Recent reviews by hapsta

soncic....

*I have no interest in swaying anybody's mind. These are my thoughts, not a persuasive piece. Do what this as you will.


Killing Floor 3 is the next installment in a video game series to fall victim to the internet's sexual hyperfixation of cynical negativity. The race consists of phases between who can find more hypocritical nitpicky things to complain about and who can regurgitate the half-baked engagement-baiting views of their favorite sloptuber. (Shoutout to gooner weebs desperate to be SsethTzeentach and Payday-tubers upset Tripwire didn't fly them out to their studios for a positive review)

On a serious note, Killing Floor 3 is by all means, Killing Floor. You play as stereotypical caricatures of different personalities and nationalities, you load into a map that's turned into a complete ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thanks to rampaging bioweapons and you shoot (or slash) at them in exchange for money that you can purchase bigger and better shooting (and slashing) instruments with. Rinse and repeat this process wave by wave until zeds or you are dead. The game offers customization in the form of cosmetics for both you and your weapons, actual weapon customization that changes stats and effects, and a per-perk skill tree that offers (primarily) passive changes to your kit. (Ex: The Commando's "Think Fast" skill that changes your grenade to explode on contact while also lowering the self-damage inflicted.)

If you need a verdict, I would bare minimum say this game is worth the $39.99, but it's more than understandable to wait for the inevitable sale down the road with more updates under it's belt. (Which you can see in the news section with their recently posted roadmap.)

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Don't get it twisted though, KF3 is far from a perfect game and is in need of continued polish and aforementioned updates. I can't speak for other people, but the only issues I've had with gameplay is the occasional connection issues and if around 5~ish Husks are all giving me a full flamethrower facial at the same time the game will momentarily stutter. I'm also on a well-built machine, so again, your mileage may vary. I'm playing just fine and am having more than enough fun to continuously come back and look forward to future updates. That being said, this game has odd choices that reek of upper-management profit pushing, oversight and just general experimentation that either needs to be brought back to the drawing board for a complete redesign or looked at under a more extensive lens.

- Wholeheartedly agree over how comical it is the battle pass was implemented before text chat. I have 0 issues with battle passes if they're done tastefully (which I believe KF3 did, although I'm uncertain if they offer Deep Rock Galactic or Marvel Rivals' ability to purchase them once the season has ended), however the priority feels like they're taking the piss.

- Some options and keybinds just don't straight up work. What's the point of having a "toggle sprint" option, if ticking it does nothing and I have to dedicate a whole keybind to? (Unless the toggle just ADDS the option for a keybind, in which case, straight to the "weird decision" pile you go.)

- I think having menus be the default as opposed to using the in-game stronghold for accessing everything would be smarter. Perhaps treat the stronghold akin to the "Vault" in KF2, a fun little thing you can explore and check out, but otherwise completely ignorable if you're looking to just get in and -go-.
-- Alternatively, please consider making menus stupidly easy to access. It's not the end of the world, but it's a minor annoyance to constantly have to run from spawn to the middle of the base to access things like the skill tree or armory.

- Emphasizing a mission system and then not having a way to view your missions during matches feels like the game is going against itself.

- Frankly the specialist system being tied to perks isn't a make or break for me. I'm pretty neutral, but I do agree letting any specialist be any perk is far more consumer-friendly. Business wise it just...feels smarter too? I can't quite grasp why this was a route they tried to take, presumably allowing homogenization promotes players purchasing far more from the shop for both perks and specialists in the long run. It doesn't matter, as they've already conceded to backtracking on perks and specialists being tied, but I'd genuinely love to hear the reasoning as to why this was a thing in the first place.

- This isn't a current problem, but they're going to be adding new enemies down the road and I'm ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ begging you do not add E-DARS or Matriarch equivalents. Those were miserable and are the fastest way to change the "Floor" to "Myself".

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I could turn this review into a novel-length rambling about the objectively wrong dribble plaguing the steam reviews section, but who cares what I think? My autistic-ass can fixate on a horde-shooter again and I get to simulate what it's like to be around those silly creatures called "Europeans" while behind the safety of my computer screen.

peggers

A genuinely fun hero shooter that was able to make characters I enjoy and want to play in every role. Although, if developers ever browse reviews for feedback and/or suggestions, I do have one!

If you play Hela the rest of the players in the match should be sent your personal information. Nothing crazy, just your social security number, bank information and your exact physical address.

Also let me play as Doom.

Get over Shadowbringers and you'll be fine, I promise.

Postal has been on the uptick of late and this game is a positive mark upon the franchise. Hyperstrange delivers a solid feeling FPS that is the closest thing you could get to the blatant inspirational source material of Doom (2016)/Doom Eternal for a measly $19.99 (or $16.99 when I purchased it) while taking Running With Scissors' Postal property and staying on-beat with the IP's usual crude and exaggerated stereotypical humor.

Nearly 7 hours of gameplay at the time of this review, a broad selection of weapons and power-ups and 15 levels from start to finish with no level feeling essentially the same. Aesthetically sure, as they're about 3 sets of levels, 5 per "chapter", but even the levels within the same chapters were varied that nothing felt too same-y. I'm also happy to hear Corey Cruise be given a star role as the Postal Dude this time around since I think he's a genuinely solid voice actor whose voice and tone fit the Dude just fine, as proven in both this game and that weird sickly fever dream all Postal fans collectively shared where we imagined there was some "Postal III" that was the equivalent of pissing in your own mouth while being severely dehydrated.

The only two notable complaints that come to mind is the music, while not terrible in the slightest or even "bad", felt forgettable to me. Serviceable absolutely, but I can't imagine myself listening to the soundtrack on YouTube on my own time and the gameplay didn't exactly have that zesty blend Doom did where the music would sort of play at the pace your gameplay was going. This is even more emphasized when the music is blaring only because one small enemy whose AI has decided to piss off into the sky is just milling about not doing anything.

Second is, again while I enjoy Corey Cruise and think he is a fine Postal Dude, the lack of voice clip variety became pretty apparent when it felt like I was hearing the same few lines every couple of seconds. I don't expect 100+ lines for simply shooting someone, but the frequency at which I heard the same thing was a bit tedious on the ears. Not to exaggerate, the line "Those moronic developers thought they could hide this from me?" is the ONLY line the Dude spouts when you find a secret, the first time it got the corners of my lips to twitch into a smirk, but every other twitch was my eyeballs rolling into the back of my head.

Neither of my complaints would even get me to consider not recommending this however. The game's fun as a shooter and is another round of unapologetic edge and popculture references that is so low brow and dumb that I can't help but adore it.

A solid autobattler that was on the fence between hotdog water and a genuine competitor to the likes of Hearthstone and TFT that decided to take the monkey jpeg market seriously. No thank you, I like to keep NFTs on news posts of people losing their life savings where they belong.

135 hours, 100% achievement completion and the end credits reached after every quest in the game being completed.

Yeah I'd say I'm confident about posting a review for it. with the usual amount of RNG one would expect from this type of game but with enough player input that you're not at the mercy of pure luck. The game doesn't give off that "never lucky babyrage" feeling some people whine about who are clueless to the genre they're getting into until the later difficulty levels where enemies begin to rack up an absurd amount of armor that can leave you at the aforementioned mercy of pure luck.

I'd easily place it among the collection of quality deckbuilders you can get your hands on with the likes of "Slay The Spire" and "Monster Train" just to name two right off the bat. There's certainly worse you can do for 20$ (USD) and I'm without a doubt satisfied with getting well over my money's worth at 135 hours for a relatively cheap game.

Can't speak for optimization, with my specs the game ran just fine so y'know your results may vary and if you're struggling to get your foot in the door but you want to keep playing, run the "Pathfinder" class, block every hit you see (One block per hit btw) and watch as you donkey-♥♥♥♥ things until you get your bearings and the game can stop acting like you're people at the later difficulties.

10/10 I've spent money on worse.

Great game, autistic player-base. (This includes me.)

You're a confusing game, Killing Floor 2.

Not your actual gameplay, that's straightforward and fun. You're a very solid zombie horde shooter that doesn't take itself too seriously with goofy cartoonish characters to play as, grotesque monster designs to play against, and with enough gore to make a serial killer blush. Your gunplay feels and sounds solid, your perk system and balancing isn't perfect but it's fine enough especially given it's a primarily PvE styled game. Your music slaps and while you're a different beast from KF1 (mostly, obviously both are still "Killing Floor" but the first is what I would describe as a more methodical horror survival shooter whilst KF2 is a more arcade-y and fast-paced murderthon, and that goes double for the Zed), you're still a good game and I probably prefer you over the first anyway.

However, your developer, Tripwire Interactive, confuses the ever living hell out of me. It's as if this game is designed off a single mad lib:
"What if we added/did _______ (Good Idea), but we also added/did _______ (Bad Idea)."
where you're not allowed to ship an update/change to the game unless both fields have something in it. Granted this is all my opinion after 200 hours in KF2 alone and someone could very well come along and explain to me how I'm wrong and these examples are all actually the building blocks that hold KF2 up and make it the best game to ever grace our unworthy gaming fingers, but I get to click the "Allow Comments" on my review so I get to decide who's opinion is correct here in this review.

"What if we added varieties and new monsters to keep the line-up fresh coming from KF1, but we also added an obnoxious damage sponge in the form of EDARS whose challenge is too deep into the taint-pinching annoyance category to ever deliver any form of satisfaction when playing against?"

"What if we gave the characters actual character beyond biography paragraphs with actual voice actors and fun goofy personalities but then past a certain point while cranking out updates we never add anybody new?" (Which alright, that's VERY subjective and could probably be ignored but always felt like it wouldn't be impossible to add in a new character with every if not every two updates given the time between them.)

"What if we continued adding content to the game past launch and if we ever decide to slow down we'll at least work with the community to add in their custom-made maps to the official roster but when we do so we make questionable changes to the map's original design without talking to the original creator and once it's out then good luck and no we're not fixing a bug that's been present in a map where a player has to wait a few couple of minutes for a zed to despawn because we botched a spawn point?" (And no, that's not just a random glitch.)

"What if we add cosmetics to the game, give players something to customize themselves in both premium and freemium styles but as far as the freemium content goes we'll just silently stop adding to the free stuff and render all future free crate unlocks completely moot once you've unlocked it all?"

"What if we add new guns with each update (Yay!) with two of them being free (Yay!) and two of them being paid for? (Boo, but reasonable, although the pricing at the time was not.) Uh...wait wait wait, here's a pass that should've been there since the beginning where you pay once, get all the content and future content up to a certain point." (The Armory Pass has been the most reasonable solution they've ever dropped in this game, and even then I'm not completely heartbroken as I've put a ton of hours into KF2 and buying each weapon didn't feel too terrible given the time spent.)

"What if we add different bosses to switch things up from the Patriarch but make one boss a complete joke that if they get slightly glitched into our buggy maps will insta-gib itself into a cheap victory (Abomination) or a boss that 8/10 times might as well just end your game with a defeat for how obnoxious, cheap and non-fun her fight is? (Matriarch)"

The list goes on. To clarify, I think this game is well worth the price of admission and I'm satisfied with my purchase. I've gotten my worth out of it and I'd wholly recommend this to anyone who's even a slight fan to the horde-based shooter genre, but Tripwire, on the slim chance anybody in your company takes a look at my review /if/ you decide to make Killing Floor 3, when designing the game and you get past the "What if we added/did ______ (Good Idea)-" portion of the mad-lib, stop there please.