reviews: 14

This data as json

id game_id external_id review_text added posted allowed
14 636320 45024940 Ooooookay... I've played my fill of this game after two hours. That's not where a roguelike should put me. The fact that this game could be played indefinitely is, to be frank, frightening. I'm going to ruminate on this, and finish this review in a bit. Probably tomorrow. For first impressions though: don't bother. Especially at this price. Addendum: I've thought about this. Here’s a review. To start, the most glaring issue: the AI. The fact that I can have a gun battle in one room, with individuals unaware of this gun battle in the next room is a leap of logic which I found difficult to make. I was left to assume: "Maybe it's because bulkhead doors are a lot thicker than normal, and wouldn't transfer sound as well. But that means that this place doesn't have an intruder alarm? How are people not aware that I am killing EVERYONE in this base?!?" The character movement aspects are something which definitely points out how unaware my AI opponents were: after I killed everyone in a room, I could move at twice the normal speed due to the fact that no one knew I was there. I appreciate this from a “okay, come on, let’s get to the action” perspective, but at the same time, that means that no one alive in the building I just broke into, guns ablaze, is aware of the fact that I am here. I am left to assume this game is set in an alternate future where living in submarines for long periods of time is possible, while handheld radio transmitters are some sort of unattainable technology. A suggestion to the dev: I don’t want the games I play to be prescriptive. I want to feel challenged. In the two hours I’d played, I went from a fear of being flanked or surrounded to the absolute knowledge that being flanked was impossible because no one in the base I was raiding was aware of the fact that I was raiding. I am not sure how you do this, but I’d suggest that you allow enemies to approach from the rear of an advancing party. At least have ambushes set in a room. Perhaps make use of some sort of lighting aspect for vision/accuracy? A little more realism Further in the AI/design space: okay, so I am killing everyone in a base like a finely-oiled death machine. Fine. This brings to light the prescriptive room battles in which I found myself. Upon discovery of the aforementioned lack of radios in the universe this game is based, and I am stuck in this repetitive cycle of room clearing. Step 1: Open door and immediately find cover for the person who opened the door Step 2: Attempt to move in the rest of my team to cover in the room Step 3: Start killing bad dudes Step 4: Move forward under cover and kill the rest of the dudes in the room Step 5: Loot corpses and stuff Step 6: Reload, and line up in front of the next door Step 7: If there are rooms left, goto "Step 1" else "become magically aware of the fact that I've cleared the base" goto Step 8. Step 8: You've been magically made aware of the fact that you killed everyone in here. Congratulations. Do you want to leave without checking all the dropped loot? Step 9: Accidentally click "yeah, I want to leave without collecting everything here." Step 10: Curse your own existence. About looting: Every enemy who was holding a weapon when they died is no longer holding a weapon. Instead, they are holding about $4. Everyone. I don’t remember pulling anything but money off dead folks, and that bummed me out. From what I saw, there was no rare loot, nothing useful like grenades, medical packs, ammunition (though I don’t think ammo was of limited supply), baseball bats, clothing, armor, nothing. Wait! I take that back! I killed a dude with a mask, and he left his mask. Maybe that was rare? Still, not satisfying at all. To the AI from a humanist perspective. Perhaps I hadn't played long enough, but I imagine that everyone I run into in this vast environment is interested in self-preservation. As a criminal in the Depth of Extinction world, when you are being approached by “those guys you heard about” who have been KILLING EVERYONE THEY COME ACROSS WHO IS OF A CRIMINAL ELEMENT, maybe you’d want to avoid a conflict. Maybe send your least tweaked-out raider outside to calmly discuss a way to avoid violence. Instead, I kept running into mindless criminals bent on throwing themselves into the whirling meat grinder which my team had become. No attempts at self-preservation. No immediate surrender. I’d realized that this game wasn’t for me when I started to believe that the AI wasn’t going to attempt to flank my positions. I became more critical as the loot system was uncovered by my experiences. To the Dev(s) again: You’ve put a lot of work into this. I understand that this is a lot of time and energy expended, and I appreciate your effort. The sound design seemed to be alright, there was music, and the game didn’t crash at all. Kudos. I would suggest looking at the AI, and re-investigating some of the strategic models currently utilized. Further, I absolutely am a gigantic fan of both of the games is appears that you’ve used as base models for your creation. X-COM: UFO Defense by Microprose was my absolute favorite DOS game. Aspects of tactical base building, planetary defense from a fighter plane aspect, destroying alien craft over water so you didn’t have to go clean them up, R&D of alien technology removed from the corpses of grays, weapons manufacturing, the game was a gold mine. FTL was also spectacular: destroying a would-be pirate, only to discover that they left you a *gasp* gatling laser?!? Man, now I need to figure out how I’m going to work this into my system build! Real-time management of your own crew to fight fires while simultaneously trying to knock out an enemy’s engine so they don’t escape? It’s an amazing experience. Depth of Extinction lacks anything substantive in comparison. No strategic decisions, no tough choices, no regretful moments. The ironic part about this game which is lacking: Depth. I want more. For $20 on a non-pre-released, non-beta game, I want a thousand times more. I want to make tough decisions, I want to care about the characters I hire and work with. I want a challenge. You can see what I am talking about with X-COM: multiple facets added up to create a memorable experience. To draw parallels from the original aspects of X-COM and this game, the battles are turn-based, and your characters stand on squares, and hide behind objects. Cool. In the original X-COM, my favorite thing to do was throw dynamite into a barn at an alien crash site. That’s because sometimes, when you walk in front of a window, an alien hiding inside will take a potshot at Danielle’s head, killing her immediately. You had no chance of avoiding death, short of planning out the safest approach to a building. Instead, just throw dynamite in, and level the place. All the walls collapse, the hay’s on fire, and there’s a dead gray in the corner! :V Meanwhile, in Depth of Extinction, You go through the steps above: no one is waiting to ambush. They are all flinging themselves at you like inhuman, soulless, suicidal robots. You can do better. Perhaps this game can be massaged to become something which is fun. At the moment, I see this as a game which adopted some visual aspects of really great games as a gimmick. I see some of the team members who have worked REALLY HARD at aspects of this game - artwork, overall menu design, sound design, storyline, UI, character/class concepts, multi-platform porting and development (kudos on your Linux release, btw) and it sucks that all of this is is being held back by the rest as described above. I do not want games to feel like a chore. I don’t want to feel like I’m wasting my time playing battles out to the end, especially when battles are a core aspect and component of gameplay. To be clear about why I am writing this: if you are going to borrow elements from some of the most influential and successful games in existence, you had better have an amazing experience lined up. 2021-03-14T05:51:54.264900 1 1