No Love Lost

This is one of my first steam reviews but I feel compelled to write one for this particular game because its gold buried in a litany of small issues The base concept is solid, a super satisfying extraction shooter with a fun vibrant environment and a hover board. What holds it back is unfortunately its animation, its gun play, and its combat interactions. Ill pick on the animation first, as at first glance it seems like an inconsequential bit of visual flavour but in reality contributes so significantly to the weight and the feel of the moment to moment combat that if left in its current state makes the experience rather frustrating. The player is given three weapons, and a series of abilities for use in combat: you have choice of a ranged weapon, a melee weapon and a hover board that you shoot while riding it. Out of all three the hover board feels the best to use but also requires the least animation to feel satisfying. The melee weapon is fine, most of the motion feels incredibly slidy and floaty missing the necessary weight and impact for it to be truly fun. A lot of the dash attacks are a static frame and a slide forward. The dodge is almost exactly the same and in my experience nearly never served its proper use. It felt like a there was no advantage to using the dodge as its unresponsiveness and distance were negligible. Moving on to ranged combat, there is something I must get out of the way first, oh my lord the way the character holds their gun is nonsensical. It's as though its the first time everyone of the player characters have ever shot a firearm. You have characters shouldering guns in elbows, revolvers being held in cowboy glam poses, snipers clipping through shoulders, I'd say maybe the rocket is the best of the bunch but then you shoot it and oh boy is it limp. This is an however not a hard fix, some time put into adjusting the posing would make the gun experience up to par with most other 3rd person shooters. The shooting is actually the best part of the combat, mostly because I don't have to engage with the dodging but I digress. The guns are responsive not incredible feeling but not bad, the sniper and the assault rifle I felt were the most satisfying out of the roster with the rocket launcher being definitely my least favourite. The explosion is just far too underwhelming for what I assume is supposed to be a rather powerful weapon at the players disposal. I will also note that the fact that I can't switch weapons with scroll wheel or the numbers was a bit confusing. There are just some established standards that are hard to go without. Pair all of this with a noticeable lack of matchmaking and unfortunately its hard to see what makes No Love Lost appealing at first glance. However there are a bunch of great things about this game. The aesthetic is unique vibrant and fun, the environments albeit a little cluttered(especially that mushroom map) are well designed and fun to explore. The creature design is really neat, That hover board is a genuinely great way to get around and is best tool in the player's arsenal. This game is certainly rough but doesn't need anything about its core structure changed. Its got great bones it just needs some better clothes and a quick course on how to properly handle a fire arm. I'm gonna leave this as a negative review for now, as with all the issues I expressed above I had a hard time enjoying it in its current state. Granted I will continue to play the game especially as updates role out as there is a lot of promise and its worth keeping an eye on.