Recent reviews by rhap

GAME OF THE YEAR ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ BUY IT NOW

I'm writing this review not only to recommend this game to other players but also to clarify on some complaints that I see in most of the negative reviews on this game. I go pretty in depth below but in short:
TL;DR - This game is an incredibly unforgiving and grueling experience that is counterbalanced by extremely satisfying moments. Failure is not avoidable, and that's the fun part of the game. The game does not hold your hand and will make it as hard as possible on you if you want to win, and a combination of stealth and strong defense against hordes is required. Try to get at least 1 other player before you decide on getting this game, and no, matchmaking does not exist, nor should it. Stick with it, learn the mechanics, and this game will probably be the best version of a multiplayer FPS Horror Survival that you will ever play.

To start off, this game is definitely NOT made for solo play. It is highly stressed that you find other people to play with in order to fully experience this game. That being said, I have only played this game with one other player. It took us roughly 4-5 hours in order to clear the first stage of this game, coming with many failures and replays. After we beat the level, we decided to take a break but we checked out the next couple stages - the way this game's progression works is that you have to clear previous stages before you can go further down, basically like a campaign - and even though we barely touched the stages we could tell they were on a whole other scale compared to the first stage, and could tell that this game gets even more brutal the more you go on.

However, this does NOT mean that we had a bad time. In fact, neither of us have really gotten upset over anything in this game other than the poor decisions WE made that caused us to fail. With only 2 players, we really had to manage our resources and take our time clearing enemies. This brings me to the first of some complaints that I've seen, and that is the stealth mechanics in this game. The stealth in this game is NOT designed for you to be able to "perfect stealth" an entire stage, as that would take away a HUGE aspect of the gameplay. In fact, clearing out enemies with stealth is the opposite of what is encouraged from the game, and my friend and I have come across spots where trying to use stealth to clear areas is actually impossible and we had to adjust our gameplay in order to "go loud" and clear the area. Also, the game includes security doors that you have to go through in order to progress that will sound an alarm that will continuously spawn hordes of enemies until you clear the security scan objectives. THIS is the core aspect of this game, searching for stuff like ammo and health kits for your team as well as other tools in order to optimize your defense against the incredibly unforgiving hordes that are to come from the security doors.

This brings me to the next common complaint, and that is the scaling of this game's enemies. No matter how many players you bring in, the difficulty of the level will ALWAYS be treated as if there are 4 players. This may seem harsh, but let me try to explain why I think this is what really makes GTFO an incredible experience. When my friend and I were still going through the first stage and made it to the second security door for the first time, we failed miserably against the incoming horde as the horde difficulty increased from the first door, and I'll be completely honest when I say that I thought it was legitimately impossible to pass this second door with only 2 people. But as we kept playing and learning the mechanics of the game and our skills became more polished and our loadouts best optimized for our small squad, we really started enjoying that challenge and when we finally beat the stage it was easily one of the most satisfying victories that I've had in recent games. The appeal of this game IS the harsh difficulty of it, and if that difficulty gets adjusted because people aren't willing to either find even 1 other person to play with or learn what best works for your squad with the loadout system, then honestly this game just isn't for those people. I get it that there are people who would want to be able to enjoy this game casually but can't due to its current difficulty, but GTFO doesn't advertise itself as a game like that. The game isn't meant to be easy to beat.

This brings me to the last but probably biggest complaint I've seen about this game and that it does not have any sort of in game matchmaking, and honestly I could not think of a WORSE way to play this game than with a squad of all randoms with no guarantee of actual communication between players. One of the key aspects in this game is resource management and being able to talk with your teammates about decisions in order to clear areas. In the stages you will find ammo packs, med packs, and tool kit packs that will refill certain parts of your loadouts when used, but they are very limited and require a decent amount of exploring if you want to find them all. Finding these resources is one thing, as most likely than not you will need to either sneak or clear an area of enemies before you can find what you need, and being able to talk to teammates about locations of enemies and if stealth killing is a possible option is a necessity (this game is INCREDIBLY dark and most of the time you will not see an enemy unless you shine a flashlight). Along with that is the communication of when those resources I mentioned are found and who would best benefit from receiving them. I can already imagine various situations where you're playing in a random squad and one person decides using an entire med pack on himself to reach 100% HP while others are suffering around the 40% range with minimal ammo left. Loadout diversity is also something that should be considered in a squad and without communication could singlehandedly ruin chances of success. No matter how many plus sides matchmaking may provide this game, they will never outweigh the struggle it would bring to many players who aren't fortunate enough to find games with averagely decent human beings.

In conclusion, is this game worth it? Absolutely. Even in early access this game provides enough content to warrant the price tag on it, and more content is soon to be added. The game is an incredible experience and only gets enhanced the more friends you play it with. I highly recommend this game to anyone who is looking for a very harsh but rewarding game.

Right now is probably the best time to start playing Dota 2 because of all the Chinese players currently leaving because they are upset about words. GG ch_ing ch_ongs.