Viper Commandos Warbond: Worth It? (OUTDATED)

A review of the newest warbond, June 13th, 2024.

Overall Summary

GUIDE'S OUTDATED, BUFFED ARMORS ARE OKAY NOW AND MAKES THIS WARBOND BETTER THAN POLAR PATRIOTS

The Viper Commandos warbond was pitched as a step in the direction towards "quality over quantity" with future content. So far, it serves as nothing more than a bad omen for future warbonds.

One of the central ideas for this perspective is having warbonds shy away from dumping an armory's worth of weapons in favor of cosmetics so that it would be easier to balance the gameplay of these weapons upon release. However, this backfired tremendously as this only meant the few weapons included in the pack need to undergo extensive scrutiny since they're now doing all the heavily lifting to sell you on it, unless you really, really want Pelican-1 to have a camo pattern that's borderline indistinguishable from its normal appearance.

As a plus side, the balance patch which came with this update was absolutely amazing, so hopefully I'll be changing my tune in the upcoming weeks.

While I originally believed Polar Patriots was going to be the worst warbond for a while, Viper Commandos has successfully one-upped it, somehow managing to be even worse, especially off the tails of Polar Patriot weapons getting some much-needed buffs (which still would keep it as the worst warbond if Viper Commandos didn't exist).

To begin, I'll start with the good aspects, going step-by-step until I hit the worst features for the entire warbond.

If you'd like to hear my review of the current warbonds, check out my other guide here.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3248114610&tscn=1718322684

A Foreword

$10 Emote

If the fact I'm listing the singular emote included in this warbond first doesn't speak volumes, I don't know what will. And, inexplicably, the emote still comes with a downside.

This is the only warbond in the entire game, aside from the default warbond, to include a new team emote. It's a Predator reference. If you like the movie, which you obviously do since it's Predator, then great. At the end of the day, though, it's the fourth team emote which is just a handshake, even if it is the best one. It also has stiff competition to compete with the hug emote.

As for the downside I mentioned earlier, this takes the spot of a potential third victory animation, leaving you with only two. This doesn't seem like much of a problem, but considering how light this warbond is on content already, it's a needed reduction in goodies in exchange for visual cosmetics you most likely will not use or notice.

Speaking of the victory animations, they're fine, but they are extremely unassuming. The first one available, which involves stretching your arms out in celebration, doesn't draw a lot of attention since it's a slow, reserved motion. The second, a flexing pose, is a bit cooler and is much more dynamic, although there's something about it I can't quite explain which makes it feel low-energy for a flexing motion. Ultimately, they're fine, but I personally would've preferred to have a team emote and three victory poses over whatever cosmetics would've been lost to include an extra pose.

Oh yeah, since I don't mention this anywhere else, the booster is great. It's the best warbond booster. It's not, like, "mandatory" good like the sprinting booster, but it's not a complete joke. Good job!

Camo Fetish

As expected, the armor and cosmetic designs within this warbond are rife with jungle camo patterns. I personally like jungle camo patterns visually, but even I realize this is not an overwhelmingly common opinion. Obviously, if you dislike or are indifferent to camo patterns on everything, this warbond will have very little to offer you. However, there's still a severe negative even if you enjoy camo patterns like me.

The problem with these camo patterns is that they're camo patterns, meaning they are, by design, intended to blend in. Although this warbond grants you the ability to paint your mechs, planes, and hellpods with camo patterns, the colors are extremely dark, muted, and muddy, meaning you will often forget they're even there.

If you wanted other players to see your cosmetic items, well, good luck. They're not going to stop and stare at your hellpods in the middle of combat. Even if they do take a glance at it, it's all visual noise which ultimately goes completely unnoticed. That's also assuming your teammates are anywhere near you to begin with.

The same goes for yourself. There were multiple times where I had to remember I even put on the camo patterns. The most I've gotten out of these cosmetics is occasionally being stunned as I realize why my resupply looks slightly off-color.

Another unique cosmetic is a new badge for your player icon, as seen in loading screens and so on. However, it's an extremely simple design (especially compared to the level 80+ badges) whose colors are far more bland compared to the usual fare. That is coupled with the fact this being available to you only matters if you're at a lower level, where all the player badges are some variant of browns and grays. As you climb into the 60-150 level range, player badges become significantly more colorful, nullifying the point to this new warbond badge cosmetic.

Similarly, as you hit level 60-150, there are obviously more people who will have this cosmetic badge than there are people who are at your specific level range wearing your normal badge, since there's no barrier for entry besides buying the warbond. This perhaps may become less true as they add more badges in the future, but as of right now, the highest value you'll get out of the custom badge is buying it right now when it's at its rarest, since its value will depreciate over time as more people obtain it.

To wrap up my thoughts on the cosmetics, they're neat ideas, but tactical camo is completely at odds with the whole point of multiplayer cosmetics, and there's simply not enough variety in the game right now to justify feeling any sense of importance being a player who owns it.

The Gameplay (The Worst Part)

You'd figure this pack having less weapons would make them be released at a much higher quality. Honestly, you should know better at this point.



THE ARMORS

Look cool.

That's all.

These launched completely non-functional, yet people inexplicably defended them, insisting they actually worked and were good.

What thresholds does 50% extra melee damage break? Forget meleeing bots, you're not going to get close to them, and it takes 4-8 hits even if you do, so 50% doesn't help. What about bugs? The tiny, squishy bugs already take 1-2 hits. Hunters take 2-3 depending on where you hit them. But hunters do insane damage and can trade blows with you as you hit them anyway. I really don't see this being useful, even as somebody who uses stealth to get close to enemies to begin with.

Then "improved ergonomics." I've heard a lot of things about what this does, but it's described that it "reduces weapon drag when aiming." The effect doesn't seem to be relative. This means that if you use something like the eruptor, which has atrocious dragging, the buff is pretty minimal, but the effect is more pronounced on weapons which are already snappy, like the carbine, meaning that it's completely pointless.

If melee did 100,000% damage, maybe I'd use this armor, but that honestly still sounds really tedious and I'd probably still get killed. But even if "improved ergonomics" was ramped up to a million, I'd never use it over any other armor even if it made my weapons control like I'm aiming in Quake. Very rarely do enemies ever come from more than one direction when you're fighting. When they do, that's not an intentional tactic, that's just you being positioned poorly. Less weapon sway is a quality-of-life consideration, not a gameplay mechanic with a tradeoff.



THE BUSHWHACKER

Did you know you can use the Bushwhacker without actually buying Viper Commandos?

1) Get the Senator revolver (from the Steeled Veterans warbond which you already own since it's the best warbond).

2) Play a normal mission, but whenever you use the Senator, do the following:

• Pretend the Senator only holds three shots.
  
• Don't use the speedloader.
  
• Don't shoot enemies with medium armor.
  
• If an enemy is more than ten feet from you, miss.
  
• Don't do the gunspinning easter egg.

3) Congratulations, you are now using the Bushwhacker.

It can be argued it's useful for eviscerator bots and hunters, but you're sacrificing a lot out of your sidearm just to have a dedicated delete button which only works for 1 to 2 of these enemies at a time, especially when they normally swarm you in groups of 3 or more and have to be dangerously close for the weapon to do any meaningful damage.



There's a running joke in the community that every warbond requires a generic, middling assault rifle.

Tah-dah.

This isn't a bad weapon because it's functionally bad. It's decent. It's the Liberator but it fires faster and has more recoil.

It's bad because you need to ask yourself if this is what you want from a $10 warbond: a slightly different flavor of the same vanilla you've had since launch. A slightly different flavor of vanilla that's been in every warbond you've ever bought.

You know what else you can get from a different $10 warbond? Democratic Detonation's weapons. Every single weapon in that pack right now save for thermite grenades are amazing. It even has its own "different flavor of vanilla" which is the most unique out of any warbond. Pretty cool.

If you're really jonesing for yet another assault rifle, get that instead.



THE KNIFE

Oh, the knife.

Oh, the knife.

If this was a custard pie you threw at enemies, I'd at least understand it's meant to be a joke weapon. Instead, here's something that might as well be, except we are expected to take it seriously.

This was the most disappointing weapon in the entire warbond. In any warbond, really. Here is arguably the most unique weapon in the whole game. Normally knifes do the butchering, but the devs decided to butcher this knife instead.

There was a joke before the warbond even came out. "Why would I want a knife when I have grenades and guns?" Very funny.

Now that it's out, yeah. Why would you want a knife when you have grenades and guns?

It's advertised as a stealth weapon. You know what it can kill "stealthily?" The same things the Senator does. And I don't mean the Senator revolver can kill them but the knife at least does it in stealth. Sound doesn't alert enemies if your target dies on hit. I genuinely mean you can stealth with the Senator revolver just as well as you can with the knife. Except better.

The Senator:

• Doesn't have an arcing trajectory.
  
• Travels instantly to its destination.
  
• Reliably kills everything up to elite and medium-armored enemies.
  
• Carries entire mountains of ammo.

The knife:

• Travels in a slow arc.
  
• Must be prepared before it is thrown (even if you fully swap to your grenades).
  
• Takes multiple knives to kill anything besides common mobs.
  
• Only has 8 shots on a resource which is incredibly difficult to come by naturally.

At the very least, the knife doesn't blow your cover if you miss. However, if you do not kill what you're aiming it, your cover is completely blown.

"The enemy cannot push a button if you disable his hand." I wish they saw the guy doing balancing for this warbond as an enemy.

There is no reason for this weapon to exist just to appease an extremely niche stealth playstyle. And this is coming from somebody who uses this extremely niche stealth playstyle. Why wouldn't I want stun grenades to cover an escape? Why wouldn't I want damaging grenades to hold my ground? I'd even take smoke grenades to make a sneaky approach or exit. Call this knife dull, because it's completely pointless.

People like demonstrating the knife killing a charger by hitting the same leg around four times, but it simply isn't feasible in practice, nor is it superior to any other method of killing a charger except for using thermite (which is already a low bar). Chargers move, bounce, damage you, and keep in mind you're using a slow projectile with only 8 shots (half of which you need to hit or else you just wasted all your time and grenades) that needs to be prepped for each throw.

Compare that to, say, a single normal grenade, which will clear out any enemies around the charger. Or a stun grenade, which lets you hit the charger with a support weapon you should've been carrying to begin with (or which lets you circle around the charger and hit his weakspot). Or a smoke grenade which lets you break line of sight to escape. A key thing to note is that these grenades all have utility beyond helping you deal with chargers, as well. The knife, on the other hand, is more likely to get you killed than kill a charger.

Even if the knife had infinite uses, I still wouldn't think it's very good. It takes too long to kill anything, it's too slow, and it's too awkward. Yes, I could throw a handful of knives at a brood commander like I'm playing Heritage For The Future, including the entire 15 seconds of setup required in that game. Or I could shoot my Senator three times, which takes less than a second even if I didn't have it already out.

Now imagine how useless the knives are when I reduce the number of uses from literally infinity down to just 8. Well, you don't have to: that's how bad the knives are right now: unfathomable as infinity itself.

[Pa1n]

devs will do anything but give us a suppressed gun xp

[Orthos Arelius]

just bought the knife. It is really good against automatons!
If I miss I don't get noticed and if I hit I don't get noticed. I can throw all eight of my knifes at a rocket devastator and it won't even notice me.
And it will also one-shot a devastator of any kind if you hit it in the eye which is not that hard to do.

[THETA 🌭 ZERO]

1,431 unique visitors.

[Riot]

WHO CARES

[putridfilth2]

softspot for the bushwhacker because i feel like im using a flintlock pistol in first person

[Scout Gaming]

Absolutely awful warbond with no good stuff in it at all, w take.

[hussar.carl]

Meta users trying not to be completely detached from what the average player feels:

[Quasar]

I did notice the more melee damage by telling my friend to stand still while I beat the shit out of him, there is a slight melee increase

[Skeley]

The Warbound is legit the worst we had yet and the only good thing in it is the booster.
(At least the Bushwhacker is funny)
They also gated 1 armor set that clearly belonged in the Warbound in the Super Store.
So we get less content for the same price...

[quantumfreq999]

The positives don't outweigh the negatives what so ever. We have fallen for fancy visuals and not how the weapons are supposed to function and stand out from one another for players to have the own uniqueness in their load-out. some of the buffs recently applied are okay at best. a decent first step from undoing most of their screw ups. Just because you polish up a terd and make it look different, at the end of the day its still a terd. what we have in return is is increased breach rates and flocks of gunships that are supposed to have location to spawn from to even be there in the first place. every game i play, with or without teammates, is excruciatingly overwhelming. they say they're not encouraging meta but that's exactly what their actions shows. And its reflected in what stratagems and weapons that are chosen by players on a regular basis. My hope in game this game future is slowly depleting. its disappointing.