[quote][b]Note: Dead Multiplayer game[/b]
This game contains no meaningful single player content. There's no viably populated servers/active player population, as the developer pulled the plug on back end infrastructure. This game cannot be played as intended.[/quote]
This was a laughably bad bot shooter with a co-op focus as you and your friends would shoot waves of pixelcrap enemies, but the developer decided to yank multiplayer, leaving a glorified botmatch.
It's a dead multiplayer game, and it's time for us to have a post-mortem to see some of the reasons this failed.
[i]Almost every multiplayer exclusive game on Steam fails.[/i] Developers often assume just because they published their game, it's going to "go viral". I'm guessing this is a case of the developers making this game in complete isolation without even bothering to look at what other multiplayer games on Steam already offer.
There's fierce competition in the multiplayer game arena... and I'm not referring to players fighting other players. There's thousands of multiplayer-only games but only a tiny handful of them are successful enough to attract and keep a wide player base. This game failed to compete and didn't get enough people to stay active. Despite being free, it did not have what it takes, it's as simple as that.
This game lacks any meaningful solo content. The developer tried to use other players as a substitute for real work like level design and story, gambling that just because their game exists, it's going to magically pull the entire player base of Counter-Strike 2 over to this failure instead. They lost that unwise gamble. A game with no players and little to no solo content is a dead game. Developers need to stop relying on players as a substitute for real content, just because they feel creating genuine narrative, level design and so on is "too hard".
This game fails on the visuals because of the use of incredibly lazy, ugly pixelcrap. The developer would probably argue this is a "deliberate artistic choice" but we all know it's because the developer was incapable of producing anything better. The game looks very poor compared to professionally developed games. Whether the developer lacked the skill or the budget for modern visuals is irrelevant. Gaming is a visual medium, and it's a disservice to gamers when developers don't bother doing their jobs and creating contemporary, high quality visuals. Games like Undertale and Stardew Valley are rare exceptions that succeeded [i]in spite[/i] of their awful graphics. Pixelcrap is never really okay, and there's no excuse for games that look this bad.
This game is fairly dated at 9 years old... and even back then it looked old and busted compared to contemporary, professionally made 3D games of the same period. It looked bad then, it looks worse now.
Next is pricing and what value this has for gamers.
This is "free" enough (not every "free" game in the "free" section is truly free, there's usually some hidden price tag), at least you won't be expected to spend any more money after you download this, but just because something is free doesn't mean it's good, and the cost of a game is more than just financial, your time is valuable too.
In terms of public reception, the "free" price tag didn't help. This peaked at a handful of players and then immediately cratered. With a peak count of less than 50 gamers (out of over 130 million gamers and over 40 million daily logons), it’s safe to say the PC gaming community has collectively decided to ignore this, probably because of the reasons supplied in this review.
All other issues aside (any of which would disqualify this from being worth your time), this is a game that relies on other players for it to be viable, and because there's not enough players, it's not viable. I can't recommend anyone downloads this, it's basically dead.
