The Signal From Tölva

Just finished the first campaign and honestly it's kinda got those 'grinding spiders while solo-ing WoW' vibes but with a *really cool* setting. I did play it on easy because I wasn't sure what I was getting into and how it would play without a keyboard/mouse (only problem was aiming, still need to check if that's just a my controller issue) but that still provided a bit of a challenge in the later game while also letting me pretty freely run through the gorgeous landscape and explore the cool sci-fi ruins...until I'd get blasted from the side by three laser rifle shots at once and look around going "Huh? What was that??" :) I kinda bought this at random, just using Steam's search utilities looking for a chill single player couch/controller FPS and this was perfect. If it were a AAA title I'd probably want more plot and more variety in the missions and strategies...but I think I paid ten bucks for this so overall I'm pretty impressed! And I want to know more about this world...which I will get, because there's a second prequel campaign that I haven't started yet! :)

I had mixed feelings about this one. After the main campaign I was a bit more positive but the polar expansion campaign really tipped the scales. Like others have said, the game is a ton of walking/running with some combat, mazes, and scanning tasks sprinkled in. The interesting environment kinda eased the exploration/traversing for me, stumbling into scenes of scattered shipwrecks and giant robot parts. A significant issue I had was that the movement was clunky and glitchy particularly around the edges of objects and on most inclined surfaces. I would constantly try to skirt around rocks and buildings while in combat then get mysteriously stuck in place for several seconds while being completely vulnerable to enemy fire. The clunky-ness of was sorta understandable given the characters but it did wear on me. The combat isn't great. There are 4 different kinds of weapons with 3-4 levels of quality; Repeating rifles (with varying traits), long range rifles, command gun (allows recruiting and directing allied bots), and a beam weapon. You start with a repeating pistol, basic repeating rifle, and a long range rifle (with an unmagnified sight). You have to complete missions that consist of traveling to a point, finding, and scanning a transmission to unlock the ability to purchase new weapons. The damage specs don't seem to make sense, or there's something else malfunctioning, as the highest damage repeating rifle states 100 and the long range rifle is 73 but at the same range the repeater takes several more hits to kill. Hit detection seems to glitch out. I thought I was just missing but testing at close range proved that sometimes even center mass hits just don't register. The main campaign is pretty open with a few points that require you to get specific armor upgrades to withstand the particular hazard. Resources are pretty plentiful, allowing you to experiment with weapons and upgrade as you level up. The polar campaign is a lot more linear and limited, forcing you to be extremely strict with your upgrades or suffer painfully grinding the respawning enemies. Enemy encounters were kinda spread out with random clashes and ambushes from roaming patrols and some orchestrated assaults in the main campaign, but in the polar expansion it gets to the point where it just spawns several squads and turrets around you making only specific loadouts and strategy viable. Respawn points are also few and far between in the polar expansion, making it far more annoying to slowly trudge through the same large sections of map to get where you need to be. I almost uninstalled without even playing the polar expansion (you have to start a new game and select the campaign in a drop-down) and now I wish I had. The basic story is presented through messages from your handler as you travel the world with deeper lore unlocked by scanning objects hidden around the map. Initially I skimmed the lore as I found them, but they're not unlocked in order (not all of it is sequential) and I never went back to read it in organized order. For what it is, it's kinda interesting and neat, but it does overstay its welcome.