Recent reviews by [ARA] Critler

"Early Access Done Right"

KF2 has been an absolute trainwreck since release. It's gotten a total of one content patch after 6 weeks, and it adds one map, bringing our count to 4 (No, the characters do not count because they are only for those who own KF1, not for everyone who owns KF2)

The amount of terrible development choices is staggering, so let me name off a few. The biggest would probably be teleporting zeds, holding is much more difficult this time around, with doors having their own health pools and doors not respawning, means you'll have to have a dynamic hold until overwhelmed and then kite, but both this and pure kiting are punished by this system.

No Sharpshooter: Someone actually thought not having the hard counter to scrakes and fleshpounds was a good idea.
AA12 and Hunting Shotgun spam is effective but not efficient, and means rapid removal of 2-3 scrakes at once will drain your ammo supply and cripple you later on. No, it's not impossible to beat the game with Support spam, but what is the point of a class based co-op game if the optimal load out is 5 supports and 1 medic? It also has an overall effect on other classes, as trash clearing classes like Commando are not typically effective because you could have another support, with sharpshooter being the dedicated power zed killer, classes like Commando, Firebug and Berserker could do their assigned role without bringing the team down with their low overall damage being unsuitable for anti scrake duties.

Fleshpounds are a joke. Gone are the rage mechanics of the first game, he will just straight up rage for no reason, and just when he's about to get near you, he'll just de-rage because he's tired. The only thing threatening about him is his 50% resistance to almost all damage types, making him more of an annoying bullet sponge than a threat most of the time. The real threat comes from the Scrake, formally the easier one to kill in KF1 due to the many ways of dealing with them, Scrake is death incarnate. On HoE he rages as soon as he loses 10% health, and he will not stop until he or you is dead, combine that with his practically insta-kill chainsaw thrust and the fact he spawns sometimes up to 10 times in a wave and you have the extent of the challenge of KF2.

The recent Medic Grenade nerf: The patch notes on this is as follows "Fixed unintended extra applications of Field Medic’s Armament and Vaccination buffs when using Medic Grenades" If they are telling the truth in saying that medic grenades giving armour were unintentional, they have just admitted that they do not play their own game. Are they actually trying to say none of the developers were level 25 medics and used the only good medic perks? Or that none of the previous pre-EA testers found this out either? This isn't some niche tier combination of perks, it was literally the only way to play medic on the higher difficulties. That brings me to my next complaint:

Perks: 5% more armour during zed time or 15% more damage during zed time? 2 health regen every 5 seconds or 50% more health? Being able to stumble husks and sirens or reload all shotguns (the longest reloading weapons in the game) faster? These are only the SUPPORT perk choices. I could list the rest of the classes' perk problems, but you get the point. Once you actually look at some of these you start to wonder how these were even accepted, How do you as development head greenlight a perk that only adds 20% MORE AMMO WHEN YOU BUY A WEAPON, not even total capacity, FOR A MELEE CLASS?

You won't hear about many of these problems on the forums or community hub because of their blind loyalty to a company that just recently put their game that was just released a month prior on sale, while getting no benefits to have paid full price or supporting them from the beginning. A company that has a EULA giving them the "right" to revoke your CD key for hurting someone's feelings.

This is starting to drag on, so I'll begin to wrap it up. There is for sure enjoyment to be had, the core gameplay is fun, but not for long. With only 4 maps and 4 perks at the moment, the lack of content is the biggest reason for me to not recommend it in it's current state. And at the current rate of patching, even if they do one perk a month we practically won't have all of the perks until next year.

EDIT: MICROTRANSACTIONS

EDIT EDIT: Martial Artist was removed in favor of a lazy mashup of all the current perks in one.

EDIT EDIT EDIT: Refunded on November 20th, 2016
Thank you Steam for not allowing predatory developers to swindle money from loyal fans.

I wasn't going to review this game until it was fixed, but seeing as it's on sale and many might want to buy it, as well as the fact that it's been almost two months and the game shows no signs of improving, I made an exception. Long story short, Do not buy this. The game is terribly optimized, I only get around 30-40 on my rig and it even drop to 20 in some areas. Extra is unplayable for most people. Crashes for NVIDIA users are constant, for example, whenever I play whiteout for about 5 minutes it immediately crashes the display driver, and with AMD, it's nothing but corrupted textures on things like tractors, trucks and even some guns, making it unplayable for them.

As for the gameplay, it's shockingly bad, balance is horrible with Assault Rifles and SMG's being the only practical weapons with all others only useful for playing around. The MSBS kills in 0.056 seconds while most other weapons need 0.140, weapons with built in attachments like the Honey Badger invalidate any other weapon not doing the same. The Riot Shield is completely broken with users being able to shoot through your shield completely or just shooting the bottom of the shield and the hit detection thinking they shot your foot, and on top of that, weapons actually do more damage when shooting someone's feet, the same as the Headshot multiplier.

If you think you can get past all of that for some CoD action, proceed with caution. Probably the biggest reason not to buy this is the lack of any anti-cheat, be it VAC or Punkbuster. Hackers and cheaters are abundant. In almost every lobby I have joined, my first or second one has always had at least one. This is literally killing the game, and it's numbers show, If you don't like team deathmatch or domination you're ♥♥♥♥ out of luck, because there are no players in any other playlist, and dom is only even populated during the US daytime.

In my opinion, Call of Duty Ghosts is this year's Blunder Of The Year. Some will point and say, "What about Colonial Marines, what about Ride to Hell?" Now let me ask you, did anyone ever expect those to be good? Colonial marines was in development hell for at least 6 years, and Ride to Hell was made by the guys who make Nascar games. This was a major AAA release with a development cost of several hundred millions of dollars, and this isn't even playable, not even 2 months after release. Avoid at all costs.