Recent reviews by Comrade Nikki

Truly one of the most beautiful games I have ever played. While I do not like some aspects about the game, such as its story-line holding your hand through basic progression, or its sense of scale feeling small (compared to something like Elite), or its limited time FOMO-triggering "Expeditions", I can nonetheless, wholeheartedly, recommend this game. Its downsides hardly outweigh its positives.

You should've just made the game free discounted on Steam. That would've been much easier for everybody than trying to sell out to Epic.

This game is truly an enigma. This is meant to be a meme; nothing more than a meme.

Yet, it is the most fun I've ever had in a Battle Royale. Funnily enough, it's more thrilling than PUBG and Warzone, more interesting than Fortnite or Apex, and yet it's a damned meme.

An April Fools joke.

Consider giving these fine folk your $5, so they can keep making this game.

Alright, where do I start...

This game, Insurgency, is one of the best titles I own in my library, and every day I find myself wanting to come back and feel the gritty pain this game can give.

Now, I'm going to assume, if you're reading this rather than just buying the damn game, you're someone who's spent a lot of their time on CoD or Battlefield and has never really branched out... well, this game is gonna kick your ass and make you eat ♥♥♥♥ by the time you're done. The game features heavy suppression mechanics, near constant getting-one-shot-by-some-guy-on-mcdonalds-internet-from-across-the-map, and lots of times you wish you had counted how many rounds you were just uncaringly spraying out of your M249.

This game is great tactical gameplay for a cheap price, and even with the limitations Source has, this game is a wonderful example of tense urban combat that will keep you really wanting to throw out your Apple Earbuds and get a 7.1 surround sound system just so you could hear the guy sneaking up behind you before he brutually filled your spine with .30 caliber bullets.

Now, personally, my favorite part of this whole game is the modding. This game has workshop support, and with such geniuses like Mr. Brightside and Hyper out on the loose, you'll have a plethora of fine weapons to murder terrorists and Marines alike. You'd rather have an L85A2 over your M4A1? Oh yeah, there's a mod for that. Maybe a STEN gun over your Sterling? Yep, you best believe. Perhaps you've got a hankering for Soviet engineering and wanna make every gun in the game a Kalashnikov? Well sorry but there isn't a mod for that, that's too much.

Anyway, with Insurgency: Sandstorm on the way, which to me seems like it's gonna be a modern day and more brutal Red Orchestra, this game is a wonderful title to add to your collection, and will provide you with countless hours of frustration, gunplay that's so satisfying you'll shoot randomly at things just to feel the power behind a .45 M1911, and tons of times where you're running into battle just to see your buddy get shot in the face, and promptly fall back, cowering, and really wishing you brought a teddy bear.


Welcome to Insurgency.

Alright, so, this is a hard to write review, as I love this game and find it very fun, but it has plenty of problems and issues. My final verdict is very mixed, but nonetheless, I'll try to make this a good, and full, review.

(For those who don't really know what PUBG is)

PUBG is a battle-royal-styled shooter, where (at most) one hundred players are pitted against one another to be the last man (or team, if you're one of those weird people that have friends) standing. You parachute from a plane, land where you want, and then loot what you can to protect yourself from other players. Okay, simple enough. The game has several guns, giving you some choice for how you'd like to play; everything from an over-under double barrel to a L115 rifle are available Classics like the AKM, M16, and even a trench shotgun are up for grabs; so the game’s got fun guns, all of which are nicely balanced. As of writing this, two maps are available to be fought on: Erangal and Miramar. Erengal is a lush, green-filled map with forests, a few plains, and rolling hills—all surrounded by an ocean. Miramar is an arid desert-y map with rather treacherous terrain and large cities, being quite a playground for snipers as I’ve come to learn. Both the maps are perfected with tons of detail, giving you a true feeling of stalking through an abandoned city, knowing you could get shot from any building you pass by.

Alright, so now that you know what PUBG is, time to talk about what makes it extremely fun in my eyes—and likely many others.


The firearms in this game are all satisfying to use, have plenty of recoil, and sound pretty realistic. Bolt-action rifles have a wonderful CRACK! to their sound, the automatic rifles and SMGs sound threatening and punchy, and the LMGs sound formidable. While it’s no Battlefield 1 sound design, it is definitely nothing to laugh at, and is actually very impressive compared to many other games of a similar caliber.


The game looks very pretty, and—at least on my screen—has little graphical breaks. I have a GTX 1050 Ti, and while it’s no Titan or some crap, it’s pretty powerful and serviceable, and allows the game to run a smooth 60 frames or more if I sacrifice the quality of shadows; which I don't even notice much loss in terms of quality. The textures are phenomenal, the foliage is well detailed, and the animations are very well made and flowing—though, the bolt action rifles look a bit stiff in third person, but it’s not like you’ll be firing without looking through your scope.


The raw gameplay itself is two things: thrilling, and satisfying. Personally, I find this game is most enjoyable when you put yourself into your gameplay… truly immersing yourself into the atmosphere of being hunted from God knows where, and even hunting people yourself. The thrill of surviving and fighting, outsmarting your enemies, flying by a town on a motorcycle while a rain of lead trails behind you… all those edge-of-your-seat moments are what I keep coming back for. While I have only won a game once on my own and once with my boyfriend, I find winning is just a nice bonus on top of the firefights and satisfying kills you rack up by the time you meet your fate, or take the head of your last victim. But, even if you’re just here to screw around with your buddies, or screw around on your own, PUBG is great for those, and is even encouraged to be played that way.

Alright… now that I’ve praised this game, let me tell you why I wouldn't recommend buying it… ironic despite what I told you, but please, be patient.


Oh my Lord, it was a mess—and is still very much a mess. Servers crashing, bandwidth being stretched to its limits, the game lagging or not even loading for people when they join a game… if you weren't told this is a release, you’d think this is still a very good-looking Alpha version. I, and many, MANY others, believe that the team behind PUBG was far too impatient, or rushed, or whatever, and the game has an obscene amount of bugs; too many of those bugs are game-breaking.


This is mixed, as there are tons of cool YouTubers making small fame off this game, plenty of funny people in lobbies, and some lobbies that are nothing but silence—which is music to some people’s ears. HOWEVER. There are also a lot of people who just yell or scream, play terrible music at ear-piercing volumes, or connect to different geographical regions just to annoy the Hell out of people (a lot of North American and European players seem to be complaining about floods of Asian players who are just trolling, or abusing their high-latency—which brings me to my next point).


Simply: it's awful. I’m talking launch-of-Battlefield-4 awful. If a guy’s in close range or sitting still and you’re a fine shot, you shouldn't have many problems—the issues are in actual firefights, where you shoot at someone, they notice, and return fire. While at times, the netcode won't shove a hot Kalashnikov barrel up your butt, but if someone’s either using their high ping to their advantage, or you get an unlucky streak, a bullet may just somehow collide with your face and you won't even have a second to react. While, yes, I understand people can get lucky and just happen to put their sights right on your noggin, it’s a little… stretched at times. The death cams aren't the most accurate in terms of replaying exact mouse-movements, and are really just for uncovering obvious hackers. The bugs sometimes it seems a bit obscene, and often you will find you’ve been shot despite being behind cover.


So, with ALL that being said, let me make my point. This game has plenty of awesome potential, and is a blast when it actually works as planned. The crew behind the game has acknowledged their mistake in it’s hasty release and has been working since day 1 to fix the issues (the situation has seemed to improve, but, this is bound to change). At the very least, it’s admirable these guys are attempting to fix the many issues plaguing the game, but all in all, I think it’s still too unstable to be considered a safe purchase—thirty USD can be a bit hefty for some people, and for a game that may or may not function properly, it’s especially risky.



This game, by itself in core values, is a fantastic game. Thrilling, satisfying, and most importantly, fun, PUBG is a great title… but now, because of the bogged performance for many people and hasty release, I don't think it’s too sound of a purchase. If you have faith in your PC and internet connection, then maybe go ahead and give it a try.

And, if you read all that, then good on you for caring about your game purchases, and be sure to check back as the game is continued to be updated and patched: hopefully it’ll become all it should be, and perhaps, even more.