Do you know what DayZ is like?

DayZ is like the guy who throws a grand party, invites every single person in the neighborhood, and then when everybody has arrived and starts to party, proceeds to disappear in the middle of the party. So everybody else just goes ahead and have fun without the host. Then, when the party is finally over, DayZ shows up again and tells everybody that their way of partying is wrong, and to restart the party again when everybody is already drunk and tired.

If you look at it objectively, DayZ is by no means a bad game. In actual fact, DayZ is a huge wasted potential. DayZ was one of the pioneers of the whole survival hype, but for some reason became stagnant during the peak of the hype, and is now trying to make a return when the hype is dying.

When people first heard of DayZ, it was merely a mod for another game, and even when it moved to a standalone, the survival genre was still young, and battle royale wasn't even a thing. Now? Now there are literally too many choices in the market, and DayZ has lagged too far behind in the race.

This is not a personal grudge against Bohemia, or DayZ itself. I really cannot recommend it because, whatever DayZ has to offer you as a gamer now, every other similar game in the genre can offer you better. Try it if it's still free after the free weekend, but if you've got money to spare, treat yourself to a pizza. Or, you know, buy another game.

will update later

I played both Vermintide 1 and now Vermintide 2 only during the free weekends provided by Fatshark, and that is literally the only thing Fatshark has ever done right: giving free weekends so players can experience the sub-par games for what they are before deciding to not buy them.

I have negatively reviewed Vermintide 1 for what little time I spent in it, but the majority reviews have vouched for my claims. What that being said, you'd think that Fatshark would have at least learned something and take an advice or two to heart from the reviews of Vermintide 1 and make Vermintide 2 at least decently better than its predecessor.

Well, apparently, they did. For a while, anyway. I can't really say I'm surprised, that's like Marketing Strategy 101 right there. Over-hype the previews and trailers first, until the money starts coming in, then throw all promises down the drain and use said money to fund something else to bring in even more money. I feel bad for the paying customers, but I don't get the privilege of ranting about that because I was a free player.

So, onto the game itself. So Vermintide really tries to imitate Left 4 Dead down to coming up with a Part 2, but Left 4 Dead 2 has much more content than the first game. Does Vermintide 2 have more content than Vermintide 1? Well, yes. Surprisingly, but yes. There are more enemy types. You now have more, "character classes" if we can call them that. Aside from consumable and throw-able items, you have an active skill, different for each "class" of character, as well as passive skills or perks that can be different for every player. You'd think that with features like these, it would make the game good.

So what's the problem you might ask? The problem is that literally all the problems from the first game is present in Vermintide 2.

First and foremost, there are still no dedicated servers. So every game you're in, you're playing on peer-to-peer connection. In a game released in 2018. Let that sink in. Your latency is at the mercy of your host.

Well, that shouldn't be a problem. You could just narrow your search to just games near you. That's totally going to work well. Except when there aren't any players near you. Player-base is either still not big enough or too concentrated in a single region.

And when you manage to find a smooth game, you better pray. Pray real hard. Pray that the host remains with you throughout the rest of the match. Why? Well, remember how players complained about the lack of host migration in the first game? Fatshark at least heard that one and finally implemented host migration in Vermintide 2. However, in all their glorious wisdom, they made it in such a way that when there is host migration, you have to restart the level from the very beginning of it. No checkpoints, no nothing. It does not matter if you were just a few steps away from the end of the level, you get to kill your way through the map again. Oh, and no, you don't get to keep your progression from the previous game.

Oh, and that "feature" will be taken advantage of, which brings us to the subject of toxicity in the community of Vermintide 2. In the higher difficulties, there is friendly fire for ranged weapons, and there are some troll hosts who will outright shoot you in the back and quit the game when you're literally standing at the exit.

Onto game design. It is messy, and so inconsistent that I think it is sometimes confused about itself. Sometimes the enemies have no collision, and they literally stack up right next to you. I once had a whole army of Skaven grunts stack up at a doorway, and with one swipe reduced my health from full to near-death, on the lowest difficulty.

It should be a rule that if you want to make a sequel using the same engine, the first thing to do is fix the problems present in the prequel.

Asset Flip Simulator 2018.

If you play this after playing Overwatch, you'll quickly recognize all of the carbon copies.

There's a female sniper in a tightsuit who even has Widowmaker's poses.
There's a male archer who closely resembles Hanzo.
There's a cyborg ninja with a long blade like Genji's.
There's a big fat tanky dude who is basically your Roadhog.

Edit: If you also play Metal Gear Solid: Revengeance, the cyborg ninja is literally Raiden.

I was going to write a very detailed review of this game, breaking down all the different aspects like gameplay, graphics, and story, honest.

But when I sat down in front of my computer and clicked on the "Write a review" button, I just couldn't. Firstly because I didn't really think it's worth my time, and also because what I want to say are covered by all the other negative reviews that aren't the "this is worse than the previous game" ones.

So I'll be brief. A little disclaimer, I never played the first/original Defiance, so you can bet your head this isn't going to be another "this is a worse DLC/expansion/sequel game" review. Also, I play from the Asia region, so I already expect there will be latency issues, therefore this isn't going to be another "the game is unplayable because laaaag" review.

With that being said, Defiance 2050 is... mediocre, at best. Maybe interesting, but mediocre. I can't quite put my finger on what seems to be the problem, but if you're a generic MMORPG player who doesn't only stick to one title, you'll quickly feel a sense of... deva ju, when playing Defiance 2050. As far as third-person shooter MMO's go, quite a few other games have explored that concept. When I was playing Defiance 2050, I felt like I was playing Tom Clancy's The Division, except that it takes place in a pseudo-futuristic post-apocalyptic world. And speaking of pseudo-futuristic post-apocalyptic, it also reminds me a lot of Destiny.

So since the story can't win me over, I tried to turn a blind eye to it and focus on the gameplay. Sadly, that didn't gain it any points either. It's just another grindfest of getting the best gear, with the standard white, green, blue and etc. colored rarity system, with the end-tier gears locked behind a paywall. Isn't that convenient? Oh, and your gear totally determines your strength, because there are no character statistics involved. Do you level up? Yes, you do, and when you get levels, you're given points to allocate in a skill tree, with the majority of skills being "perks" or passive skills. You usually only have up to 3 active skills. Sounds familiar? Yes, the levelling system is basically taken straight out of a MOBA game and rehashed to be fitting for a MMOTPSRPG.

The graphics are not bad, I guess. It's not some cream-of-the-crop level work, but that means some lower-end computers can run it with minimal issues. It's the design that horribly needs work, because a lot of the landscape aren't what they seem. You get the ability to drive a vehicle in this game, so sometimes you can drive or walk up a 89 degrees slope and be perfectly still, but on a perfectly flat platform you could be flung back and start rolling like a fish that jumped out of the water.

I personally did not enjoy the game, although I can say that if this was the only online game in the market, I could still recommend it. Unfortunately, there are so many, too many in fact, other alternatives. Only play this game if you have lots of lots of extra time to kill, like, really really extra time.

I got this game during a free giveaway, so I've really, really thought of giving it a fair review.

But I just can't... I just... how do I review a multiplayer game when there are practically nobody playing it? This game is so dead it makes No Man's Sky look full of life.