8089: The Next Action RPG

After playing 3089 (and, in spirit, 5089) and not liking it, I wanted to give a fair shake to the developers latest creation in the series. Unfortunately, a game with such heavy reliance on procedural generation needs a LOT more aspects to the game to be worth it. As it stands, progressing through the game feels, quite frankly, meaningless. There are "story milestones" you reach to progress through the increasingly difficult zones, but increased difficulty is more enemy numbers go up, your numbers go down, until you get your numbers back up to snuff. AI doesn't get smarter, new equipment doesnt different additional stats, missions don't get varied from what you've already seen... etc. It's all the same grind with higher numbers and no meaningful progress. Do the exact same thing you were doing a few zones ago, and keep doing it. I found guns to be awful to use in general, whether I made one myself with various parts, or used pre-made ones in gun shops, even with proper gun skill. Melee and grapple-hook'ing everywhere is the only reason i stuck with the game as long as I could. I also don't know why there was a design decision nerf ships and vehicles into the ground. They run out of fuel too often to be moderately useful. While there were many aspects I didn't like of 3089, I really liked the hoverboard and skating around everywhere. I really wish that was kept in. Removal of Burden/Equipment weight was a good decision I will say. Glad it was removed and instead a simple inventory space system was kept. Burden was annoying. Weapon customization seemed interesting at first and was an improvement on previous games, but sadly is restricting in subpar ways, and doesn't give enough freedom in others to feel impactful. Maybe with programming skill things liven up, but that requires leveling up and keeping leveled yet another stat, adding to your constant grind. Without rambling further, this game I feel does improve upon the the developer's previous game formulas in key areas, but sadly isn't fleshed out enough to be enjoyable. I found this game to just be... tedious and monotonous overall. I appreciate the effort, but it's just not fun...

A glorious return to the xxx9 series, 8089 feels like a natural progression, modding weapons and gear is greatly expanded, the lifeforms are a lot of fun and the graphics retain that certain charm. Once you understand the games various systems it becomes engrossing and making progress feels good. Whether you are raiding an enemy stronghold, sheltering from a meteor shower or simply standing beneath a tree watching the rain, the game has a surreal atmosphere which really appeals to me. My only dream now is that Phr00t might one day do a total remake of 3079, one of my all time favourite games, I think I read that 3079 became more than it was meant to be and in the end its engine was pushed to the limits, it'd be awesome to see what could be achieved with modern pc's.

I play *a lot* of games, and return enough of them that Steam customer service gives me warnings. This game is fun, worth the price, and overall I am satisfied with the purchase. None of the issues I list below are anywhere close to game breaking or enough to sour the experience, and are mostly here as suggestions based on what I personally think would make the game more fun. Phr00t makes great games, and if you haven't tried any of them yet, this would be a great one to start with. If you have, you likely already know what to expect. I'm having more fun with this than any of the others I played. However, I'm not a huge fan of some of the design choices made with this one. First, 95% of the item drops are useless and overall gear feels the same. For guns, beams feel weak and leave you exposed while you attack, and lobbing has it's uses, but they're pretty slim. Seemingly the only stat to look at fir anything is level. There won't be a reason to use anything that drops aside from consumables or something 1-2 levels higher than what you have. However, whenever you get higher level gear, it disables the abilities on any gear you have that are several levels lower than it. This is an annoyance considering how movement feels without either the grapple hook found on arms or the blink ability from pants. You'll want to wait specifically for gear with the same abilities as what you have most of the time For the most part, enemies may as well drop money instead of gear, as you'll be selling almost everything and just buying a completely new set of gear every time you set up a new spawner in a higher level zone. If you invest in engineering, you can use the trash drops to upgrade other things, but I'll touch on that issue later. Second, as I mentioned earlier, the movement abilities on gear, while not absolutely necessary, saves so much time, to the point that I kept level 7 blink pants well into stage 17 (it took that long before I found another pair in a shop), so that I could unequip everything else to use them to get over the walls surrounding the bases (rather than spend an extra minute walking around to find an opening, or blink onto the tops of buildings where the vehicles spawn. It's really a night and day difference in how enjoyable the game is when you have either the blink or grapple hook to help move around. This also means that I miss out on the cool abilities like bullet time the majority of the time I play. My suggestions would be to make an extra gear slot just for movement options rather than have them tied to gear, make grapple hook a base ability, or put the jet spawns on the ground. Third, to level up stats you need to go to a shop and buy consumables that grant the points. This is the only shop you can refresh, thankfully, which will change the costs as well as the amount for each stat. The more you pay, the exponentially more stats you get. This means you'll need to open and close the shop about 30 times to get the best value out of the first purchase, or trying to get the cost low enough to afford. Not entirely sure why the stats are tied to a shop inventory system rather than something like clicking the stat, and then clicking either a 25%, 50%, or 100% button that spends that percentage of your current funds. I assume the logic behind this was to tie it into the zones level, but since money already is, it ends up just weird making people reroll the shop a bunch. Finally, I feel the benefits of engineering need to be enough to justify the investment. If I use a cauldron, overclocking, the whole works, to get something maxed out completely, it will be loads better than other gear at my level. However, since everything is exponential, it won't take much to overshadow it with something pulled from a shop 1-2 zones higher. Maybe I'm missing something, but so far I haven't seen anything to bump up the level on items to make it worth doing. With all that said though, the game is enjoyable. Aside from enemy beam weapons occasionally tilting the heck out of me and meteor showers just being generally annoying, It's mostly quality of life things this game (or future games) could use in my opinion.

coming from 5089, i really enjoy this game. i feel like phr00t made some great variations on the formula and the game runs just as well as 5089 did for me.

По сравнению с 5089: - графика на 1% лучше но производительность на 300% хуже, - населяющие мир существа выглядят мерзко, почему нельзя было сделать роботов как в 5089? - с самого начала тебе дают обязательный квест который ничем не интересен и плохо понятно как его выполнять, - мультиплеера нет. Это все что я успел понять поиграв 20 минут и отправив запрос на возврат средств. ------ Compared to 5089: - Graphics are 1% better but performance is 300% worse, - the creatures inhabiting the world look disgusting, why couldn't robots be made like in 5089? - from the very beginning you are given a mandatory quest that is not interesting in any way and it is poorly understood how to perform it, - there is no multiplayer. That's all I managed to figure out after playing for 20 minutes and sending a refund request.

Phr00t is the benjamin button of game devs.

This type of games are good for some venting off after work sessions. With the AAA monster prices of the new AAA titles coming out, these games provide some peace and good old fashioned 'time pass'.

Has a constant very annoying fake vsync tearing effect that you don't see in the game-play videos. No way to disable. I want to rip my eyes out after 45 minutes. Requesting refund

The game is for a specific kind of player that enjoys constant progression feedback loops in a single player experience. Go to an area that whoops you, get more stats and better weapons, then move forward at your own pace once it gets easier. The pacing definitely makes the player responsible for the difficulty level they are experiencing. You have level 30 equipment and stats, push yourself to a level 35 area for significant challenge / reward, or hang a bit back to cheese farm at level 28. There can be significant punishment for dying, specifically losing some very important modules. The quest system can be cycled to provide complete-able quests at higher levels by avoiding combat ect. The game works well flat screen and VR. Personally I prefer VR, being able to use the grappling hook in VR and blink teleport really adds significant mobility to the game. The ability to mod your weapons to get homing ect allows for ease of use play on remote play systems. The combat isn't hardcore twitch fests, so it is comfortable to play on a phone.

It improves on the first game in many aspects, but it falls short in many others... The spawner system is very weird, in order to get to higher levels you need to A. Get a spawn activator and then B. find an offline spawner and activate it. Why? And as far as i can tell the only way to get spawn activators is to get a quest from a quest terminal(only the ones in a base) that rewards you with a spawn activator. I think you can very rarely find one in a box? This is a very weird system, i honestly will change my review to a positive if they fix this, because this aspect of the game makes it very grindy, sometimes you can't get a quest that rewards you with an activator, and offline spawners are very difficult to find. I believe in the first game the only point of activating spawners was to get allies spawning in an area, not to unlock a new area of the game. This is my main complaint of the game, but my second complaint would be the gun system. I wish gun stores were more consistent, the only game used to let you assemble guns from parts, now all the guns are assembled but you have to put mods in them(guns don't work if you don't have a specific type of mod in them) Modding guns is kinda frustrating, sometimes you'll find a good mod that decreases cooldown time only to realize it also makes your bullets lob. Very few of the mods are actually fun, it's kinda difficult to find a good mod combination for guns, and even the good ones will be like -5% cooldown time, like, is that even worth it? lol My final complaint would be there doesn't seem to be much to do in it later on. Even if you activate a bunch of spawners and get a really good gun, and buy a bunch of skills, it's like good job, you can go to a higher level area and do the same thing over again. Also, if you die, good luck getting back to the higher level area because it respawns you back at level 1 lol. This game feels... unfinished. I'd give it a 4/10 maybe, i enjoyed it a bit, but it doesn't feel very fun to play for an extended period of time. Edit: I saw the dev responded and was considering removing my review if you had apologised or promised to improve it in the future, but instead you criticised me and acted like my review was invalid so ill respond to their points. 1. Okay, this was one thing i got wrong, but it's very confusing as to what the "backup" stations are, i'll give you this one, though. Weird that spawners don't act as spawn points lol 2. Yes, and this is a terrible system, what should be fixed? Get rid of it or make spawners easier to acquire. 3. I know they're not all fully assembled, i just meant the guns aren't "assembled" the same way they were in the old game. 4. Would love to find them if this game wasn't such a slog to get through lol, I never saw one story event. Didn't think this game even had an end, but i have no desire to see it, it's too boring.The spawn activators being a big issue preventing me from progressing, another being the difficulty to get proper upgrades to guns and fighting feels useless, drops are somewhat common but very very rarely useful lol An unfinished game is an unfinished game. As a game dev myself, i understand how difficult game design can be and it feels like this game is plateaued. I wouldn't have given it a bad review if I didn't feel like it was deeply flawed at it's core... but hey, that's my opinion. As I said, it's not horrible. It's just not... fun. lol, on the contrary, i hope my response(if you see it) helps give you some ideas on what to fix for this game