What follows is a review I just posted for the game. TL;DR Good stuff in April update, lets make similar fixes and Improvements to make the game even better.
April of this year marks the time I can really recommend this game without reservations. They haven’t “fixed” everything. There are still a number of small gripes, and private lobby/matchmaking functionality that they should “fix” or add. But they actually addressed my three greatest complaints, all within the same update, as if they actually had someone play their game and give them real feedback.
Something that should happen before release across the industry, and yet, seems to be considered unimportant.
“Made Scab/Dreg Ragers combo attacks dodgeable, reduced stun from attacks”
You need to understand how absolutely ridiculous these enemies looked when they got on their “roller skates”. You could dodge, jump, fall and dodge again before they completed a big windup and they would absurdly “zoom” after you, and every hit they would interrupt your melee attacks. When you had 4-10 of these guys on you (as is INTENDED on higher difficulties) you were very much dead unless you had a brute shield, your hyper-effective rager-killing gun (not all guns could thin these hordes, or stagger them, if you have the wrong gun equipped you are just dead) already out and fully loaded, or a crowd control ultimate. Now heavy melee builds can actually DO something, and dodging works as intended.
“Removed the “force field” in front of Bulwarks that allowed them to block hits/shots that didn’t look like they would be blocked by their shield.”
This is so frustrating in basically any shooter, scope/iron sight/ADS in with a good bead on nice squishy flesh, and scream in frustration as your bullets evaporate to nothing on thin air. It feels awful when it’s your own cover and it feels awful when its enemy armor. The fact that every enemy in this game can occupy the same space, meaning Bulwarks would regularly project their “force field” over a horde of enemies, stand inside monstrosities, and trap players in corners with walls of impenetrable garbage and piles of enemies they can’t kill or stagger. Yeah, frankly absurd they existed like that for 2 years. Shouldn’t have made it to release.
“Removed player stuns from normal enemy ranged hits and Toughness break”
The player’s survivability is tied directly to movement, and the ability to complete attacks. Enemy AI is supposed to be manipulable so that you can force them into melee. But quirks in enemy “activation” and the fact that they could be “engaged” with a teammate or bot behind you and then suddenly switch target, mean that more often than not, you can take a spray of bullets to the face before you can land your melee on them, cancelling your melee attack since they “interrupted” you. Large amounts of normal shooters were absolutely the deadliest killer, especially back when the dreg shooters simply ignored suppression (fixed a year ago), the game mechanic designed to counter large groups of enemy shooters. They could summon a “wall” of bullets that completely arrested forward movement, prevented you from finishing attack animations, and breaks you out of sprinting (the primary way to dodge incoming fire while moving forward is to slide, which you CANNOT do when the enemies can “turn off” your sprinting by shooting at you).
IF you cannot tell, playing Ogryn gives me great joy, and all of his various nerfs are completely acceptable given how much complete idiocy these three fixes have removed from the game. They were without a doubt the three most irritating things about the game for me and to have them all fixed in the same update was a pleasant surprise.
(For those curious, the remaining two things on my top five stupid for this game is inconsistent Poxburster spawns and fuse times, though I could live with variance in fuse if I could be confident they can’t spawn within 5m of me, and Hit detection of “grabs” notably the Hounds and Trappers but extending to all the “grabs”, including Monstrosities. The nets and hounds clipping through walls, railings, cover, and floor to hit me feels terrible, I should never be able to see my character dodge and the net clearly miss my viewmodel but still end up trapped because of janky hitboxes, and there needs to be more than one “option” for dodging nets when they can fire through an infinite number of minions, but I can’t hit them with my ranged options because of the minions. Hounds at least can be pushed or melee’d to stagger them out of their leap.)
Both of the frustrating things mentioned above happened today, in the one play session I’ve sat down for since I read the patch notes. I played about ten matches on diff 4-5, and those two things were the exact reason I lost the only two matches I lost. Poxburster silently spawns within 5m of teammate who is down, and leaps instantly through (as in clipping through concrete wall) the corner (with normal fuse time, something like 0.5s), downs me as I was attempting to revive, sends one teammate off edge for instant death, sends other teammate into the railing hold “down”. We were not in dire straights, had plenty of resources, but one sec of not reacting to one enemy that spawned right next to us (we were wrapping through a door on a “U-like” path, so line-of-sight was broken despite it being less than 5m away) and we had a game over.
The other game over happened in a messup cascade, where one by one we got separated on high difficulty and we were scrambling in a big room filled with nearly every dreg enemy type. I kept my wits about me and did what Ogryn do, survived. I used a medicae station, I used my medi-pack, I used my ultimate, I used my Ogryness, I had full toughness and full health surrounded by enemies, dodging heavy fire, using cover to block sniper sightlines, I was right next to my tied up teammates ready to rescue them. I had already dodged the trapper in the room, even melee’d it once, but couldn’t kill it in the press of bodies. I heard the reload and reapproach, I tiptoed up some stairs over dozens of bodies, dodged around a corner and one-two-three’d the little guys around me. I saw the trapper aim at me and fire, and dodged left with “correct” timing, and I saw my dodge animation start, but noted I didn’t go full “dodge distance” because of the press of little guys. I then saw the net clip through a dozen little guys, the stairs, the stairwell, and the corner of the wall to “grab” me despite clearly missing the “center mass” of my viewmodel because of the half-complete dodge, sending us into game over instead of a heroic (fun) clutch to bring it all the way back.
These scenarios were not unique to the new update. In the past I have experienced similar scenarios, with more frequency even given how unfair and punishing ragers were with undodgable melee attacks.
These are not situations where the game beat us because of lack of teamwork, or due to us being unprepared to deal with enemies. (yes the second scenario was a messup cascade, but I did what an Ogryn can do in that situation to recover and stayed “aware” of the two biggest threats in the room, the snipers and the trapper, I even reacted the “correct” way to them and still ended up punished.) These are situations where unfair “video-game logic” (teleporting enemies and janky hitboxes/ enemy clipping/instant loss mechanics) robbed us of our ability to “play” the game and win/overcome difficulty. The purpose is to be challenged and yet overcome while having fun and feeling satisfaction for it. I honestly think they should double the amount of basic enemies on higher difficulties, while adding in an upper limit for the amount of enemies that can occupy the same space. The game shouldn’t be any “easier” (it ceases to be fun for most people playing it if it were) it should be more “fair”.
The three changes above made the game more fair, and I had more fun (especially fighting the ragers, no more ****** rollerskates), thus I’m recommending people to buy this game.
When it’s on sale.
Absolutely worth 30-40 bucks.