Nylige anmeldelser av DiggerDog

4th Update: Kind of bored now; Expect a perk progress wipe :-( Will check out again when officially released.

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Recommended? Well, sort of...

It's a survival zombie game, where a number of successive waves of mutants/zombies advance upon you from all directions. You're sort of a mercenary who's tracked in real time and paid for clearing out an area of monsters, and between incoming waves you rush to visit a shop where your pay lets you buy increasingly effective weapons to deal with the increasingly dangerous foes.

Killing Floor 2 gets rid of many of the problems in the original Killing Floor.

First, the graphics, sound, and voice-acting are better, more varied, and that alone makes the game more immersive and satisfying.

Second, if you join a game late (or are killed within the game?) you join with funds appropriate for the current wave of monsters. You're not rich, but you don't have to completely rely on teammates to give you their scarce cash to equip yourself enough to contribute to and survive the upcoming wave.

Third, advancement within character classes are not road-blocked the way they were in the previous game. For example, the medic can advance levels without ever healing anyone (I remember lame, repetitive behavior of jumping off low bridges and cliffs to give the medic someone to heal), and the commando can advance levels without killing invisible stalker women (commandos are riflemen who rarely stand at the edge of group and therefore rarely get the chance to kill invisible stalkers which attack and are quickly killed by outliers like melee berserkers and shotgun-toting support class teammates.)

Fourth, although the maps are still confusing, there's enough detail there that after you've played for a while, you can figure out where you are with just a glance at the unique features of each highly cluttered and detailed room. At least, it's starting to feel that way. I still get briefly lost after fifty hours playing.

Fifth, there are more people with voice comm. Maybe that's because "early access" gamers are more likely equip themselves with microphones? I don't know, but seldom, even in a group of five strangers, do I find myself as the only person willing to use voice comm. EDIT: However, all voice comm is "push-to-talk" so if you're used to playing with an open mic, this might wreck the game for you. Also, because there are usually multiple threats, there are fewer friendly "Good shot!" comments, because there's not as much time to watch what the other players are doing :-(

Sixth, Browser servers, friends tab, WORKS for finding games where any Steam friend is playing Killing Floor 2 - you don't have to befriend that person in a separate Killing Floor friends system...I can't remember if this was possible in KF1.

I had a lot of fun and spent many hours playing the original Killing Floor, but only because I was lucky enough to be included in regular games with a wonderful group of players organized by ZBane and his wife Ms.Dagain. Friendly, fun people. I think almost any game played with those folks would be satisfying. However, I didn't recommend the original Killing Floor because almost all the games I played with random strangers didn't feel good.

Not so, with Killing Floor 2. I've enjoyed games with strangers. I've really enjoyed games with friends. There is still a bit of a problem in that, in normal (easy) difficulty, everyone usually survives so the satisfaction comes from making lots of kills and there's a bit too much competition for the best spots to stand and kill monsters.

I expect that will change as I play "hard" difficulty more often. As with any zombie-killing game, the satisfaction should come from surviving and beating the boss, rather than getting the most kills.

So far, so good. Apr. 29/2014.

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Normal difficulty is not very challenging. The first 70% of the game is usually just a turkey shoot. Hard difficulty is better, but for some reason, the random pub groups aren't as friendly. (Moreover, even the Normal difficulty games are less communicative than when the game launched.) Another advantage of "normal" difficulty is that the teams tend to hold up in big, multi-access areas which are more dangerous, but more fun; it gets boring holding up in an area where all the zeds come from only 2 directions.

Solo play is more fun than the original Killing Floor. I've also had a much easier time winning in solo. In the first two hours that I tried it, I made it to the 10th round on Suicidal difficulty and the 3rd round on Hell on Earth difficulty. (With a 19th level support character.) If I repeated enough, I could win on solo suicidal difficulty. But...it's slow. On the harder difficulties, you have to run around carefully at the end of each round, collecting ammo boxes as they spawn, being careful not to kill the last remaining zed. Every single wave. Because you're not going to get through the next wave without grenades (you shoot on one side while your grenades kill on the other side), and you don't make enough money to fill your ammo otherwise. It's also disappointing that the really amazing animations for zeds don't appear except on the harder difficulties. On suicidal, the husks sometimes pull flame-throwers on you. On Hell on Earth, all the animations are simply more varied, faster, and more interesting. It would be fun to throw a few of those zeds into normal difficulty.

In general, Killing Floor for me is mostly fun as a head-shot game. There's very little random spread; if you center your view correctly, you aim and hit. It's satisfying.

But honestly, I'd rather start with a big bank account and see 10 of the hardest waves, followed by the boss, than the slow build up of difficulty, and the tearing around in the first two waves, looking for ammo and things to sell. I think I will get bored of Killing Floor 2 in its present format.

Finally, Tripwire's FAQ states that everyone's characters will probably be reset to zero several times during "early access." That is standard for a Beta, but NOT for early access, unless horribly unbalanced game leveling exploits are discovered. I might put the game down permanently if my four 20th level characters are reset to zero.

Tips?

If you throw a random spawned weapon on the ground and pick it up again, it sells for £150 instead of £100.

Full experience if you just do some damage to any zed, so don't hesitate to share kills, or put one bullet into the stomach of that headless bloat. A lot of people haven't noticed this, and therefore try to go off by themselves to get experience. Oddly, sometimes expected "assist" experience is not awarded...not sure why.

No experience when using the pistol, katana, or flamethrower, or any off-perk weapon. Partial experience if your damage is done partially with an off-perk weapon.

The support perk/class is over-powered for the final boss. The boss kill is easiest if everyone goes support and/or medic. And if you can afford it: throw an extra AA12 on the ground for the final boss - for a quick reload if necessary.

Current bugs allow you to keep your max armor, carrying capacity, and for a while (sometimes the entire game), your max health when you switch perks. (For example, a 20th level medic can enter the game with free 160% armor, then switch to another class and keep renewing his armor to 160% thereafter.)

The server browser can't remember all your filter choices (like no custom servers).

The BIGGEST thing they could do to change the game without much effort? Allow difficulty changes in the middle of a game. Sometimes your team playing "hard" is too weak; sometimes your team playing "normal" is too strong.

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3rd Update:

Ran into my first griefer. Happily set him to "blocked" status afterwards.

A friend found a "level up" server. He says it works. Sigh. I guess Tripwire will be resetting all of our stats. Early Access. Pfahh.

Beautiful old game, but the camera and controls are too frustrating for me.

Didn't finish. Many puzzles seem simply random: try all the combinations possible on this switch until you find one that works. Lots and lots of swirling your mouse pointer about to find the items that can be interacted with. Otherwise: an oddly charming feel to the game. (Note: 0.6 hours on record? Nope. More like 3 hours. Not sure what happened to records of my first attempt, a year or two ago. And definitely over 90 minutes last night; perhaps the time is only recorded when the game doesn't crash?)

Final? Update: It's tremendous fun playing Russian biplanes at the beginning. Eventually, I imagine that gets too repetitive. Still, I might go back to just playing lower level. Relaxing.

The game becomes more and more of a grind as you advance in levels. I'm much less satisfied at battle rating 5 level than at lower levels. It's not that I'm bad. My last month's win rating currently stands at 58.9%. Not bad at tipping the balance for 16 player teams. Still...meh.

Ground forces? Beautiful graphics, but... Apparently, you can turn the vegetation off and give yourself a big spotting advantage. Meh

GAME NEEDS TWEAKING.

Original.
The last flight sim I tried was back on an 80386 computer. Windows 3.1/DOS. Things have improved a lot since then.

The flying feels good. Obviously, things are not photo-realistic, but every tree is modeled, even from miles away, and if you swoop down and slam your plane into that tree you saw from 2 miles away, the tree will take you down; it wasn't just a decorative texture overlaid on the ground. Many of the maps include ridiculous kilometre high cliffs - the landscapes aren't always believable, but they're visually and tactically interesting.

The game is fun. At least so far - I guess the opponents may start getting very difficult by the time I hit tier 3. Flying....well, it's very different. Lots to learn, but it's surprisingly easy to get the basics in hand - fly in the direction you point your mouse (arcade mode). When shooting at an enemy plane, shoot in front of the enemy, aiming at the little circle that pops up in arcade mode to help your aiming when you get close (inside 500m). Probably the most difficult part for an FPS player, is to learn NOT to constantly press W. That takes the throttle past 100%, over-revs the engine, and you want to save that ability for the times when you need it. No biggy. I probably flew the first hour with W constantly pressed. Selecting your enemy before shooting at him helps too. And learning to control your view will eventually be necessary...but not right away.

The goal of the game is always to wipe out the enemy ground forces and/or the enemy (air) bases; or occasionally to dominate a neutral airfield or some predefined air space. You're always conflicted - help the team to reach the goal directly, or confound the other team by shooting at their planes.

You enter a battle with 3 or more crews - you can get up to 5 crews per nation without spending any gold (gold is bought with real money). When you get shot down in a battle, you re-enter the battle with your next plane flown by the next crew. If you run out of planes, you can spectate or return to the hanger, but you seldom need more than 5 planes in a battle - using 3 planes is fairly common for me; using six planes only happened once so far (in about 40 battles with six-crew countries). At the end of the battle, you get experience, which opens up new planes, polishes/upgrades the planes you flew, and slowly, slowly gives experience to your air crews.

Experience? I don't understand it. There's three types: general plane research, plane upgrade research, and convertable for money research. Be kind of neat if the developer had a FAQ explaining it all, but their written material is poor. The tutorial missions seem OK, mostly because the written stuff is so poor. I guess there's a fourth type - crew experience. It's slloooowww to accumulate and the bonuses available for expert and ace crews are so large, that I suspect most habitual players simply buy their crew experience - at least enough to get their expert or ace qualifications.

Pay to win? Well, pay to progress quickly, that's for sure. But if you don't mind low tier battles, you don't have to spend very much real money. And personally, I really enjoy the low level battles. I imagine you can have a lot of fun at low level without spending any money past initial training. If you want a crew to get ACE qualified on any plane, you have to INITIALLY pay for that (qualifications are basic/expert/ace). There are all sorts of ways they try to squeeze more money out of you - but by far, the biggest, is unlocking planes sooner, and initial training of your air crews.

I found the game by watching the War Thunder videos of BohemianEagle (aka "The Mighty" Jingles) on YouTube. He's kind of pleasant to listen to, especially when he's recording audio alone, rather than collecting audio from his squad mates as well. You can get a good idea of the game from what he's posted - but stick to viewing the combat, because the out-of-combat stuff has changed a lot since the game went public.

Download it. Try it out. If you like it, $6 should accelerate the training for 5 good crews - enough for one nation (Japan is unpopular for various reasons - fewer planes?) After that...well, the money spent is small compared to the time you'll put into the game. Drop me a comment if you need a squad mate. I tend to play games in binges though - no guarantees I'll be available.

A final thought on in game random battle match-making. Currently, match-making looks at the battle-rating for your top three planes, with double weight given to the very top plane you bring into a battle. So don't bring any planes into the battle with a high combat rating unless you plan to use them - they just punch your battle into a more difficult group. If you enjoy low level games, make sure all the planes selected in your hanger are low level! It doesn't matter if you own high level planes - but don't have them selected unless you want a high level game.

As a post-final thought, you can run the game fine without Steam, if you download it from the developer's web-site. I bought through Steam, but tried that out and happened to get a May 10th freebie - free access to the closed-beta-tank part of the game and it doesn't run on Steam, but runs fine on the seperately downloaded game on the same computer. (Edit: as long as auto-logon is not enabled. Bug?) More buttons to learn. The tank game looks great. When the tank servers go public, I'm sure there'll be an update on Steam as well. Otherwise, the only real advantage to downloading through Steam seems to be that there's one fewer vendor to give your credit card information to. Lots of videos on YouTube. Jingles (above) loves simulator mode in the rolling Kursk landscape for tanks. Who knows what will happen to the game if they try to mix tanks and planes. Hopefully, there's always an option to play each seperately.

Update: War Thunder - Ground Forces (Tanks) is no good. The graphics are great. The mechanics seem to work (although in arcade mode, tanks can slew around like a car with bald tires in the snow). But the gameplay...terrible. The closed Beta has veterans playing in leveled up tanks killing noobs. There's nowhere to practice. Maybe it's OK if you joined early. Too much of a grind to interest me. I hope they manage to figure out a good game. Because its a really good looking sim.

Updated Update: Ground Forces is OK now. Start with the Russians. Don't use HE shells.

This is a real pay-to-advance game. It would be awfully slow in higher tiers without a premium account. A highly trained crew is not as important as I initially thought for fighters - just train your crew enough to allow "expert" qualification on each plane you fly; don't bother with ace qualification on any planes until you've advanced as far as you want to play and you're sure you want to replay your aced planes a lot - ace qualification helps, but will eat your cash very, very fast. Imagine getting ace qualification on 150 planes at an average of 400 golden eagles - that's 60,000 eagles, or $300. There are currently 324 planes in the game.

The nicest way to start out: Russian bi-planes, with battle ratings of 2, 1.7 and all others 1.3 and lower. This keeps you in the easiest grouping, on maps where your fighters can still kill ground targets with machine guns. Fun.

Update May 2021:

The timing bug is GONE. Better computer? Higher framerate? More compatible drivers? Or maybe it's just that I turned off V-Sync? I've no idea, but it makes a HUGE difference that the five? hardest fights in the game - none of which formerly could not be completed without hitting the timing bug - can finally be completed as the designers intended. The timing bug is GONE.

(Basically the timing bug worked as follows: in certain circumstances, the player had to execute a melee attack within a certain time window. When required to do so, a red circle about an inch and a half in diameter would appear near one's target, and a bigger circle would appear around it and immediately begin shrinking. The player had to melee after the shrinking circle had shrunk inside the static circle, but before the shrinking circle shrank to zero diameter/reached the center. The suggested timing simply didn't work right for me. Sometimes the required times were earlier, sometimes later than the indicated window. It was constant within a fight, but varied from fight to fight. Frustrating.)

Very nice game, even 8 years later. Glad it works as intended now. Really helps having a monitor with nicer colors and all the graphics turned up to the maximum.

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So I had a huge long review...just the basics this time.

I liked it. It's repeatable to some extent.

The first playthrough is the best. The next playthrough, where I decided to get 100% completion, finding every last hidden item on the map was the worst. Ugh. Not recommended.

Months later I came back and discovered it's possible to complete this game on the hardest difficulty level (there are only two possible difficulties) using only the bow and without visiting any tombs or picking up ANYTHING except for quest items and the salvage from the corpses of the bad guys you kill. (You end up with an 80%? upgraded bow to fight the final battle...it's enough.) I played through once doing that, and about five more times just rolling along as fast as possible. Enjoyable. You die and reload a lot though.

The story...yeah, it's OK.

Making beautiful, athletic Lara jump around in pursuit of her heroic goals...oddly satisfying.

Easy battles, but again, oddly satisfying.

Great sound. For example, there's a different sound for Lara's footsteps in very shallow water close to shore than when the water gets above Lara's knees.

Great voice acting and great animation. For example, Lara shivering and warming herself before a campfire - they've done it right.

The graphics. I love 'em. Scenic mountains. Horrible gore-filled dungeons. Beautiful forests. But I guess they'll probably look terrible in another five years. But for someone who started gaming on the Intellivison (me)...pretty impressive graphics.

The bad:

Too many corridor quick time events. How often does Lara have to run down a corridor where everything explodes or falls to pieces behind her, leaping and weaving from side to side? It's convenient for stranding Lara in her next location, but really...

Too many random button sequences needed to survive the latest quick time attack event.
For example, a badass wolf is attacking you. Vaguely remembered routine: Mash LEFT and RIGHT repeatedly to struggle. Now press MELEE. Now a tone sounds and time slows for a timed melee attack: press MELEE as the shrinking circle passes the half-way point, but has not reached the center. Time speeds up again. Now press USE repeatedly. Now press MELEE repeatedly until the wolf is dead. Miss any of that? Lara dies and you quickly reload and repeat until it's all memorized.

Odd shrinking circle timed attack mechanics. The window for successfully timing the melee attack CHANGES. However, it seems to be constant each time the game is repeated. I learned how to time the shrinking circle melee attacks just right...then spent ages trying to finish off one boss, only to discover that in his case, the proper moment to finish the attack was just after, instead of the usual just before, the shrinking circle had reached the central dot. Mis-timed for that boss constantly through about 7-9 games.

Saved games are needlessly obscure. Say you've been keeping your latest saved game in save slot 1. This constantly gets overwritten with the latest save. To stop overwriting, it's easiest to: save the game in a NEW save slot. Then save it again in save slot 1. Now, the new save slot won't be touched but you can easily find your most recent save: save slot 1. This is different from the latest campsite, which is also autosaved but may be several minutes earlier. Want to restart the game at a certain point in a list of saved games? Too bad. You've gotta load 'em up to figure out how far along in the game you are.

The treasure-seeking is needlessly obscure. It's also a waste of time, but if you're feeling compulsive, toggle checkpoint on the mini-map and highlight any item on the minimap. Now, when viewing the world with "survival instincts" a column of blue light will appear above the checkpoint that was highlighted. Makes finding items much easier...and doesn't seem to be documented.

Non-skipable cut-scenes. Only about 75% of the cut scenes (and there are LOTS and LOTS of cut scenes) can be skipped.

Some of the things Lara can do with her bow, arrows, and ropes...they work well in the game, but a niggling part of my mind always says...nope, the arrow would break.

Overall, I'm looking forward to the next Tomb Raider that comes to PC. I might yet play this darned game again; would almost definitely do so if I could skip 100% of the cut scenes.

Finally, I gotta say, I loved seeing photos of the game's creators in the credits. Good job, guys; you've given a lot of fun to a whole bunch of gamers.

Beautiful graphics. Nice story. I'll probably play the story through 3 times before saying good-bye to this game.

Duels in the story are a bit irritating - completely different mechanic than rest of game. Figuring out the duels mechanic took me about 40 minutes to get a handle on - reading guides along the way - and there's one guy that you simply cannot outdraw - you have to dodge one way, then the other - that required dodging killed about 20 minutes by itself for me. The game runs 1 or 2 short maps of standard FPS play on interesting maps, followed by a duel that is required to progress further in the story. The duels were the only laborious part for me...that and collecting the nuggets of truth, which I recommend you ignore - they're interesting if you find them by chance, but are not worth searching for.

I guess I'm more of a fan of FPS's following the Call of Duty 1 style - just work your way through the environment, killing a limited number of enemies along the way, trying to limit the damage you take as much as possible. Call of Duty 2 introduced regeneration, and unlimited enemies if you fail to advance. No unlimited enemies here, but the regeneration is here...well I guess it's the only way they could make this game work.

Definitely worth the time and money (goes for $5 on sale) to try the story through once on normal difficulty, ignoring all achievements, etc. It's beautiful and fun, and the first run through the story should take you 6-10 hours.

There are two extra modes of play: arcade, which is all about getting a high score (killing baddies in high style with combos, rather than just killing them) and duel mode, where the duels seem MUCH harder than they do in story mode. For hardcore folks only.

A guide for story mode duels: (except for the guy you have to dodge)

A and D keep your hand near your gun, when it's placed exactly right, your draw speed slowly increases. However, you can win your duels with 0% improved drawspeed. Instead, concentrate on growing your FOCUS as high as possible.

The focus circle behaves like a big blob with a lot of momentum - it's slow to get it moving, and it's slow to stop it moving. Move your mouse to get it over the enemy.

When you get the circle over the enemy, it should turn yellow and rotate. In story mode duels you can make tight circles with your mouse to help keep it from drifting around. (In duel mode duels, this doesn't work as well.)

When you hear a heartbeat, you can draw. Or wait for the enemy to move his hand and then draw. Some people report that there's a big accuracy penalty if you draw first.

To draw, click once.

If your FOCUS was over 80%, time will be slowed enough that you can dodge right or left, but this is seldom necessary.

After you draw, wait for the red aiming cursors to appear. The moment you see red crosshairs (hugely seperated initially), you can usually fire and win the duel - there's rarely any point in waiting for the cursors to close up for better aim. One shot always seems to kill in duels.

Good game, but not as good as Borderlands 2.

That's all.

:-)

Edit: but the intro and exit songs were better in Borderlands.

This game is far from perfect.

The worst thing is that you cannot save during battles, or during the opponents' turn. If various computer opponents attack you ten times between your turns, you never get to save, and unless you auto-resolve the battles, each battle may run 1-2 hours and you might have 10-20 hours of fighting before you can next save the game. For me, the game was very stable, but leaving it dominating my gaming computer for a week or more without being able to save did not feel good. Once you start to dominate, you rarely have to fear attack, and this type of long, drawn-out slug fest turn disappears, but until then, expect to leave the game running all the time... And you never get to save in mid-battle.

Saved games are huge on your HDD. Big enough that I stopped keeping my saves from the beginning and end of each turn, but started to recycle a group of 10 saves instead. Beginning and end of turn, and beginning and end of every battle. In a hundred turn game, they add up unless you recycle.

Ships. Nice to see ships, but the battle system felt really contrived. For example, the sailing ship fights give small ships a longer range than larger ships. That's the opposite of reality. Secondly, ships can only run away once per turn - again, that doesn't reflect reality, where small ships could run away from the big battlewagons each and every time they saw them, and only had to fear frigates. Then there's the whole: spin your ship like a top strategy. It just didn't work with big ships in reality. But it works in Empire. Spin one direction, fire. Spin the other direction, fire. And yet...it's fun to watch your ships batter the other side's ships to pieces.

Seiges. Are handled terribly. The computer just doesn't know how to attack a fort very well, or defend a fort very well. If you wait a couple of turns, a more sensibly managed battle takes place just outside the fort, but tying up your army for two turns anywhere is frustrating.

Setup. Even outside forts, the computer can give itself some utterly terrible opening setups - most terribly when it entrenches its artillery.

Armies. Armies start out tiny. Not simply poorly armed and trained: tiny and poorly armed and trained. Why?

Stacks. Are limited to 20 units. Battles are limited to 20 units PER COUNTRY. So if you have three stacks of twenty units, you only get to deploy 20 units at a time. Toughest and most satisfying battle I fought was against a stack of 20 French units, reinforced by 20 Spanish units and several French units. None of my units routed, despite fighting against 40 enemy units at once, and having one opponent's units (the French) getting reinforced by a fresh unit whenever a unit of theirs routed. Oh, normal difficulty - you're the best!

Government leaders. Are random and can have HUGE effects on your ability to wage war. It'd be nice to be able to disable that wildcard, 'cause mostly I enjoy the battles. And for that matter: it'd be nice to have a summary of the effects of all your government leaders.

All that bad, and still...watching my little men kill the little enemy men is fun. And so is taking over the world. I don't know why. About 100 hours at the keyboard for a grand campaign? I think I played three of 'em. Russia, Britain, Britain. Britain is by far the easiest.

I loved this game.

Great IF you have a good group of friends to play with.

The game is kind of dull alone. And very hard on the higher levels of difficulty. And I just didn't see the point in participating in those silent, multiplayer battles. Everyone is trying to level up their characters and seems only marginally interested in supporting each other.

I played with ZBane and his friends and that started out really, really good. But as we moved to harder levels of difficulty, even that group of good folks produced the occasional sour note as players sometimes grabbed kills for themselves that other players needed. (Most of us eventually moved back to favouring Left 4 Dead 2.)

Between rounds of killing monsters, you have to get to the randomly placed gunshop. THAT is the biggest part of the strategy in the game - figuring out how to get close to the gunshop before the round ends, so that you have time to go there, buy your guns and ammo, then race to the best close defensible spot before the next round starts. Again, that can lead to sour notes, as people get caught and killed going to and from the gun shop on unfamiliar maps.

I hoped that when I'd maxed out a few classes to level 6, everything would be fun and cooperative, like Left 4 Dead. It was still kind of snippy now and then. Games are rarely the right level of difficulty - they are either too easy (with people just hanging around, letting others do all the killing until the final rounds of the game) or too hard (with people getting miffed at one another when their character dies, and they have no time to rebuild dangerous weapons before the game ends).

The voice-acting is fine, but there are far too few lines. For example, every player sounds exactly the same as they frequently repeat: Reloading!

I think I would have loved this game, if I wasn't so familiar with Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2. But I am, and they're simply better co-op games. Playing Killing Floor is like choosing Yahoo search when Google is available. What's the point?