The game paradoxically seems very technically polished but also very mid for me. The graphics look decent. Not amazing, but I'm not playing on a high end machine atm either so it might be better with better hardware. Character customization is pretty bad, almost laughably so. Its not super important in an extraction shooter, but even still it seems very flat and quite androgynous which I am not a fan of and leads me to believe it might be purposefully so in order to help sell Decks and cosmetics. Performance is very well optimized, even with my shitty computer (good one blew up, thanks Helldivers) it plays and runs smoothly and has no noticable lag or stuttering.
My complaint though is it feels rather uninspired. I enjoy sortieing with my friends, but solo I just... don't have the urge to. The desire to grind stuff and improve just isn't there. So far the weapons don't seem to have a unique flavor to them. Yeah, the single shot Ferro hits harder and has only 1 bullet, but aiming it and shooting it doesn't really feel all that unique from aiming and shooting a pistol. The automatics feel samey in aiming and shooting as well. Only real difference is reload times and ttk times. To me it just feels like they lack unique identities. I am not excited to unlock later ones beyond them being +1 gooder. This might change as I get deeper into the tech tree, but atm I'm just... not impressed. A friend described it as the guns feel like guns from "The Borderlands."
Gun mods also feel rather uninspired. Instead of stuff that changes the gun feel in a significant way, it just seems to be basic stat increases. There are no scopes and different aiming devices, no laser etc. Stat wise, they are important, improve damage application and recoil, but they just don't feel like they really do all that much gameplay wise other than improve ttk. Again, game is new and so better later game mods might be more significant, but atm meh.
Camera and audio frustrate me to no end. I enjoy a few extraction shooters and generally prefer more stealthy approaches. Starting with the camera, the forced 3rd person perspective makes hiding in a bush laughable. You can't creep up to the edge of the cover to peer out. Your camera is stuck behind you. You can be completely exposed having crept out of the bushes and yet still unable to see because your camera is stuck behind you trying to look through the foliage. This might not be an issue for a lot of people that are more run and gun, but having played a lot of these games solo being able to sneak around and avoid fights with bigger groups and keep on eye on them from concealment has been a skill that really made the genre enjoyable to me. Instead you have the 'corner peeking' of being at the edge of something and 'peering around' it exploiting camera rotation and angles. Just feels bad to me.
The positional audio seems bad. I have fucked with my settings quite a bit, messing around with my headset and testing my shit and it seems to not improve. Good positional audio is of big importance in these games. When you hear stuff you can get a general impression of the direction, but it seems like they 'muddy' the sound direction a bit. I believe this is on purpose, and it kind of seems like they try to do an 'echo' effect of sound distortion as it moves through buildings and terrain to let players have a general sense of where noise is coming from but not enough that they can pin down more specifics. They might be doing this on purpose to force more 'meeting engagements' and less pure ambushes. Which makes sense if you want the game to be more approachable for non sweats. I still find it frustrating.
Add to this a lot of 'false positives' the game tries to throw at you, with random environmental noises that are designed to mimic ARCs and the 'tumbleweeds' that magically ignore physics and roll through trees, fences etc without stopping or being hung up/diverted. Its very unnatural and pulls the eye.
Lastly is inventory management. The 'Recyclable' item tag feels like a newbie trap. So far I keep finding recyclable items being needed for base upgrades. This isn't that bad of a thing really and wikis and guides will quickly develop that give new players a clue on what's worthwhile and what isn't, but so far each new player that has joined us on discord throughout the day has ended up asking the same questions of 'Are recyclables trash items? Can I recycle them or will I need them later. Cause it says recyclable, but I can also recycle the 'material' items, and if I try to build stations it says I need the recyclable stuff, so should I just keep it all cause how do I know what really is trash recyclable and what isn't?" Again. Not a super big deal, you can farm the stuff up again, but it just feels very counter intuitive at the start and each new player we've had has ended up asking the very same questions. It had to have come up in the betas as well. Just wanted to add its even more counter intuitive, cause all the other items have tool tips saying, "Used to craft X items, recycles into Y items" etc. So recyclables not having 'Used to upgrade crafting bench' feels like a purposeful oversight.
All that said, the game has been fun with friends. We've clocked up quite a few hours and are poking at it and exploring. The big question I have is how much longevity the game will have in a month or two? Am I having fun in the game because the game is a lot of fun, or am I having fun in the game cause its just fun to play with my friends? As we ended the day today that question came up and we are leaning towards the latter cause once people log off no one really wants to play solo. Hopefully more content and stuff expands the game but looking at videos and reviews I don't know if that will be the case.
