Recent reviews by Harmless

The game itself is excellent with noticeable improvements both mechanically and when it comes to balance of some weapons that would never see the light of day in previous titles. It follows the usual trend of improving the formula just slightly without straying from what makes EDF great. A bit more confusing than usual in the narrative department. The absurdity is laid on pretty thick from the start.

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We did it!

I waited six years for this game to come out after falling in love with HELLDIVERS.

My GOTY 2024.

Nothing will come close. Not for a damn long time. Just hearing the music makes my eyes water.

Week 0: Fears of an incomplete game because of season passes and DLC roadmapping.

Week 1: Online only and sever errors mean the game is unplayable.

Week 2: Vote to Restart Simulator 2023 because there is no matchmaking.

Week 5: Cheaters. Cheaters everywhere. Feel like an idiot for grinding XP when someone can just download a script online and finish missions in thirty seconds.

Major bug and exploit patch now weeks late leaving the game with zero new content and complete radio silence.

How motivated can you really be to play when at some point in the future, progression will be reworked, guns stats will be tweaked, skills will be rebalanced, money values will be changed, and the only way to keep up with the game's content will be to continue giving money to a people that clearly isn't utilizing it?

Are we really surprised with the results when we're talking about a studio that accumulated financial losses for fifteen years, had massive success with Payday 2, yet had to restructure five years later after putting everything into a game that failed to even launch?

Can we at least pretend that Payday 3 is more than just a life preserver that exists solely to keep a company afloat?

TL;DR: Crafting Menu Simulator 2023 2021

The game is pretty, but nothing in the environment has any motion. It's like walking through an abstract painting. The game has passable gunplay, but enemies remain the exact same and only increase in number, and if their drops aren't clipping through the floor, they're impossible to find because tokens are the only item in the game that don't glow. You have pets that serve as workers, but they only slightly buff your crafting at best and very slowly get you a pathetic amount of the most basic possible resources, while using up a massive portion of your limited space, at worst. Impressive first-person animations that will wow you in the first ten minutes, but quickly get repetitive when there are no animation cancels and you must watch your character pull out a hammer for 3 seconds, and put it away for 3 seconds. Cute 'secret' reloads that will happen early enough to make no sense as one of your pets puts a mag into your gun for you... when you have no pets, then realize that these secret reloads are three times as long as your normal reload.

These are small gripes. Easily fixable given time and with more content. The things I just listed add up in annoyance but do not ruin the game.

What ruins the game for myself and many others is the crafting. Let me run you through a recent example. Phase 27 of the research table. You must complete every research in one phase to unlock the next. I unlocked phase 27 after researching some food items despite never needing food, but on we go. One of the research items is the tier 3 container, the best in the game! Great! It holds 8 stacks, and a stack is 10 items. A tier 2 container holds 6 stacks. Not much of an upgrade for the increased cost. But bigger number is always better I suppose. The next research item is an upgrade for the diesel engine to make it more efficient. But in order to collect as many resources as possible you have to move at a snail's pace, which doesn't consume any fuel. So this upgrade literally does not do anything for most players, but you have to get it to progress research.

Let's break down the requirements for this diesel engine efficiency: 2 steel ingots, 2 dampers, 2 rubber, 2 steel bolts. If I had all the direct resources to make these items, it would still take roughly 10-30 seconds crafting them at different workstations: the smelter 2, the workbench 2, and the lab 2. You have to have all required items in your inventory and run around your train and wait for them to finish. But you know damn well you DON'T have the direct resources required for this because you just used them all researching and creating the diesel engine itself. So you need to craft 10 iron, 2 sealant, 2 unstable chemicals, and 2 iron bolts, which require the smelter 1, the lab 1, and the workbench 1. That's right, you can't craft everything at the much better, much bigger, tier 2 stations. You must have both, and hopefully you remember which one makes what items, or you'll be doubling up on inventory opening. Congratulations, you've now spent the last 10 minutes running around on your train crafting things while parked, because if you're in menus while moving you aren't getting resources.

The game is so afraid to automate ANYTHING, remotely activate ANYTHING. No 'take all' or 'deposit all' for chests. No sort function as you somehow end up with 3 stacks of 3 zinc. Rofleemo are in the game to be cute and marketable, not to fuel your furnaces, not to grab heavy objects, not to slowly craft things for you. Rare puzzles of randomized tiers of chests? Scrap metal. Raid outposts? Scrap metal. Fight in an unbalanced alien arena? Scrap metal. I will probably start getting free steel ingots when I've researched a nuclear reactor.

So, so tedious. Please add collection nets. Magnets. Something. Let workbenches use items that are in chests. Allow players to smelt gun parts into metal, I don't even pick them up anymore. Put large story events much closer together. It should not take me 20 hours to get a train battle that's over in a minute. Why is there a narrator if they only talk once every 2 hours? Why do the tracks never converge or split, why do I never have any choice of where I'm going? Why are there mines that I can defuse for scrap metal, but if one of them explodes and hits my train, it costs iron ingots, making the risk worthless?

So much lost potential. Lot's of work needed here.

If you played any God Eater, you've already fought this boss. Most people will not even realize that the main draw of these DLC, besides everything else, are also reskins that do not translate well into a Soulslike. They just happen to be from an obscure title.

A decent zombie-slasher gone full-blown Ubisoft. A map littered with copy and paste locales; empty rooftops you are forced to stare at. Climb a tower, sluggishly parkour to the next.

The map itself and the repetition are not the problems here. They simply highlight the core issue I have with the game at it's current state: the movement and parkour. Aiden feels incredibly slow in almost every regard. Jumping is an almost constant action you are performing and you quickly feel just how stiff and floaty it is. This is not a hop. Someone gave this man moon boots. How do you survive the apocalypse this long when you can't even crack a slight jog? This might explain the results of the first few missions...

Looting is unrewarding. Many bags and lockers require long or multiple presses. Please take all the time you need... while you get swarmed. You either get junk materials you cannot craft anything with, a decent usable item, or gear with single digit improvements to what you already have. Almost all melee weapons feel the same. Instead of fighting for your life, you are stroking a kitten. Hitboxes are massive and you can safely smack most grunts without actually making physical contact. A dinky knife is just as good as a two handed sledgehammer. I am racking my brain trying to think of how one could make bashing skulls have no weight or impact...

Day and night cycles are an important part of Dying Light. The sequel is no exception. Or is it? The intention, it seems, is to go out into the streets in relative safety, helping people and cleaning up the scum of the earth. When night falls, you seek the light, stay where it's safe, or risk big looting runs in buildings where there is now (slightly) less flesh-eaters. But that last part is the kicker. Almost all worthwhile activities, namely those that give you permanent stat increases (which you'll want if you don't want to be weak and have zero combat or parkour options), are night-exclusive. Rooftops are the fastest way to travel so you are using them regardless of time of day. It as if the sun only exists to give some breathing room from having to constantly refill a time limit; one that is incredibly easy to fill. Now add in the fact that the easiest of said night activities are incredibly buggy and your reward for having spent five minutes fighting a mini-boss can possibly be a whopping nothing. All of this results in the legendary bed being your best friend. Perhaps if you skip the daytime enough, you can sleep through this whole apocalypse thing; just like how you'll sleep through this game.

2015 was a long, long time ago... but I fondly remember running around and dropkicking everything in sight as Kyle Crane.
But I did not continue to play Dying Light for the seemingly many years they continued to work on it. Perhaps something happened down the line that greatly impacted the course this series began to take. I cannot say for certain why this game is the way that it is... but it not only does nothing new, but everything that it does do, it does terribly. Hopefully that changes as Techland patches and updates the game, or when Denuvo is bludgeoned and exposed to UV light.

As it currently stands, I regret paying $60 for Dying Light 2.

Factorio, even through an Early Access phase, has and continues to feel like a refined and finished product. The developers are active with the community and have core mechanics and system interaction down to an elegant art. The feeling of slowly shifting from "makeshift, conveyor-filled mess" to "sorted, fully automated super-factory" is truly a satisfying experience that could make Factorio truly amazing just by itself. Every failure has a cause. Every iron ore transported to your factory means there is something else further down the line.

A 2009 game with an engine that easily rivals and often outperforms those of new and upcoming shooters in terms of optimization and unhinged, extreme, absolute structural destruction. Walls creak with the swing of your hammer. Smokestacks and radio towers crumble to the ground with the detonation of placed explosives. Obliteration is rewaded with satisfaction and upgrades to simply fuel more of it. It never gets old. A simple, sometimes cheesy, but well refined masterpiece, it delivers exactly what it aims to give. An open world yours to destroy. Fast cars to ram into anything you please. Weapons to make armies and towns quiver. A true Martian revolution.