Necromunda: Hired Gun

The Games Workshop Renaissance continues

Necromunda: Hired Gun is another good game in a growing line of Warhammer 40,000 games (we don’t speak of Dawn of War 3) in recent years. The First Person Shooter (FPS) takes place in the titular world of Necromunda and puts the player in the boots of a bounty hunter working in the grimy underbelly of the hive city.

The Setting

As written above, the game is set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, in particular the world of Necromunda. Necromunda for those unaware of the setting is one of the biggest hive worlds of the Imperium of Mankind. It is a manufacturing world where hundreds of billions of people are crammed into hive cities – gargantuous structures the size of mountains.

Underneath these hive cities, known as the underhives, the criminal elements of the city gather. These are brutal places where violence is the only law and war a constant companion. Gangs are just one of the many dangers lurking in the abandoned levels of the hive city. Many people are forced to find refuge in the underhive – mutants, chaos cultists, renegades and genestealers.

The dangers of the underhives are many, and into this world the player sets foot.

Gameplay

The game is an FPS with an emphasis on movement. Anyone who has played Titanfall or Apex Legends will be quite familiar with the movement system (in particular if they played as Pathfinder). Running and gunning is not only encouraged, but a must since enemies often flank, charge at and advance on the player. Wall running, double jumping and a grapple hook allow the player a high degree of mobility.

Levels take advantage of the movement system. The level design is quite impressive. While linear in nature, the levels never feel constraining or narrow. They are quite spacious at places, allowing the player to tackle the enemies various ways and use the movement system to its fullest. They also complement the environment perfectly, making for quite memorable scenes and action pieces. In addition, the player is given an incentive to explore the levels thanks to chests sprinkled throughout them. Each chest has additional loot that can be picked up for the level.

The player has various abilities to aid them in slaughtering the denizens of the underhive. Besides an array of weapons, the player can use melee takedowns against stunned enemies, strip shields using energy pulses or use heightened senses to slow down time and manage the firefight better. Abilities can often be used in conjecture to create beautiful works of violence and modern art. No ability felt vestigial or useless.

The health system is quite simple. The player has a health bar and a shield bar. The shields can be recharged using shield batteries that are scattered around the level or drop from enemies. Health doesn’t regenerate on default. However certain abilities can allow limited regeneration (though require unlocking). The player can also use health packs purchased at the start of the level to get a quick boost of health but at a monetary cost. Besides them there are stim packs. These revive the player should they get overwhelmed or mess up a jump and plunged into an abyss. Like health packs, the stims are also purchased before the mission but also at terminals.

Gunplay

If movement is one half of the core mechanics, the other half is gunplay. The gunplay is quite satisfying. Guns vary from heavy stubbers that can rip through crowds to plasma rifles that incinerate enemies. The player can carry up to four weapons; two rifles and two pistols. This forces the player to choose their loadout carefully. Thankfully each gun can be customized extensively. Want a heavy bolter that fires rapidly? Just buy the modifications. Do you want your autogun to acts as a sniper rifle? Modify it. The game allows extensive weapon customization with actual visual impact on the gun models.

The guns themselves are extremely fun to play with. They feel impactful, in particular the bolters. The damage they wreak is also satisfying to witness. The game has plenty of gore. Limbs get taken out, guts fly off and heads explode in detail. It really gives visual feedback to the player. The enemies themselves are quite varied. Different gangs have distinctive looks and tactics. Eschers, for example, are an all-female gang that prefers employing plasma weaponry and invisibility fields. Golaiths prefer brute strength. Besides their employment of rocket launchers and heavy stubbers, they like to use melee weapons and charge at the player with jetpacks.

Each gang has its own hierarchy. From regular gangers that can be mowed down easy, to heavy gunners whose backpack can be hit once and explode. Lieutenants with shielding that require heavy weaponry to bring down to bosses such as Ambots and Ogyrns that tower above the battlefield. Each has a distinctive silhouette that allows the player to differentiate them at a glance and thus switch to the appropriate weapon to dispatch them.

A Dog’s Life

Another mechanic in the game is the player’s dog. The player is able to summon the dog for a limited time to the battlefield. The dog can be upgraded much like the player to be made more lethal. At first I saw the dog as a mere gimmick but as the campaign progressed I started relying on the mutt. Once summoned the dog can reveal all surrounding enemies in a radius. It can also attack enemies on its own and at worst be a bullet magnet. Used alongside abilities, the dog can be quite a potent equalizer.

Martyr’s End

After the first mission, the player is brought to the main hub area of Martyr’s End. This area serves as the place where the player may purchase guns, bionic upgrades and weapon customizations. The area also has a firing range and gladiatorial arena to test weapons and configurations before missions. Here the player can also choose to either progress the story or pursue side missions in order to earn cash and loot.

Cash, Guns and Bionics

As alluded to before, money is an important part of the game. The player earns cash by finding credits, opening chests and selling loot such as guns and trinkets. While the player would often find most good weapons in the levels themselves, bionic upgrades and customizations do cost a pretty penny. Thankfully, the game allows the player to grind money in game by taking various side missions. These are divided to categories based on difficulty and unlocked via progression. These missions take slices of previous levels and have the player either hunt x amount of enemies, destroy/install/release x amount of stuff, defend areas from waves of enemies or capture points of interest.

Most of these missions can be completed in comparatively quick time and confer reputation with various factions in the underhive. Since each mission specifies the enemies the player will meet, the player can also be better prepared to meet them. In addition, often times these missions will have additional loot chests to find, in the same place as their campaign counterparts.

It is not necessary to grind these missions but should the player want, or need, to upgrade their bionics, they are indispensable since the price of bionic upgrades quadruples by each level. The bionics themselves are separated into main and sub categories. The main categories are major body parts which confer passive advantages and unlock the sub categories to upgrade. The sub categories are often active skills that allow the player to better fight, explore the levels or just survive.

Again, I stress, it is not necessary to upgrade bionics, but I found my progress often stymied without them. Of course, the dog can also be equipped with bionics to increase their effectiveness.

Besides bionics, the player can also buy guns and items, though for inflated prices. These guns can be customized as mentioned before though they are often inferior to anything that can be found in the levels.

Art and Graphics

I am not going to say that the game has next generation graphics. I don’t think of myself as an expert in graphical fidelity nor do I own a top of the range rig (middle range, sadly). That said, I found the game and its effects to be quite pretty. The environments are just gorgeous. They fit the setting to a tee. Huge natural caverns, large manufacturing halls filled with molten steel and citadels built atop mountains of garbage.

The levels are quite colorful as well. While there is the expected gunmetal grey and brown rock, there is also a huge palette of colors. From glowing blue pools of pollution to bright yellow rivers of molten metal to the soft red glow of fungi, the world of Necromunda: Hired Gun is a sight to behold.

The feat of making every level not just seem decrepit but also lived in is quite remarkable. The gothic aesthetic of buildings and statues married with the cogs and bolts of machinery is quite impactful. It is Warhammer 40,000. These details extend to the guns themselves. Each one is a great work of art that fits the settings. They are bulky, brutal things. Often big and unwieldy with many scratches and gashes. Add ons are often jury rigged, with scopes on certain guns looking out of place (as they should!).

The enemies themselves are just as colorful as the setting. Gangers will have Mohawks, tattoos and garish grab as they charge the player. Each looks as though their mini models were brought to life.

Sound and Voice Acting

The sound is adequate. The weapon sounds are, as mentioned before, satisfying and the ambience is quite nice. The soundtrack however is lackluster. It is mostly forgettable, with generic metal riffs the only notable exception I can recall from level climaxes.

Voice acting is passable. Everyone does their job well enough. I found all voices to be appropriate and fitting. No performance fell flat. That said, its nothing spectacular or worth reporting on. It does its job.

The Jank

God emperor, the jank. The game has plenty of issues. Enemy AI sometimes breaks mid firefight. Some objectives won’t trigger properly. I caught notable slowdowns in certain intense firefights. Clipping through objects, including level walls also occurred. The dog’s AI ignoring all enemies around it is a common issue. The list can go on. These issues didn’t flare up constantly in my playthrough, but happened enough to be noticeable and thus forced me to note them down.

On the performance level, I already wrote that there were some notable slowdowns, but only during intense firefights in a couple particular levels on four separate occasions. That said, the game ran well overall on high graphics with only one notable crash occurring in over a dozen hours of continuous play.

Story

I left the story for last because, honestly speaking, the story is not that important for the game. I am usually a player that prefers a good story to gameplay but Necromunda: Hired Gun doesn’t offer much and I don’t begrudge it for that. The player starts the game as a bounty hunter on a mission that goes bad. Saved by another bounty hunter, they are now trying to find out who screwed them over. It’s a very simple story centered on a more localized conflict rather than some epic tale of revenge with the fate of the galaxy hanging in the balance. Just a bounty hunter looking for retribution getting involved in local power struggles. This works for the game and is one of its strengths. No deep story, just kill gangers.

Summary

Necromunda: Hired Gun is a competent FPS emphasizing movement and gore over realism. It brings the Warhammer 40,000 franchise to life, illuminating another facet in the setting; that of the criminal underground in the hive cities of the Imperium of Mankind. While its soundtrack is forgettable and its voice acting passable, its environment really does a lot of the heavy lifting. It is enjoyable and fun though lacking in longevity. One friend watching my gameplay remarked it reminded him of RAGE 2, and looking at reviews it does seem similar. Thus if you like RAGE 2, or just looking for a nice mindless FPS or maybe exploring another corner of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, I highly recommend it.

The Fallout Fallout

Fallout 76 is out and the verdict seems to be a public lynching

The first time I learned of Fallout 76’s existence was a week before its release when I started seeing reviews of its beta. To say I wasn’t really interested would be an understatement. I haven’t touched the series since Fallout: New Vegas which I bought at a bargain price, played a few hours then uninstalled.

I have found the Fallout series, in particular under the Bethesda banner, to be a messy, buggy, visually outdated, clunky games whose stories lacked agency and interest. The real interesting stories were often buried under terrible UI design and scattered in empty brown sandboxes. The shooting mechanics were terrible for a first person shooter and the character mechanics were too dumb for any serious role playing game. The worst of two worlds is the way I often viewed the series.

As disclaimers go, its quite long but I hope you readers get the message: I don’t like the Fallout game series. However, I can’t deny their cultural importance or the place they hold in mainstream gaming. Thus I just turn a blind eye to them and focus on more interesting aspects of gaming. For that reason, I had no interest in Fallout 4, only taking notice of its mixed reception the same way a passenger on a train takes interest in the landscape flowing past their window. Yet Fallout 76 seems to have done something quite extraordinary for me to not be able to ignore it: It made Fallout fans angry.

While I admit there is some satisfaction in seeing an enraged fanbase of what I view as mediocre game series turn on its creators, I have to try and think on WHY it happened. Why did this game offend so many in the Fallout community as to review bomb the game, have news outlets damn it and give it scores so low, lower in fact than Kane and Lynch, a game so terrible that it only warranted a 6(!) on Gamestop. Like a witness to a trainwreck, I feel compelled to watch and try to decipher the mess.

Watching the many reviews online, I personally don’t get the hate. Visually the game is indistinguishable from Fallout 4: Ugly. Bethesda games were always quite graphically impaired, filled with clunky character animations, horrible shooting mechanics and copy pasted interiors. Not much has changed on that front in Fallout 76. Next is the story or lack of. People complain about the fact there are no NPC characters to give life to the wasteland but in all my experiences with Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas that is an upgrade. Bethesda’s Fallout series never had much life in it and what NPCs you could interact with would often stare at you lifelessly or repeat their pre-programed routine, making you feel as though you were wandering in an animatronic theme park.

Next comes the bugs, but as infuriating and game crashing as Fallout 76’s bugs are, how do they differ from all the previous incarnations in the series? Bethesda has a reputation, A REPUTATION, as a shoddy game developer that pushes half baked products on store shelves, does only the minimal bug fixing and often relying on the community to debug its games. Those that bought the newest game have no right to be outraged in that regard.

Gameplay then, is the last aspect to explore as to the cause of the outrage. That said, there is little change on that front. It is still the same horrible shooting mechanics and lack of meaningful character progression. This time though, instead of choosing perks every few levels you get ability cards that help customize your character and perhaps supply an opening for another avenue of microtransactions. Not much change from Fallout 4. There is still the stupid looting and building mechanics that add very little to the game. The only two major changes in my eyes are the survival aspects (needing to manage your food and water) and the VATS system.

The survival aspects themselves are almost token, and don’t seem to intrude much on the overall Fallout experience while the VATS system change is, well, dumb. In the past, VATS was a nice pause button or a free “Get Out of Jail” card if things got hectic in a shootout. You could take time to pick targets, choose what organs to shoot for maximum success\damage then see it unfold in slow motion. Since Fallout 76 is an online multiplayer game, you can’t really pause the server for every individual so VATS was changed to basically an aimbot. No, I am not kidding. It is literally an aimbot, allowing you to target an enemy and lock onto them with your weapons with hardly any player input.

Did I forget to say Fallout 76 is an online multiplayer game? Yeah, I guess we found the reason for the outrage. The biggest problem for Fallout 76 is its multiplayer aspect. Not because the experience itself is horrible, after all as I demonstrated, there is little deviation from the games that came before it. That said, by making it a multiplayer game, Bethesda has pretty much shot itself in the foot.

The problem with making it a multiplayer game is that what little immersion there was in the game is basically ruined. Not only are the people in the server total strangers who may dress in wacky outfits and make rude gestures at the player, they also queue to the same events and stories, meaning they hinder quest completion as well as the immersion itself. After all, part of the “Charm” (With the biggest quotation marks possible) was the solo exploration aspect.

Don’t get me wrong, players had been clamoring for a cooperative Fallout experience (The sadists!) but not one populated by a myriad of strangers who keep running around, knocking things over and just reinforcing the emptiness of the world. In a way, Bethesda managed to expose the cheapness of the Fallout experience by shedding light on it with multiplayer gameplay.

Of course, this isn’t the only reason why Fallout 76 is receiving such pillorying. The multiplayer only aspect was merely the catalyst that lit the powder keg. The real explosive powder was the fanbase’s expectations of the game. While Bethesda marketed the game with an emphasis on multiplayer and survival, they did try to have it both ways by either being evasive on the singleplayer aspect, (You know, the thing that made the series popular) or claiming the multiplayer aspect won’t hinder it (Which it doesn’t, until you get disconnected from the server and lose all your progress). Of course, they also lied about performance and graphics but that is small potatoes compared to the main selling point of the game – Exploration.

After all, Fallout games (and Elder Scrolls games for that matter) are all about the exploration. You can yell “Story” from the top of mount Everest for all you like, but all Bethesda main stories (and many side stories) are total rubbish. Playing more than two hundred hours of Skyrim I didn’t feel once the urge to continue the main plotline. It was the lore and exploration which drove the game for me. The same is true for Fallout. The game series is good in spite of its stories, not because of them. However Fallout 76 doesn’t even have that good an exploration drive. After all its not the player exploring an unknown wasteland, its a bunch of players doing it. With the spell of crafting a unique experience broken, all the faults that have existed in the series since Fallout 3 came to bite its studio in the ass.

Yes, there is nothing new in the complaints of the Fallout fanbase. Bethesda continued to dilute the series, dumbing it down for mass appeal. It seems that this time they simply crossed a line that allowed the rubes to realize they were robbed. The degradation of the series was there for all to see, but I guess you only become aware of it with a crowd, with open mics running around an event and killing the boss before you can get your chance.

I feel like a lot of the outrage comes from waking up. The army of fans who really liked the series and deluded themselves into thinking a messy, buggy game that somehow gets worse with each iteration is worth it for the experience. When that experience was cheapened by the addition of the online component, they woke up to see they’ve been living in a slum catching fire and the landlord doesn’t give a damn saying instead “It just works!”. Yeah, I guess I’d be angry too.

That said, the only recourse those fans have is either try to force a refund (Which is a tad problematic since Bethesda made their own launcher and sold it outside of Steam for what I believe could be this very reason) or boycott Bethesda products. Don’t buy the new Starfield and Elder Scrolls VI. That said, we all know that fans often like to forgive abusive game companies because they liked previous games of theirs and they hold franchises to ransom. I don’t like to make allusions to battered spouses, but it sure feels that way. Would Fallout 76’s outrage live long enough to make gamers ditch Bethesda? I feel a tad cynical in saying “I don’t think so” because like every battered spouse they’d go back after a promise of “We are sorry” and “We will change and take your feedback into account”. After all, they made Skyrim! (and how many years has it been since Skyrim?). Todd wouldn’t lie (narrator’s voice: Todd always lies).

Bethesda, Bethesda never changes.

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Shadows Over Bögenhafen

Shadows Over Bögenhafen is the new Downloadable Content (DLC) available for Warhammer: Vermintide 2 which came out more than a month ago. I stumbled across it when I saw a sale for the base game in my steam feed. Since I enjoyed the base game and the asking price (equivalent of $10) was reasonable I thought why not and bought it.

For a review of the base game you can go here, but suffice to say that the DLC doesn’t change the basic gameplay. It remains a co-op horde survival game with an emphasis on melee, an interesting loot and crafting system as well as plenty of character. I loved it the first time around and I still do. What the DLC itself adds are a couple of things that in hindsight should have been included before as well as a mini campaign.

The mini campaign takes place in the city of Bögenhafen where a powerful chaos artifact named the Blightreaper had been locked for safekeeping. When the Skaven and their Norscan allies, the Rotbloods, attack the city in order to take possession of the artifact, its up to the Ubersreik Five to stop them.

The mini campaign itself consists of two maps, each a sprawling district of the city. You start in the piers and go through the poor district before crossing over to the main city, traveling through the sewers and emerging into the upper levels. The map design itself feels a tad sloppy compared to the expertly crafted maps of the base game. I often found myself at dead ends forced to backtrack or going in circles. Another element that distinguishes these maps is visibility. In each map there is a part where due to circumstances (smoke or lack of light) visibility drops nearly to zero, making it harder to see incoming enemies or rely on ranged weapons. In particular the second map where in the first half you wade through pitch black sewers, forced to carry a torch which further diminishes your offensive and defensive capabilities.

Enemy wise, its still the same deal. You have squishy hordes, tough elite enemies and bosses which can easily demolish a party if spawned in a tight claustrophobic room, which happens from time to time. In regards to the boss spawns, it seems like it was tweaked as in many maps I found myself fighting two bosses, sometimes even three.

Graphics still look gorgeous and the new maps have great visuals. Magnificent sky boxes, excellent lighting, sweeping vistas all contrasted by the grim mire of the unplanned urban sprawl and unkempt sewers. Echoing my words from the previous review, the art team has really gave it its all and it shows.

That said, the mini campaign only adds about an hour of gameplay in total. Thankfully, Fatshark, the game’s developers, were smart enough not to divide the community and allow all players to play the new maps in Quick Play mode. I also found out that you can select the new maps and play them even if the rest of your party doesn’t own the DLC, which is neat. Props where due.

The second major addition is Okri’s Challenges. An addition to the game that tracks and rewards players. There are 207 challenges in total, some as easy as finishing the campaign, leveling a character or killing a boss. Others require completing an insane number of missions on hard difficulty or killing a certain enemy in a certain way. Each challenge unlocks a reward, either cosmetic or a high level chest which will probably contain powerful gear. By the way Electronic Arts, this is how you instill in your playerbase a sense of accomplishment and pride. The fact that the cosmetic items cannot be bought and must be earned is really a throwback to better times in gaming when character appearances denoted skill.

Like I said, this is something I feel should have been in the base game at launch. The fact however, that it was added with the DLC and even given access to the entire playerbase is commendable. It gives better purpose to grinding, as in the past it was just for better loot and completion’s sake (i.e. complete the game in every difficulty). It also helps retain players’ interest far better and incentivizes playing different characters and builds, something that was surely lacking before. This is evident in that fact that even though my main is Kerillian, I’ve been playing other characters in an attempt to level them up and complete challenges.

Another tool to help keep players’ engagement is the daily and weekly challenges. Daily challenges are available to all players while weekly ones are only available to DLC owners. The daily challenges often involve slaying 3 monsters as a party, or gathering 3 tomes or grimoires and so forth. They can be usually done under an hour with a full party or up to a couple of hours of solo play. They often reward the players with a valuable chest, thus helping weaker players gain good gear. The missions themselves reset at midnight GMT time. The weekly missions reward players with cosmetics chests (either weapon or character) and take significant more time. By myself it took around six to eight hours to complete the objectives. That said, since they reset only once a week, players have more time to finish them and once more, with a group they take significantly less time to clear.

This leads me to the final addition to the game, cosmetics. Though there were some alternate costumes before, the new DLC added a slew of them. A lot of them can be unlocked via challenges as stated before, each an indication of an accomplishments. Other varieties can be found in the Bögenhafen chests that are given by the weekly challenges. This includes hats, outfits and portrait frames. Also expanded upon were the weapon skins (also known as illusions) with new ones added. Whats more, now new weapons skins can be obtained via the same Bögenhafen chests. Thankfully, you can transfer weapon skins between weapons due to the game’s crafting system (thus you don’t feel like you wasted them, unlike another certain game *cough* Destiny 2 *cough*). Overall though, I found this aspect of the DLC the least interesting for me because the original look of the characters was already great (again, much credit goes to the art team) and I usually don’t bother much with character customization.

Overall, the new DLC injects new vigor in the game. Thanks to it I’ve gone back to playing Warhammer: Vermintide 2 regularly and so have some of my friends. The fact that I still grind day in and day out so long after completing the main stories is both a testament to the game’s strength and the DLC’s additions.

If you can afford to buy the DLC, I highly recommend it, and even if you can’t, I suggest going back to Warhammer: Vermintide 2 to check on the free updates. I guarantee you’ll get hooked back.

Battletech

I am no stranger to the Battletech universe. As a kid I played several of the MechWarrior games so I have a passing familiarity with it. That said, the newest game set in the universe, Battletech (Yes, that is not going to be confusing in the future whatsoever) which had just recently released allowed me to get a deeper dive into a universe fraught with war and giant robots, known as Mechs.

For those unfamiliar with the setting, the game does a good enough job summarizing key points. Suffice to say its the 31st century and everything sucks. Humanity has spread across hundreds of stars but has lost a lot of its technological advances thanks to internecine wars which wreaked havoc on many worlds. Thus, people cling to what working relics of the past they can maintain as a new feudal society rose to prominence, with the Mechs – giant bipedal war machines, acting as its equivalent of knights, only dozens of meter tall and able to destroy a small city with Gauss rifles and phased plasma cannons. In this universe, noble houses wage war with each other over planets and technological relics.

The story itself is set in the Aurigan Reach, a region of space in the Periphery, located between several of the major powers in the Battletech universe. The player takes the role of a mercenary captain, down on their luck with debt and loans piling up. When a mysterious client offers the player a chance to climb out from their financial black hole, they’ll get embroiled in the struggles of the noble houses in the Reach.

The main story of the game wouldn’t shame a season of Game of Thrones. There is a healthy dose of drama, intrigue, backstabbing and reversals to truly engage the player. The various supporting characters all play roles in the bigger story and have interesting backgrounds of their own. The motivations of all parties are quite fleshed out, amplifying the tragedy of their actions. Suffice to say the story both surprised me at points and had me invested in it heavily. That said the game takes place before the invasion of the clans, so sadly no Timber Wolves.

Gameplay wise, the game is of the tactical turned based combat genre. The player operates a squad of 4 Mechs (also known as a Lance in-universe) which they can customize beforehand. Once deployed, the Mechs will be under the player’s control as they attempt to complete objectives. The combat system itself can be described as complicated at best, and obtuse at worst.

Mechs are assigned their combat turn per round depending on their initiative, which is dictated by their class and pilot skills. The heavier the Mech, the later its turn in combat would come. If the player has several Mechs with the same initiative, they can choose whichever one they wants to move or decide to reserve them, thus further delaying their turn. Mechs are usually able to move first then shoot. The further a Mech travels the more evasion it gains, making it harder to hit by the enemy.

Thus movement and positioning are key in combat. Mechs are armored, with the front and sides being the most heavily armored parts. Its important at all times to present the front of the Mech to the enemy as it is able to absorb the most damage while maneuvering to the back of hostile Mechs and vehicles where the armor is thinnest. A Mech that doesn’t move during its turn will simply become a sitting target.

Terrain itself is vitally important. Battletech operates both on elevation and lines of sight. Certain weapons require unobstructed line of sight while others offer indirect fire, not to mention the ranges. The game does a good job showing firing arcs, optimal ranges and whether the target is visible or hidden behind terrain. The other role terrain plays is in stability and heat management. Mechs, being bipedal walkers, must be stable. Weapon impacts may destabilize them, causing them to be knocked down which injures the pilot, temporarily decreases initiative and allows the enemy to get Called Shots (focuses the firepower on a specific part of the Mech, thus able to inflict greater damage). Things like rough terrain increase stability damage and decrease overall movement.

Heat is another factor in fighting as weapons generate heat. Each Mech has a heat threshold which can be improved with pilot skills. Once a Mech passes the threshold, it risks internal damage and worse, emergency shutdown which takes it out of action for a round. Terrain can contribute to heat retention (like geothermal fields) or aid in its dispersal (such as lakes and rivers). Biomes also play a role, as snowy biomes give Mechs lower heat retention while deserts and lunar landscapes cause Mechs to overheat much faster. Thus it is important to pick the right Mechs for the environment.

For these reasons, the game doesn’t feature an overwatch function. Instead the player must be careful and pick and choose which weapon systems to employ, at what distances as they watch heat accumulation and effectiveness, being mindful of the enemy’s next turn. The point of a battle is always to incapacitate hostile Mechs. There are several ways to achieve that:

The most tried and tested way is to blow out the main torso. This is not an easy feat considering that shots have a percentage modifier to hit and that hits’ damage can be halved by armor, brace command and pilot skill. The second tactic is to incapacitate the pilot, usually by causing recurring injury as pilots have limited injury tokens which can be improved through skills and equipment. Third option is to blow both legs off a Mech, but considering leg armor is second only to torso in thickness, this isn’t very recommended. Fourth case is lethal cockpit damage, usually by blowing out the Mech’s head. This is very hard to achieve due to the small target area (even with Called Shots and a skilled pilot I never saw more than an 18% chance). The last option depends on the type of Mech, as those that use missiles and artillery house the ammunition inside of them. Destroying the part of the Mech where they are stored can cause internal explosions which can bring the Mech down from the inside.

Last part of combat are the pilots themselves. Pilots have 4 stats, each corresponding to a different aspect of the Mech. Pilots gain experience through completing missions, enabling them to improve their stats. Once enough experience was gained, pilots can also unlock special abilities, specializing in one of the 4 branches and having a secondary ability in another. The 4 branches are Gunnery, which improves hit chance, Piloting which increases evasion and melee attacks (as well as stability thresholds), Guts, which increases health and heat threshold (don’t ask me how) and finally Tactics which gives better detection range as well as decreases penalty for indirect fire. Pilots can die in combat and injuries are so common place that its always recommended to have alternates just in case. The pilots themselves are not bound to specific Mechs and can be easily re-assigned.

It is this complicated combat system that can either frustrate a player or satisfy them. For my part, as much as certain aspects galled me, overall I did enjoy it. That said the game’s difficulty is quite wonky. There is no adjustable difficulty level, and certain missions can easily overwhelm a player. One bad mission can easily derail a campaign. Thus save scumming isn’t just necessary, but is recommended. Mainline story missions are more balanced but contract work can often surprise you as the difficulty indicator only tells the player the total tonnage of a hostile lance, not the number of hostiles or Mechs (many missions will have reinforcement waves of hostile Mechs). Often times the player will have to choose between just completing the main objective then bolting, standing their ground for a bonus or just withdrawing.

This is a problem as money in the game is tight. To get better Mechs the player has to either locate a planet selling them, often at an inflated price, or salvage them from the battlefield, which may take several battles to find enough parts to assemble one complete Mech. This forces the player to choose in contract negotiations whether to pick more salvage and receive less pay or sacrifice overall salvage for a much needed monetary relief. Salvage is also important in finding and getting better weapon systems.

Mech customization is a factor as well. Each Mech has a set tonnage and number of hardpoints and it is up to the player to decide what to load them with. Players can replace generic weapon systems with upgraded ones, add more heat sinks to better manage heat or jump jets for better maneuverability. They can even decide to just remove certain weapon systems and focus instead on thicker armor. There are many ways to tweak a Mech to suit a player’s playstyle though that said, Mechs do have set roles.

Graphics wise, the game looks beautiful. The Mech models are detailed, giving them a very realistic look of bulky war machines with paint flaking and scratches. During combat as the Mech accumulates damage it can be seen on the model. Sparks will fly out of sockets of lost weapon mounts and fires will burst out. As heat builds up the Mech will start venting steam and glow redder. Environments are nicely detailed though not as much as the Mechs, and physics can glitch at times leading to some hilarious animations. Overall though its quite a pretty and visceral robot punch out game.

The game’s cutscenes can be described as still images with limited movement added to them. They remind me Battlefleet Gothic: Armada with their style. They are quite beautiful to look at, and the voice acting itself is quite good. Sound design is satisfying as Mechs sound like the lumbering metallic constructs they are. The creaking of metallic limbs, the high pitch of lasers and the dreaded shrieking hiss of a missile barrage all add to the experience. The soundtrack though was completely forgettable, so much so that I quickly gave up on it and just had podcasts and my own music playing in the background for most of the campaign.

There are several nitpicks to be had. The player is given the illusion of choice in dialogue segments, but it all boils down basically to roleplaying. Loading times are an arse. I wouldn’t usually comment about this but having just bought a new mid range rig, I thought it worth mentioning. Some levels would take minutes to load up. Travel between systems also brings the game’s flow to a standstill and contract work dries up in a system after a couple of missions. The game tends to favor bigger, heavier Mechs as it progresses, changing the game style a tad (from fast and flanky to slow and lumbering). Oh and the game remains a 4 Mech lance for the entire duration.

That said, many of my complaints can be countered with the narrative. Of course travel between systems takes time due to the backwardness of human civilization. That time is also used for repairs and healing crew members. It is only logical that a mercenary outfit will only have a few contracts thrown its way per planet as competition is fierce and will need to seek higher paid work elsewhere. A Battletech squad is a 4 Mech lance and of course bigger Mechs are preferable due to their thick armor and punishing firepower (my favorite is just kicking smaller Mechs with an Atlas II and seeing them explode from the sheer power of the strike). Since Mechs are such an important commodity of course they’d be hard to find and expensive to buy.

Which brings me to the final score. I wrestled with myself for a whole week over the score. It is part of the reason I hate, though understand, the need for numerical scores. Having fretted for a week, the game’s ending was the clincher, raising the score a whole point (which tells you just how much I liked the story). Thus:

Battletech is a good game which brings its namesake universe to life. It has a deep combat system, a good story and beautiful graphics and sound design. However, its soundtrack is forgettable, its difficulty level non adjustable and certain game design choices may turn off players. 8/10, I recommend it to Battletech fans and newcomers alike.

Frostpunk

Frostpunk is one of those hard to classify games similar in a way to Papers, Please (And yes, that is a tall accolade). The best way to describe it is as a story driven city building crisis management game and even this description does little to do it justice. Suffice to say it is quite an interesting game which flew under the radar for me.

The game itself comes from 11 bit studios, whose other notable title is This War of Mine and the two games share a similar theme of survival in inhuman conditions and choice. While This War of Mine mainly dealt with the survival of a few individuals holed up in a bombed out building in a war torn city, Frostpunk story is a tad bigger and more apocalyptic.

You play as the captain of an expedition in an alternate, steampunkish 19th century, sent north to locate an experimental generator as the entire world descends into a hellish ice age. The temperatures keep plummeting and most of the world has succumbed to the cold, becoming a bleak, snowy wasteland. Upon discovering the generator, you must marshal your band of survivors to build a shelter from the growing cold and save whatever is left of humanity in the face of mounting challenges.

Stated in the opening paragraph, the game is a city building\crisis management game. You start with a set population and must feed it, keep it warm, housed and healthy. The cold is a constant enemy to battle out as it can take its toll, thus heat management is a major aspect of the game. There are various resources you can harvest and mine, from coal (needed to stoke the generator and keep the city warm), wood and metal (common construction materials), steam cores (needed for advanced machinery) raw food and rations. Of course materials are scarce and research is needed to unlock advanced buildings which allow you to access deposits.

Scavenging and scouting are also a vital part of the game and important to the story. Early on you can research and build a beacon which allows you to send out search parties. These expeditions can travel outside the city and find survivors to bolster your city, materials for buildings and advance the overall plot. The game itself allows you to pick and choose where to send the expeditions and unlocks more locations as the story progresses. Each location will often have a journal entry besides materials and survivors, further fleshing the world of the game and adding to the backstory.

Story driven should be emphasized. The game has a story line, with the story advancing by certain triggers\time stamps. This means that certain events will always occur, giving less replay value but allowing players to learn from failures and better plan in their next playthrough. The story itself is unique to each scenario, and each varies in length, goals and emphasized mechanics. Of course, each is full of challenges and hardships.

Challenge is the operative word. Besides managing resources, the player must keep an eye on two gouges; Discontent and Hope. Should hope fall too low, the people would lose faith in their survival. High discontent will cause bloodshed, insubordination and an uprising. Managing these two gouges is hard considering various events and laws the player has to navigate on a daily basis. Keeping discontent low and hope high seems obvious, but when the survival of the city depends on people working 16 hour shifts and sometimes double ones just to keep the coal mines running to feed the generator, and you too would be facing an exhausted and disgruntled workforce.

Morality is the main theme of the game. Each choice you make either in the overarching story or in the daily events is important. Would you enact more draconian laws to keep people working and content or would you turn to faith to soothe the fears of the population and be tempted to slide into a theocratic state? Would the shortage of workers make you enact laws forcing children to work, risking their lives in mines and factories, or would you keep them safe in shelters as the coal piles dwindle? And always, there is the growing cold… The game often forces you to ask just how much of humanity are you willing to sacrifice just to keep the city going for another day.

The game’s aesthetics reinforce this theme. The landscape is almost an unbroken snowy terrain. What isn’t white is either frozen blue, brown or industrial grey. The only bright colors are those of the generator’s flames. The art direction itself is reminiscent of This War of Mine and tends to look closer to a graphic novel than realistic. The graphics themselves are quite beautiful, the city looks alive and the buildings and people are very detailed. A major theme of most buildings is just how roughshod and cobbled together they look.

The sound design is great. The sounds of the wind howling and water freezing and thawing are a constant companion. The soundtrack itself is filled with haunting orchestral pieces, many employing the violin to great effect. It is one of the few games in which I didn’t feel the need to play my own music or have a podcast\tv show\movie playing in the background. A true compliment you can be certain of that.

That said, there are some drawbacks. While the game eliminates the most tedious aspect of city management for me – the plateauing (when the player has enough income to build whatever he or she likes and is left with the task of just improving\maintaining the city), it may hamper the enjoyment of others who do like it. The city building itself is quite constricted due to the setting, which can also turn off players of the genre. The story beats themselves are set in stone and don’t vary, meaning there is little replay value once you beat a scenario. As for choices, while the game aims for the players to make “Moral Choices” it more often fails in my opinion. The only times I really felt like making a moral choice was when I was forced to by a lack of resources rather than anything else the game presented me with. Once you gain sufficient experience with the game its also easy to plan accordingly and negate this entire aspect which seems like a failure of game design.

All told the game is an intriguing take on the city building genre. Has interesting lore and good world building. Presents the player with difficulty and challenge while telling a compelling story of survival in the harshest of environments. Scenarios have their unique takes and never overstay their welcome. That said, has little replay value and is very constricted in its nature. Not to mention falters when it comes to its “Morality” aspect.

8/10 would recommend.

Warhammer: Vermintide 2

In the last few years Warhammer Fantasy (Not to be confused with its offshoot Warhammer 40,000) has seen a revival on the computer. Vermintide, Mordheim: City of the Damned and Total War Warhammer have served to bring the tabletop game back from the dead (Let’s not talk of Age of Sigmar) and introduce it to a wider audience.

However, I profess that of the three, Vermintide was the only game I didn’t play. Part of it stemmed from my dislike of horde based games. Though I have played both Left 4 Dead 2 and Payday 2 (As well as a brief stint of Killing Floor 2) they never had a lasting appeal for me. This might be due to the reason you need a good group of friends to maintain interest in them and that the constant grind (i.e. replaying levels over and over again) quickly erodes what little joy there is in these games. Thus when I received a free copy from a friend, I didn’t really have much in the way of expectations.

I was proven wrong on so many levels. Vermintide 2 is one of the best games I’ve played in recent years and that is not an accolade I give lightly. The game clears the first hurdle (Lack of interest) by actually having a story and characters. You play as a member of a small strike force captured by the Skaven as they attempt to activate the Skittergate, a bizarre contraption that should it work, would allow the Skaven allies, the Rotbloods, to mount a full scale attack of the Empire from inside as well as summon daemons and other nasty creatures from the Warp. It is up to your strike force to escape and work to sabotage the gate in a series of missions, each contributing in a way to the overarching goal.

Some readers would of course be confused by the terms used, but the game does a good enough job of informing the casual player of the stakes while giving more informed players a taste of the rich lore. The characters themselves do a good enough job of expositing in their banter, fleshing them further via their interactions. This is the second selling point for me as there is a character progression and skill tree, as well as weapon customization allowing for deeper gameplay not to mention actual personality. Kerillian, my favorite character, can be summed up as a murderous psychopath bitch who spends most of the game demeaning the other characters and reminding them of her exalted status of being an Asrai (Wood Elf).

Characters earn XP by completing missions and collecting items in levels. Each level adds more damage and health to the character (Represented as power). Every 5 levels a character earns a talent point which is used to unlock skills or ‘Talents’. The point allocation can be changed in the lobby, allowing players to change and tweak their characters before every mission, thus giving more flexibility. Added to it, every 7 levels a character unlocks a different class with different talent trees and unique abilities. This allows party members to try or fill different roles if needed without sacrificing their character progression.

The game has 3 major roles, coined on reddit as Tank\Striker\Ranger. Tanks are, as the name implies, able to soak damage and draw aggression. Strikers do a fair deal of damage in close combat and deal a lot of damage to bosses as well as help clear hordes. Rangers play as long range support, dispatching dangerous enemies from afar and helping allies. Though each character starts by fulfilling a certain role, as said before, they can change class and transition roles, thanks in part to weapon customization and talent points.

When I wrote weapon customization, I truly meant it. There is a wide variety of weapons available to each character, both with unique looks and a wide range of properties. Weapons themselves are given at the end of a level via loot boxes (I’ll address them further down the review) and differ in power and rarity. The more rare an item, the more secondary properties it has, thus making it more powerful in combat. The amount of weapon types is quite impressive, each with their own animations and qualities. From fast attack weapons like swords and daggers, to more powerful axes and maces and even slow but highly damaging halberds. For range you have the assortment of shortbows and longbows, crossbows, pistols, rifles and even experimental revolvers. Each has its own pros and cons such as the longbow’s armor piercing property but long wind time or the sword and dagger combination that can cleave through enemies fast but easily glances off armored foes.

Added to the game is a deep crafting system. As the player progresses in levels and gains more powerful weapons, old equipment can be salvaged to its basic components and used to augment current weapons or craft new ones. With rarer items producing better parts that can even be used to re-roll the properties of other weapons, thus making them far more beneficial. This mitigates the RNG factor of the game somewhat as well as allow players to keep their inventory less cluttered. It also gives further purpose to level grinding, as the extra loot can all be smelted into salvage materials to make better weapons.

It seems in the current gaming landscape loot boxes are inescapable but thankfully Vermintide 2 handles them well. These loot boxes are always dropped at the end of a level and upon gaining a level. They will always drop level appropriate weapons and trinkets that can be used by the current character. There is no option to buy in-game currency to spend on them. Even better, these loot boxes can be augmented by exploring the level and gathering tomes and grimoires which also give small XP boosts. However this adds some further challenge as tomes take the place of healing items and grimoires take the slot of potions and have the added effect of lowering overall party health by a third per grimoire (Thankfully there are only 2 per level). This gives level exploration a boost as well as allow a well coordinated party to gain better loot.

This all works to make level grinding more tolerable as each re-play can be used to explore for more secrets, get more loot for the smelter and quickly level up other characters. One can play the game solo on lower difficulties as the bots are competent enough and are able to respond to different situations adequately. However on higher difficulties they can easily get swept by the hordes and more on one occasion their programming left me dismayed, thus tarnishing some of the single player experience.

Gameplay wise it is a horde based game. You start the level and make your way to your objective fighting regular enemies and hordes that spawn from time to time. The look and behavior of different enemies does well to shake things up. You have the genre staples such as the slow lumbering but hard hitting enemies, fast berserkers that quickly drain your health, armored enemies that take a lot of hits and sneaky ones that attack from behind. All told the fact you fight both Skaven and Norscan raiders gives all enemies unique looks and behaviors that make every fight challenging but satisfying. The focus itself is mostly melee, with very few enemies employing ranged weapons and overall is very satisfying. You can feel the impact of the weapon as it cleaves through a wall of fur and teeth.

Boss characters are also diverse, with Spawns of Chaos flailing around, grabbing player characters and munching on them to recover health, Stormfiends with warp flamethrowers and heavy armor and Bile Trolls with vicious clubs, acid spit and natural health regeneration. Last (And pretty least) is the Ratogre which is the most vanilla enemy there is, simply an oversized rat which is fast and hard hitting but has little else going for it. The boss encounters can happen anywhere in a level though some missions will always have specific encounters in them. It is not unusual to have 2 boss encounters in a level (Especially after you used up all your health potions after surviving a particularly vicious horde wave and are trying to catch your breath).

Level design is really good, there is enough freedom as to not feel oppressed by the linearity of the levels and there is good variety in visuals. You will go through ruined cities, sewers (Sadly it seems mandatory in EVERY videogame to have a sewer level), woodlands, mines, farmlands and so forth. I rarely got lost in a level and always knew where to go next. Whats more, the art team has really done its research and you get beautiful vistas from seemingly pastoral farmlands with seas of wheat, to ruined, dilapidated cities struck by disaster to ivy grown ruins. Every location is both beautiful and memorable.

Graphics wise the game is beautiful. It is stunning to view, especially the backgrounds and sky boxes. I caught myself more than once just staring at the landscape before rudely stabbed in the back by a dirty Skaven. Am not the biggest judge of graphics but the game looks good even on the low settings I run it with due to the age of my gaming rig. I’d imagine on higher graphics it is breathtaking. It really made me wish the team would make a Skyrim style game of Warhammer Fantasy, since they certainly have the skills in the arts department at least.

Difficulty is varied, with higher difficulty levels granting better loot but in return beefing up enemy health and damage. The lowest difficulty can be breezed through with bots alone but has a power cap on loot, incentivizing playing on higher difficulty. Difficulty levels also determine the amount and availability of health items and ammunition, ramping up the challenge on all fronts. The top two difficulty levels also add friendly fire to the equation, which at that point seem just plain mean. Difficulty can be further customized by deeds, a loot box drop item that imposes certain restrictions on a level in return for guaranteed better loot (Like no health potions at all, all mobs turned into armored enemies and so forth). It really ramps up difficulty with these special rules, adding to replayability.

Of course, no game is perfect (Except Stardew Valley and I am willing to stab anyone who disagrees with me!) and Vermintide 2 has its fair share of faults. As mentioned before, the companion AI really lets you down on higher difficulty levels and has a tendency to break in certain situations. Even on lower difficulty levels the game has a nasty tendency to swamp higher level characters with almost impossible enemy combinations. The exploration aspect often forces the player into jumping puzzles that don’t suit the engine well, making them often frustrating. Last point are the loot boxes themselves. I just dislike RNG loot drops in general and had my fair share of disappointments hoping for better gear and receiving nothing valuable (Yeah, I know, but still!).

In summary, Warhammer: Vermintide 2 is a fun, horde based game with good story, characters and mechanics. It is enjoyable both alone and in a group and really brings the Warhammer experience to life. Score wise I’d have to give 2 separate scores to the game (Single and Multiplayer scores).

Singleplayer – 7/10

Multiplayer – 9/10