VOLTED

Out of my entire steam library, this is the first serious, actual game that I have outright disliked. That makes me sad because there's some stuff I actually like. The sound effects for example are really good, and just driving around and shooting baddies feels pretty alright. But everything else falls apart with two simple issues, no multiplayer, and poor balance. VOLTED isn't multiplayer for whatever reason, meaning that every game you'll play with have you paired with bots. The AI really needs some more work, because there's some crucial factors that just don't exist. The bots have no self preservation, and will charge blindly into battles at low health and travel in one big group constantly. The worst parts are the bot interactions with the player. First of all, teammate bots often prioritize following you over making their own offensive pushes, meaning that you can't sneakily flank anywhere without towing an army behind you. Secondly, the enemy bots have some programming in them to intentionally attack you over anyone else. This not only makes no sense from a commercial sense, but also makes a lot of the combat scenarios wretched. You can't poke out to fire at the enemy cluster without drawing a hail of bullets and shells at you. Enemy bots will completely ignore enemies closer to them to fire at you, they will avoid firing and die just to keep their eyes on you. My favorite way to abuse this aggressive AI is to get a group to follow you away from a pylon, leading them on a tour across the map while your teammate bots blow up the pylon with no opposition. Another big issue is how unbalanced a lot of mechanics are. For example, each class has a specific resource that it can share with other teammates. Most of these classes are not built for obvious support, making it difficult to both take advantage of your combat prowess and provide for your team at the same time. The only class + resource that synergies well is the artillery and it functioning as a respawn point, which is good due to artillery staying in the backlines most of the time. The only problem is that the ability to respawn on teammates, in any game, is the worst thing ever. I could write a novel about why, but this review is long enough already. Plenty of weapons, such as the sniper or cannon, were clearly not designed with the maps and gameplay in mind, and generally feel unfitting for the game you're playing. VOLTED has potential, and I could see myself enjoying it far more with some changes, but I simply cannot recommend buying it in the state that it's in.