this type of gem.

For an early access game I have to say this is very well polished and visual pleasing title and off the bat, performs amazingly, I'm playing with Epic quality preset on my Steamdeck with 55+ FPS, the only stutter I've run into is the auto save feature which is probably not noticeable on PC.

The game is very charming, the sounds the sparks make are absolutely adorable, the way the tutorial eases you into automation through the quest lines is just lovely, I have found this much more appealing to play than the likes of Factorio which is the king of automation games but also very daunting to dive into imo.

I look forward to future updates and content, well done to the devs.

Smalland is an okay survival title, it still screams early access, 1.0 it is not, there is a lot still to work to do, some basic QoL functions they should implement etc but you will still get some enjoyment out of it in this state but unlikely to return to play any content drops or updates in the future as replay-ability is non existent imo.

In comparison to Grounded, if you have not played either, 100% go for Grounded first and come back to this in a years time.

Absolute game changer in the FPS scene.

Also absolutely the most frustrating game I have played, but also the most fun I have had in a while.

In terms of actual feedback for devs, fix the UI navigation for contestants and equipment, if I unlock a new item on battlepass or in any menu I should be given the option to equip to a build or all builds.

I like all my builds looking the same but I have to go and edit them 6 times...

First time I played (20 minutes after launch) died immediately as the doctor told me to stand on my feet great start, I had to quickly leave but upon returning and despite launching with 100+ servers, everything was full and I could not play again until the following day. Now I've had a run around, I can say that yes, this came out in early access but this is really really early access. It needs at least another year to focus on core game play, then probably another 6 months on the bugs. The city is empty, saw two zombies and 1 player, looted boxes and found 5 jackets. Other player characters running around naked with clothing randomly popping into existence, some players kneel sliding around. Zombies glitched into cars, get shot in the body, head gushes with blood?? So many issues.

Graphically the game looks good, atmospherically it sounds good, but there is a lot of work to do with nearby sounds.
It has a good foundation to build upon but this is very alpha state atm.

Will check it out in a year or two, unless they go under/give up.

So, I've been waiting a while to buy Icarus, I was hyped at launch but reviews told me to avoid, it looks like reviews have improved with 2 years since launch and with a few hours at the free weekend i thought I would try it, I somewhat regret my decision.

I enjoy survival games, and this ticks a lot of boxes for me however, the game is not sunshine and roses, it is very buggy still, given its been out two years now. Animals still walk around with the most basic animations I have ever seen, caves lack diversity 11 hours in, they all look the same cut and paste caves across the map.

Clearly there are some animals added in as part of missions to make it harder but they have ZERO AI, like it makes Sega's Aliens AI bug look smart. These placed animals walk a set path and lose agro if they walk 5 meters from the path and instantly heal. It's clear to see timed events where randomly 3-4 wolves or odd horses will come and attack you no matter where you are. Animals that spawn in as part of a defend mission will always spawn in the the same spots and take the same paths.

It is honestly disappointing to see such a basic build of a game, I would expect this to be really early early access but its apparently 1.0 with several paid DLC??! Perhaps the DLC's fix these issues but honestly not looking to sink another £20 to find out.

Valheim does base building 100% better, the natural progression of the game is also far less janky and intuitive. This just looks fancy and does it worse.

This is an amazing looking game, textures are great, level of detail great, however, this has the most basic level of gameplay which makes this boring as hell to try and play, so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ boring I'd rather watch paint dry than try to continue on in this game.

The AI is dumb, immediately reminded me of AI in previous games, nothing has changed, just copy and pasted over that code. the inventory is horrendous to use
Space travel? this was an afterthought in the development of the game, its just point and click and travel.

Honestly hoped for more from this title, but its been a huge disappointment to play.

Absolute blast to play with friends

Despite the mind numbing dialog, the game so far has been a real treat to play, has its performance hitches, especially with every cut scene but it is not the end of the world. They've gone to great lengths to adapt this type of gameplay to the wizarding world and done a great job imo

Great addition to the L4D series, the developers have truly made this a difficult game to master, sadly the multiplayer needs some serious work, I don't think I've played a game without the enemy team rage quitting after losing the first round.