Recent reviews by atonement

game crashes every 20 minutes. didnt do this at launch.

Asks you to launch the game to complete a "daily tidy"... 365 times with the achievement "Highly Decorated". But, as the game description states.. there are only about 75 puzzles? So I will have to complete each puzzle 4-5 times, not to mention the initial story mode? Very odd decision, and I can't imagine what decisions must have led to doing that to your customers.

Puzzles are OK, but sometimes obtuse. I think the price is driven too high by the cost of developing the artwork.

A generally quite competent and enjoyable platformer which unfortunately long overstays its welcome for completionists due to a requirement to do full-game level rushes 4 times (two of which must be without dying), a task which will generally take upwards of an hour each for an unpolished run. I'm sure the story and gift mechanics are enjoyable for some, but I really got tired of how slow those menus are even with the fast-forward mechanic. I didn't come to this game for that, and it wore me down.

Despite that I think boss/level rushes are a poor excuse for content, the core game is by no means bad and I could recommend it to anyone looking to casually play through. Gold ranks are pretty easy to get on first tries, and you probably will see more than a few Ace ranks on the first go as well, so the time restrictions are never super tight. Beating the developer times is not required for anything, so that is one positive.

Combat is surprisingly repetitive for a game I expected to bring some new ideas to the table with its central theme. That's OK, but my game crashes every 10 minutes or so, even after trying a few different combinations of settings.

awful experience all around, and I'm disappointed this was one of the 'big name' games in humble choice september 2022..

UI is terrible and controlling it is worse (and a noted departure from every game in existence.. ever) the "1" button opens the main game menu - not escape, which opens a different, settings-oriented menu. You can't use escape to get out of menus or skip cutscenes - that's the backspace key... what? The game doesn't tell you that it's possible to skip them either, I had to search that one up.

Cutscenes are awful, dialogue is drab, and at least the opening cutscenes seem to be some kind of 720p pre-rendered trash which looks wonderful on a modern monitor.

Navigation is unenjoyable, and the tools at your disposal to do so (over short distances), the wingsuit, parachute, and grapple, all seem to work however they feel like at the time.

I haven't played the previous games, so I assume they are a world better because there's no way the Just Cause name has the clout that it does from 4 releases like this. I am surprised that reviews for this are even mixed. I would have strongly expected a slant towards negative sentiment.

I originally had this as a "not recommends" vote due to concerns about the achievements (detailed below). However, per the dev reply on this review, it looks like they are some kind of placeholders for the early access phase that will be invested in closer to launch. While I would still advise anyone who is concerned about achievements etc. to be aware that this game _currently_ has some pretty bleh achievements, the game itself does seem like it has solid potential (though probably is best played with a bring-your-own-friends mindset, or solo for speedrunning, as the matchmaking population is small at the time of writing). It's comforting to know that the game itself is being prioritized over relative trivialities like achievements, but that they aren't just going to be a slapped-on afterthought to tick that box.

== original review ==

Potentially a fun party game but I'm not recommending this due to the thoughtless achievements. It's always disappointing when they boil down to a mindless grind and Fling manages just that. All achievements are essentially a series leading up to 1000 matchmaking wins. A race probably takes about 2 minutes once you get the hang of it, meaning you're looking at 30-40 hours of playing matchmaking to claim that achievement. I've not seen very many party games have that kind of lifespan, and this one clearly isn't one of them - I've tried matchmaking a few times and gotten no randoms to join. They recommend a Discord server in-game to go find players, but I'm not interested in doing even more work to play a game.

More thoughtful, skill-based achievements or at least more reasonable win targets for the grind based achievements would go a long way towards the image for me. (If you're just slapping on bad achievements, it makes one wonder what other corners were cut for design..)

Based on the gameplay I did go through, it's probably not a 15$ game if you have to have each person in your group buy it. Maybe Remote Play Together would benefit there. I got this as part of Humble Choice (Dec 2021), so not sure what a good-feeling price point would be. Would probably need to experience how much variety, etc. is available; I'm just not encouraged to do so by the current achievements.

My 2021 game of the year. Excellent evolution of the first game, bringing a bunch of new challenges without leaving a bad taste in the mouth that some Nioh 1 encounters gave me.

Truly a great puzzler in the same vein as the Hexcells series, with a number of new (and, importantly) interesting mechanics. The puzzles are well-crafted and range between easier introductory puzzles as mechanics are introduced and a respectable number of "aha!" moments as you play through the harder levels. None of the levels require guess work (and those that have had gaps in this regard have been updated to fix it!) which makes solving the game a fun exercise in logic. Highly recommended to any puzzle fan!

I'm taking back my positive review as the game has left a bad taste in my mouth over time. The first time through (on the middle difficulty, veteran I think it's called) things were OK.. tough to get through but feasible if you get a semi-competent team. I always played a medic role to try and bolster an OK team enough to survive. Nightmare is impractical with randoms, however, and given that sections of the difficulty can take hours to complete, it's purely going to lead to frustration. Wouldn't mind if there weren't achievements attached to it, but I no longer have a squad to play games like this with, so they are left hanging since there's no singleplayer progression.

I've also seen a couple small updates go through, and one major one, and the major update really confused me. It seemed very out of touch with my impression of the community's view. It did nothing to change speedrunning (which seems to be the meta way to get through nightmare, so that's good), but then it made playing the game as a non-speedrunner even harder. I don't think people were asking for a more difficult experience by any means, given mob spawning can be pretty janky, and even when it's not, nightmare difficulty is a long, tedious challenge. On the topic of speedrunning, there's also no way to build a second deck to match a different playstyle via going through a different card channel without just farming easier difficulties (boring). So, I can't participate in the meta without spending hours on a game in an unfun way.. yikes.

Oh, and the EAC problems I described below are still unresolved for many people, 2+ months after the launch. Mega yikes.

(Below is from the second revision of this review)

While I initially had issues getting into the game due to EAC, the game eventually began working. The support team was in daily contact (during the work week) asking for more debugging information. I'm not sure if they changed anything on their side, as I was tinkering with hardware and software throughout the week trying to fix it (and they didn't mention anything was changed from their side). I've now gotten to play the game for a bit and made it through the first act on the veteran difficulty. So far, really enjoying the game! Can sometimes be a pain with random parties, but always exciting when you get that good part that keeps making the right moves and recovering from any stumbles along the way.

(Below is from the first revision of this review)

Edit: I have received some traction at the time of this edit via the Bug Tracker. I'm in communications with their support team and will update this review once I get to play :) I actually did receive an email from them about an hour before writing this review but missed it as it came in the form of a blast of Help Request Received emails, which mostly looked like templates, but one of which had a real contact. Have provided the %AppData%/EasyAntiCheat folder to their team, which hopefully will provide details on the underlying issue.

I pre-ordered this game for 100$ and have been able to play due to Easy Anti Cheat blocking my computer for no apparent reason, with no ability to figure out what is causing a conflict on my computer due to the game giving a vague "anti cheat violation" error described in the bug filed on the B4B website: https://back4blood.bugs.wbgames.com/bug/B4B-80. I've spent around 8 hours over the past weekend trying different configurations, uninstalling random programs, disabling various services, killing any non essential processes to get into the game and have had no luck. A community manager has replied on Reddit saying they would look around for an answer, but I have not heard back from them nor seen progress on the filed bug. I had no issues playing during the open beta and have only changed a bit of hardware since then. I also have no issues with any other EAC games.

As a result, I have paid extra for early access to a game which I have not been able to play either during the early access period nor post-release. I will be refunding this game proactively if there is not a solution by the dev teams in the next week so that I'm not at a 100$ loss for a game that doesn't work.

Physics seem very inconsistent for seemingly equivalent set ups making the central mechanic unenjoyable given the ask to speedrun the game to earn all achievements.