So I've had this game for a few years now and I was there for the original build and thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought it was fun with the layout of the map being varied with the towns, the terrain, the hills, etc. You could call warnings if you weren't near a town to warn them. You could max out your stats and just drive into the tornado without ever getting lifted. It was unrealistic sure, but it was fun. You could be the tornado magnet where horrifyingly huge wedge tornadoes would chase you. You could survive an outbreak of tornado after tornado after tornado. Certain things weren't perfect, if you got thrown by a tornado, it would genuinely throw you off the map and there was no way to spawn back on land meaning you had to quit back to the game menu. It was a pain but it was fun back then......but I think a step back was taken cause at the previous build. After the developer released an update, you couldn't max your stats anymore. In fact you had to sacrifice which attributes you wanted to focus on which caused an imbalance of any skills or upgrades were available. It was kinda disheartening at the time but then, the developer said he was going to rework the game. And that he did, the tornadoes were varied in size, shape, speed, intensity and we had multi-vortex tornadoes. You could upgrade again with cash based on your level of data you collected each chase. And with your level of profession which was based off of how many lives you could save based on the warnings you gave. Tornadoes can randomly chase you if you have hunts enabled with a horrifyingly ominous "IT IS COMING FOR YOU" text that pops up on the screen. The tornado during the those hunts would get faster to reach you. Now with all of that in mind, let me express my dislikes with this new build. If you spawn onto a map, it sometimes throws you in the middle of a field for no reason and because the driving is so slow, it takes ages to get back onto a road thus wasting time to get to the tornado. While the map generates something new each chase, the road network is incredibly inconsistent. With how big the map is, I felt like the developer thought making the roads more windy and curved would make it more exciting but in actuality it hinders the player whilst driving because thebroad network is never cohesive and you have to keep looking at the map because you might miss your turn and then it's a nightmare to find a consistent path to the tornado. It's never from point A to B, you have to hope that it generates a road network that makes sense. The slightest bumps can make you lose hundreds of dollars for no good reasons and it's not like I'm driving distracted, if you drive on the slopes of an off-road trail and just bump on the incline or decline of it, you can lose your money or your samples. I can understand if the tornado throws you or if you drive like a maniac into the fence or such but that's ridiculous. I find leveling up your rankings is hard because for some incredibly cruel reason, the tornadoes love to spawn over the mobile homes which causes you to lose your rescue score from how many residents are injured or killed. And no you can't radio to a town to warn them so why should I get penalized over something so mundane as that? The hunts are fun when you get them but it feels like you don't get them 90% of the time, which makes it feel like what's the point of even having the hunts enabled for a 10% chance when I could just leave it disabled and chase normally cause practically it's the same thing. For how big the map is, it's incredibly frustrating how quickly the tornadoes go off the map. I've seen comments on Discord of people whining where is TIV or the Dominator, but for me the bigger concern is, where is a varied selections of vehicles? You only get the one vehicle and that's it. It would be exciting to include other vehicles/homages that don't infringe on copyright. I know it's only one guy working on it and I respect his hustle. In fact I like the new scenario mode, which recreates tornadoes in history like Jarrell or Bridge Creek and recreates the events in a timeline as you chase them and warn residents. It's a brilliant idea that I feel other storm chasing games should have done before. But at this time it's just too many flaws that hinder it at this time.
