Recent reviews by Aya

Surprised Steam is letting me review this. This was on a free weekend at one point and while I'm all for a game that celebrates LGBTQ+ Pride (haven't been keeping up with the current acronym), the main thing I remember from this is input delays so horrendous that I'm glad that I didn't pay anything to even touch the game.

For anyone with even the slightest interest in Warhammer 40,000, this game's arguably the best Warhammer 40,000 title to release after the bankruptcy of THQ, after 13 years of getting a bunch of ♥♥♥♥♥♥ games that between 2018 and Boltgun's release, the best way to enjoy the Grim Darkness of the 41st Millennium in video games was honestly to create Space Marines in SoulCalibur VI. I'll admit i've only played the first missions of the main story and the co-op campaign respectively, though my first impressions of the game have me confident that I'm gonna get a lot of enjoyment from the rest of it.

Being a continuation of Relic Entertainment's Space Marine, combat is meant to have you split your attention between melee and ranged combat, and I feel like Saber Interactive did a much better job at making melee more viable compared to SM1, and I think the dodging and parrying mechanics were the main things that buffed the game's melee, cuz I remember that using your chainsword in the first game was a very fast way to get got by the Ork Boyz and Nobs, often really only being used in the campaign's jump pack sections.

One thing which I can already tell that people miss is SM1's health system. While I personally don't have issues with how health is handled in SM2, I feel like they could've introduced a temporary health mechanic similar to L4D's pain pills for the executions, cuz the armor blips tend to not last very long in the face of your ankles being bitten by multiple hormagaunts, and fodder enemies can be equated to death by a thousand paper cuts. This is a minor nitpick on my end, though one thing I've found from the first half of the second mission is a harsher criticism.

While other games might enjoy putting the player in a forced turret section, Space Marine 2 has forced flamethrower sections, where the game leaves a Pyreblaster near a door to inform the player that they will have to fight against Rippers, small legless creatures that are about the size of a house cat, but swarm you in the hundreds of thousands. It's annoying enough that firing the weapon slows your walking speed significantly, though the fact that they deal pathetically low damage is needless frustration, especiallly since the smaller mortal-sized flamers have been proven to be effective against Hormagaunt and (former) human alike in other forms of Warhammer 40,000 media.

Moving onto the co-op Operations mode, this to me feels like the co-op experience that fans have been craving since the days of the first Space Marine game. Though I've only really played the Vanguard, I found it to be a pretty solid experience, though I personally wish they added a Firstborn class in the game. To those unaware, Games Workshop has been trying to redesign the Space Marine identity from the ground up, though certain weapons from the earlier days of Warhammer 40,000 are unavailable to the modern depictions of the Adeptus Astartes.

With Warhammer 40K being full of intricate gothic architecture you'd expect to find in a fantasy setting with the first antagonist you fight being a swarm of buglike creatures that hope to overwhelm you with their numbers, I think it's fair to expect a hardware-intense game. With the Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X targeting 1440p and 30FPS, it's fair to say that it's a pretty demanding game. I'm personally on a Ryzen 3800X and RTX 3070, and while i'm on 1080p myself, the game typically hovers around 50-81 FPS, though there are occasionally some dips down to 41 in moments of high activity. While demanding, I wouldn't call it unstable since in the 6 hours I've clocked in so far, I've actually only had one crash, which is a huge improvement from how frequently the leaked build would crash on the same machine. I don't think more modest machines can realistically target 60fps without utilizing the game's built-in upscaling options, though I think the Dynamic Resolution option isn't functional.

Those who have spent a lot of time personalizing their Space Marine in the first game are gonna be let down with the second one. With Games Workshop trying to push the Primaris Space Marines as the new face of Warhammer 40,000, the number of options available to customize your looks has been severely neutered, to such a degree they had to make colors and emblems unlockable. It's especially egregious in my personal opinion that the fully sealed Mk X Phobos helmet isn't in the game, since that at least is a callback to the old scowl helmets from the pre-9th Edition days of Warhammer 40K.

While we might never get a chance to beat up those holier-than-thou knife-ears that Guilliman seems so attracted to these days, Space Marine 2 is definitely one of those games where an admittedly painful wait turned out to actually be worth the delay it ate, which is a welcome surprise when you consider that game delays in current year are a sign of the dev team thinking that their game's an absolute dumpster fire, especially with 40K. Do i think that this game will be the standard that other devs will follow when handling the license? Unfortunately, no. With that said, I think the June 2024 leak has proven to be a blessing in disguise, and I hope that Saber would at least consider releasing the prologue and first mission for free as a post-release demo.

Full disclosure: I originally bought this game on the Epic Games Store during the House Aberfell update out of frustration over the state of Bannerlord's multiplayer. I know the Epic Games Launcher is univerally loathed, though in my defense, a melee game where the most optimal strategy is to play it like a worse version of the cover-based shooters of the mid-2000s isn't worth remaining loyal to Steam. Don't know how many hours i put on the EGS version of the game, but i can say with full confidence that i've been waiting for Bannerlord to be good for a very long time. Giving this game a thumbs up would be a no brainer due to it being the best in the genre, though I feel like the position that Chiv2 is in is actually its most jarring flaw. It might seem weird for a game's success to be a flaw, but I can explain later in this review.

Combat

Being a PVP objective/TDM game set in a medieval setting, there's gonna be the expectation that players will do battle with melee weapons. You've three basic attack directions with standard and heavy variations along with a jab, kick, and special attack, along with the ability to riposte and counter, though blocking is limited by a stamina mechanic.

I can see why some people find this style of melee to be enjoyable, though my main gripe with how the combat system is set up is that it doesn't feel as intuitive as how Mount&Blade handled directional melee attacks, especially if you're on the defense. Blocking with your crosshair is admittedly finnicky, as it requires you to point the crosshair at the contact point of your enemy's weapon, which can lead to some rather frustrating moments where minor packet loss can cause you to eat hits when you feel like your block should've connected. And if you're like me who has played M&B's multiplayer, it can be a bit jarring when blocking in M&B seems more reliable despite Bannerlord's netcode being much worse, and Warband's being nonexistent.

Netcode aside, i also feel like the stamina mechanic puts a cap on player skill, and it can lead to moments where winning a melee fight feels less like you're outplaying your opponent, but rather outlasting them due to the game's mechanics working in your favour. Despite these flaws, I think the edge still goes to Chivalry 2 due to Torn Banner actually caring about balancing the multitude of classes and weapons in the game.

Archery

Ah yes, the bane of every melee fan: the skinny nerd hiding behind his teammates while he harasses the enemy with unblockable ranged attacks. I've seen more than my fair share of people who complain about archers, though I feel like a lot of it comes from a lack of experience with other games in the genre. As such, I think people who complain about archers in Chivalry 2 should actually play Warband's multiplayer mode at least once to see what "archers are OP" looks like. Being a dedicated ranged class, I think it's important for archers in a medieval game to have their weapons be balanced around the presence of melee weapons, and I think Chivalry 2 comes the closest to achieving this. In standard gameplay, archers are capped at 16% of the server population, which prevents bows and crossbows from being an oppressive presence in the game, while still allowing good archers to shine.

My biggest gripes however, are that skirmishers are treated as an archer class and on top of being somewhat underpowered, will end up wasting player slots that'd otherwise be taken up by bows and crossbows, which are often much more useful for their ability to restrict enemy movement through their unblockable projectiles.

Another gripe of mine regarding archers is how Torn Banner tries to encourage people to use this class when they'd otherwise use melee weapons exclusively: by adding in a particularly oppressive weapon that has huge reach, huge damage, and average speed. I get that the Highland Sword is added to the game to get people to consider the archer's utility in a 2v1 context, but the biggest problem in that regard are that most archers have pretty terrible aim coupled with an even worse sense of target priority. If all the archer slots are occupied by idiots, this will artificially inflate the effectiveness of the HLS due to being a hard target in melee while the class that's supposed to deal with him instead pay no mind to the massive anime sword wielder.

Classes
You have four distinct classes: The archer which i've already mentioned in the Archery section, the Vanguard who is a lightly armored frontline fighter that has a large stamina pool, the Footman who is Chivalry 2's equivalent to the medic class you'd find in first-person shooters, and the Knight who is also a frontline fighter, although they don't have as much stamina as the Vanguard, instead compensating by having a higher health pool and having stronger sidearms than the Vanguard and Archer classes. On paper, having these four classes are pretty good though in practice, I feel like there's quite a bit to be improved.

In more situations than not, having a larger pool of stamina feels more important than having more health and that has ended with Vanguard and Footman being my most played classes while on Epic. While the Footman has the same stamina pool as the Knight, his focus on healing means you'll actually spend less stamina since your most optimal position in any given fight is often a few paces behind your healing patients. I think it's especially jarring when the Knight and Footman class feels pretty reliant on certain unlocks to do well, which can make grinding feel like an absolute pain due to playing with straight downgrades, with the Vangaurd being the class that you'll level up organically due to already having a strong loadout at Level 1.

Miscellaneous
As i've mentioned early on in this review, Chivalry 2 is the best medieval slasher in the market at the time of writing this review and likely for a very long time, though I feel like Chiv2's position as the best is a jarring flaw. Thoughout the game's lifespan, Torn Banner took about half a year to release one particular content update that took an absurd amount of time to release after its initial beta test, having eaten a multitude of delays heavily due to the development team's lack of incentive to improve upon the systems they currently have. As i've mentioned earlier, the Steam counterpart to Chiv2 during its EGS exclusivity was Bannerlord's multiplayer, and given how that still remains to be worse than installing the Epic Games Launcher while Chiv2 has been on Steam for about two years now, there's definitely the impression that the development team is becoming complacent with their position as the best medieval PVP game in the market.

Between a summer update releasing during last winter and this year's Spring update feeling pretty dry on content, I can't help but notice that Torn Banner has allowed their consumer goodwill to tank if this game's Steam Community hub and the official Discord has anything to say. There's no denying that the devs are actually capable of getting away with this, since players burnt out from Chiv2 will continue to play it because Bannerlord really is just that bad, though I think the Regicide update is Torn Banner's attempt at trying to win back said consumer goodwill, since it actually released only a few months after the Spring Fete-for-All update, much to my surprise.

Overall, I think Mount&Blade's multiplayer has largely been replaced by this game and if you're about as sick and tired of TaleWorlds' crap as I was, Chiv2 is actually free until June 6th on the Epic Store. Yes, I am aware of the reputation that Epic Games has, though I ask again: Is constantly dying to Bannerlord's terrible PVP balance really worth remaining loyal to Steam? It's definitely worth grabbing during a seasonal sale or weekend deal.

P.S.: Steam Awards edit

One year after release, Darktide manages to dethrone SoulCalibur VI as best Warhammer 40,000 game

Placeholder text due to steam awards

Suletta did nothing wrong

2023-07-31 EDIT: I heard the ending to G-Witch is "up to interpretation" as per Bandai Namco. My take? Whoever greenlit that statement seems probably needs to rethink their priorities.

I'm sure we've seen our fair share of games trying to bring back the classic arena shooter to modern PC gaming, from Quake Champions fading to obscurity to the entirety of the Unreal franchise being erased from Epic Games' portfolio. Rather than retread familiar ground, Daev Team decided to take a left turn and have a story-based singleplayer game carry these familiar mechanics and level design.

Since this is meant to be invocative of 90s arena shooters, Ghostware is a game-within-a-game story where you died in the real world and are brought back from the dead with little memory of who you were in life, forced to fight against other undead spirits in a deserted multiplayer FPS by The Wizard, a stereotypical fat nerd reminiscing about the glory days (in his point of view) of multiplayer FPS where you've probably fond memories of spawning in as a free kill and getting ganked before you could even reach a weapon spawn with nothing to defend yourself with beyond a wimpy pea shooter.

As someone who has grown up with more than my fair share of ZDAEMON and Zandronum with a bit of UT2004 sprinkled on in my childhood, I was able to get into the setting of the game and while I do like how the lore tidbits are collected through URLs viewed through a totally-not-Netscape browser, it does get a little difficult and confusing to follow the game's backstory due to 90s web design being what it is.

For the better portion of the game, Ghostware can best be described as a stripped-down UT99 with fewer weapons, along with the addition of activated abilities that you can unlock as the story progresses. I personally don't mind how those abilities are implemented, though later ones that you unlock are definitely overpowered to the point where it'll be difficult to justify using whatever the upcoming Episode 2 has in store when you can just heal yourself willy-nilly during the more story-focused levels. I can say with full confidence that this game's definitely not for everyone but players who grew up with the old-school deathmatch games will likely be a fan of what Ghostware has in store

Being a game invocative of 90s multiplayer FPS, I can't help but think that progressing through the story or collecting certain pieces of lore should unlock levels and player models to use in the Instant Action mode. So far, the only things you get for that are the abilities you use in the Story Mode. One other nitpick I have is relating to a late game spoiler but personally, I think there should be a drastic change in artstyle in 03_CTF3 due to that map taking place in the real world. Sure, I get that the low-fidelity visuals are part of the game-within-a-game setting, though I think there should be a lot more in the way of visual distinction between the game world and touching (in-game) grass

Overall, this is definitely not a game for most people but I think this is definitely something to keep your eyes open for if you've grown up with the likes of Unreal Tournament and/or Quake 3 Arena.

While this game's definitely within "wait for a sale" territory considering that the singleplayer-only Legendary Edition exists for this game, I think it's still worth getting ME3 2012 for the multiplayer. However, DLC is handled by the EA client which will probably lead to complications that'll likely end with EA's support staff revoking your Steam copy and replacing it with an EA App version of the game.

Played through the first part of the game, and while fairly simplistic, I can say with full confidence that the game certainly has better level design than half the Classic Doom community. Bringing Touhou's danmaku to a first person perspective is certainly an interesting -- and fun idea from what I've seen of it, though my main complaints are the relatively large file size (i presumably that's due to the soundtrack being wavelengths rather than MIDIs), player projectile collision, and pricing.

It's definitely a "wait for a sale" type of game since it feels more like a novelty more than anything but when you can catch it at a 40% discount or lower, you'll get your money's worth.

With Sgt_Mark_IV being perfectly okay with Brutal Doom code being used in other mods, I'm kinda hoping we get something of a player/monster rebalancing that incorporates some of his work

After putting more time into the game, I'm still not impressed with the Steam Community's uncanny ability to burn bridges with Gundam game developers, and with GBO2 nowhere to be seen, I'm confident to say that this is the last bridge for them to burn.

We all know that consoles have better options for Gundam games than PC, so please don't compare Gundam Evolution to things we will never have. Similarly to my SD Gundam Battle Alliance review, I think the best way to approach Gundam Evolution is to look at it with a lens of whether or not Gundam Evolution is a good enough experience for people who only have PC as their available gaming platform. And honestly, it's one of the better F2P shooter's i've played (closed beta test playtime included).

I think it should be noted that most of my playtime was with the DOM Trooper and RGM-79 GM and while there's no denying that players will pick their main in a hero shooter, I think the daily challenge system does a decent job at encouraging players to try out different mobile suits, possibly forcing them out of their comfort zones of "what mobile suits net me the most kills".

As for the gameplay itself, I feel like there's very little to be said about it. Gunplay and movement feels pretty nice, and I think the best way to judge a fast-paced PVP arena-like FPS is how satisfying the in-game rocket launcher feels. Suffice to say, it's one of the better ones i've seen, not including those found in id Software games that aren't Doom 2016. The GM's Beam Spray Gun also feels about as good as I remember from the closed beta test, though I'll probably have to give the RX-78-2 another chance some time, especially since I don't remember really liking how the beam rifle handled compared to other hitscans I've seen in my years of playing video games. To those who played the closed beta, Gundam Barbatos isn't nearly as annoying as I recall. In fact, I've yet to see it take an MVP award.

As for what I don't like about Evolution, I do agree that there does need to be the opportunity for players to join ongoing matches (esp. since a disconnect can put you in a permanent disadvantage), and I do agree that Casual queues can do without the quitting penalty (or at the very least, be much less penalizing than regular matches). Most importantly, I think the game's monetization could do some working on. Specifically, I think there should be the option to have multiple editions of the game, so as to allow players to unlock mobile suits independently from the in-game currency systems. Hell, I'd be willing to shell out $30 Canadian to buy the melee Zaku and sit on whatever unlock tokens I have in preparation for future updates.

But yeah, I have ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in terms of hero shooter experience, but I can say that this is definitely one of the better PVP shooters you can play for free, and if you give a ♥♥♥♥ about the Mobile Suit Gundam IP, it's actually the best Gundam game available for those who only have the home computer as their gaming platform. At the very least, GEVO's certainly more balanced than other games I've stumbled upon.

Service ain't the only thing being terminated, but also what little remains of PlatinumGames' faith in PC gaming. I still think Nippon Ichi Software is to blame regarding why Platinum (and nearly every Japanese game developer for that matter) is as superstitious about PC gaming as they are.