I love this game. I really do.
Which honestly makes this review harder to write because ABI has so much potential, but there are a handful of issues that keep dragging it down.
Headshots are probably the first thing that drives me insane. I don't understand how I can put two rounds directly into someone's face mask and they live, then I get tapped once while wearing better durability armor and I'm dead.
Tier for tier, bullet pen/damage just feels inconsistent sometimes. If I shoot somebody in the face with a round that should be able to handle their armor, I shouldn't be sitting there wondering whether the game is going to count it.
Weapons are another one.
This one hurts because I LOVE building guns in this game. I've spent stupid amounts of time building expensive, low recoil laser beams just to get absolutely ♥♥♥♥ on by somebody running one of the handful of META weapons.
At a certain point it feels like if you're not running one of the 4-5 top guns, you're voluntarily putting yourself at a disadvantage.
I'm not saying every gun needs to be identical. Obviously some guns should be better than others. But there should be enough balance that somebody who knows their weapon and builds it properly can still compete.
AI/scavs are also hilarious in the worst possible way.
I'll be stalking another player and watch them practically run past a scav like they're coworkers.
Then I creep past the same area and suddenly every bot within 30 meters knows my exact location and starts screaming.
Cool. Thanks for announcing me to the entire map.
The AI is one of the biggest accidental position giveaways in the game and half the time it doesn't even feel consistent.
And then we get to the big one.
Cheaters.
Oh boy.
I've reviewed enough of my own reports at this point to know what suspicious gameplay looks like, and there are kill cams that are absolutely ridiculous.
Watching somebody track you through a hill, mountain, wall, door, whatever, then magically line up the perfect headshot the second you're visible is infuriating.
Obviously not every death is a cheater. Sometimes you get outplayed. Sometimes somebody heard you. Sometimes you're just mad because you died.
But there are absolutely matches where you watch the replay and go, "yeah...okay."
Then you get the opposite problem with leg META.
I'll dump what feels like half a magazine of DumDum into somebody's legs and somehow they're still sprinting around like nothing happened.
50 rounds into your toes and you're still alive?
WHAT?
Cheating and weird damage situations are probably the biggest reason I'm putting the game down right now.
Then there's the skins.
Some of them look cool.
But this isn't Fortnite.
Running around a green map wearing a bright red outfit basically says:
"HELLO EVERYONE. I AM RIGHT HERE."
Not really my thing, but whatever.
At the end of the day I still love ABI.
That's the frustrating part.
The gunplay can be awesome. The loot loop is addicting. Building weapons is fun. Getting a huge extract feels great.
There is a genuinely great extraction shooter here.
But weapon balance, inconsistent damage, AI behavior and especially cheating keep getting in the way of it.
If the cheating problem gets seriously cleaned up, I'll probably come back.
Until then, I think I've had my fun.
