Call of Duty Vanguard Alpha (PS4) Review

 

This weekend (27-29.8) Call of Duty Vanguard has been hosting its Playstation exclusive Open Alpha Test. The new game mode 'Champion Hill' could be tested by all PS owners.

Champion Hill is a mix of Gunfight and Mini Battle Royale. Teams of 2/3 (16 players total in Duos and 24 players in Trios) are competing in round based gunfights to crown an ultimate tournament winner. Each round lasts 1 minute and players can eliminate each other as often as possible during this time. After the end of the round they switch to one of the other maps and fight a different team for a minute and so on. Every couple of rounds there are buy-rounds, where players can purchase different weapons, equipment or Perks. Weapons on the other hand can be upgraded at any point inside or outside of the buy-rounds. Duo Teams start with 12 lives and Trio Teams with 18 lives. After each round you can check the overall score and extra lives can either be purchased during the buy-rounds or one can be found per round on the map. If there are only 2 Teams left with lives, there will be a showdown round between those, that lasts for 2 minutes. The last team standing wins and you can pick up the weapons of eliminated teams to replace your own with, or you can use them to upgrade your weapons, if you have the same ones equipped.

The gameplay and gunplay feels like a mix of Modern Warfare 2019 and WW2. This is a positive thing and makes the gunplay and movement feel pretty satisfying. The visuals are also nice. Vanguard uses the same visual engine as MW 2019 and it shows. The game is looking pretty good, even on the outdated base PS4. A great new addition in Vanguard is the option for auto tactical sprint, a feature that has still been missing in MW2019 and Black Ops Cold War (Joysticks will now be a lot less likely to break). Another good change in Vanguard is the transformation of the Ghost perk, that now only works if players are actively moving. This makes it less viable for camping. But what I probably liked the most was the new Champion Hill game mode. It is intense, but also strategic and just a great concept and much more motivating than the rather dull separate gunfights in the last two COD games. I also like that the individual maps in Champion Hill are all connected and you can view and listen to players on the surrounding maps (damaged areas on the maps change the flow and stay the same till the end of the tournament).

There were however also a couple of aspects, that I was, so far, not particularly fond of. These can of course still change and I was only playing an Alpha with a single game mode, which doesn't need to be representative of the Vanguard Multiplayer experience at all. There were issues with visibility of enemies in a bigger distance, which sometimes was really poor. You could see each other's player names, but you couldn't identity their bodies. This will probably be improved till the release and I also hope that they will fix the bad spawn locations till then (even though bad spawn locations are kind of a tradition in COD games). Some of them however were particularly awful in the Alpha. You can often shoot players or be shot directly at the starting second of the round, or sometimes spawn 1-2 meters in front of a player. A lot of players praised that you could barely hear any footsteps in the Alpha, but I honestly found them to be too quiet. Listening shouldn't be OP, but I couldn't hear any other players during the Alpha, which seems like a bit too much. The two big new additions to the Vanguard gameplay are the advanced mounting (you can mount behind cover, making you barely visible while leaning over the cover) and destructible objects. I personally may be biased, since I never liked the mounting function in COD games, but I feel like advanced mounting is giving even more incentive to camp. I just personally believe, it hurts the game more than it adds to it. I would therefore recommend removing it. Destructible objects are however not necessarily bad, but they did seem a bit too random during the Alpha. I had walls, where I thought I shouldn't be able to shoot through and other objects, where I should be able to shoot through, and they both worked the other way around. I just think they should improve the consistency of destructible environments and not overdue it in this area.

 

Result:

Overall I did enjoy the Alpha of COD Vanguard. The new game mode is fantastic and very motivating. Gunplay and movement already feel good, which are probably the most important aspects of any FPS. Other aspects, like some visual issues, bad spawns or the advanced mounting should still be improved, but Sledgehammer already announced they want to fix some of these areas. If you enjoyed WW2 or MW 2019, than Vanguard could definitely be worth a shot (The campaign also sounds pretty interesting so far).

Turbo Tempest (PC) Review

 

Turbo Tempest is the first Boat Battle Royale (at least the first I have heard of), which makes it a pretty unique occurrence (EDIT: Upon further research there also seems to exist another Boat BR game called 'Maelstrom').

It has a player maximum of 8 and allows up to 3 additional Bots per match regardless of the player count. The Bots however aren't too smart. They can get stuck on the environment and they will stop moving after all human players have been eliminated, even if there are still other Bot Players around. Nonetheless, the Bots can still actively shoot and sometimes put up a little fight. They are however no real substitute for human players.

Turbo Tempest offers Online and LAN matches. Both modes can also be played versus Bots regardless of connection. During the launch week multiple players complained about broken servers not allowing them to connect to other players. I experienced these problems as well and couldn't connect or find other people ingame, even though according to stats a handful of other persons were playing the game at that time. These problems seem to have been partly solved when I recently tested the game with a friend. With random people however it remains a gamble, whether you can join their game or receive matchmaking errors.

There are 3 unnamed maps in Turbo Tempest. Map 1 is located in a field of icebergs, Map 2 contains tight rivers inside a canyon and Map 3 is a jungle map. I didn't like Map 2, because human players would always hit the side of the walls on these rivers and Bots got stuck too easily (The map also aesthetically looked worse than the others). The iceberg and the jungle map on the other hand looked and played well. You only have to point out that all 3 of these maps are rather small (especially if you consider that you are driving fast boats) and together with the small player maximum make Turbo Tempest a really small scale Battle Royale game (you can extend the relatively short length of matches by giving players more lives, but that makes it less of a BR in my opinion).

There are 6 different types of boats, the differences however seem to be only cosmetic and do not affect gameplay. The boats can take up to 2 different weapons at the same time, which have to be found on the map. Ammo runs out pretty fast, but there are many weapons scattered around the map. The weapons do behave somewhat differently. Most of them are projectile based and differ mostly in shot speed and ammo capacity. There are however also Mines and a shield item/weapon, that temporarily protects the boat from damage.

What on the other hand did annoy me about the weapons, is the fact, that the boats are only able to shoot straight ahead. If you miss your first shots you will have to rotate and try to get your boat into a position to hit other players. This makes fights clunkier than they have to be.

A very interesting and bold design choice of Turbo Tempest is, that there are no UI elements in this game. All relevant information (like the health status of the boat, the weapon types and their amount of ammunition or the number of lives left) are symbolized on the boats themselves. This might potentially sound overloaded, but it actually works pretty well and I liked it. What I didn't like however is the fact, that the game gives you a very noticeable blur effect, every time you move the camera and this effect can also not be deactivated in the options.

The customization options in Turbo Tempest are nevertheless pretty decent, as far as visuals and sound are concerned. Controls however can not be changed, but function pretty well. This surprised me a little, since the game oddly doesn't assign the mouse buttons any function (you can only move the camera with the mouse). I found the controls nonetheless to be simple, yet satisfactory and the game even supports gamepad use as well.

 

Pro:

- Boat Battle Royale

- Bot Support

- Map environments mostly look nice

- No UI (all info on the boats)

 

Contra:

- Really small scale BR game

- Combat gets clunky through fixed aim

- Bots not too smart

- Forced Blur effect when moving the camera

- Still occasional matchmaking errors

- Tiny playerbase

 

Result:

Turbo Tempest offers an unique experience, unfortunately it is on such a small scale. I do like the concept and the aesthetics of most maps, but matches are super short and the maps really small. The gameplay however is decent to a large extent, even though the restricted aiming definitely makes combat clunkier than it has to be. Online Matchmaking also often still doesn't work. Turbo Tempest can therefore not compete with the big fishes (pun intended), but it could perhaps be fun to play with a group of friends. 

 

4.5/10

Farm Fatale (PC) Review

 

Farm Fatale is a farm based Battle Royale game and more than just weird. The twist of this game is, that it plays on a farm and all shot opponents turn into animals (horses, pigs, chickens or foxes), who wildly run around the map, creating a total chaos. The animals can not be taken out directly, and if they find some human essense (dropped by other killed players), they can respawn as regular players on the map again. I found it pretty frustrating, that the criteria for a final elimination are completely unclear, because the player count is going to drop throughout the game, but there is no apparent way how players can influence this after downing players and turning them into animals.

The farm setting is generally been captured pretty well. The map gets randomly generated every match, but always consist of stables, granaries, windmills and some hay bales for example. NPC farmers (who do not engage in combat) and the players, who turned into animals, help to provide this farm vibe. The map outside of this farm elements however feels definitely too empty. Most parts of the map consist just of one texture green or yellow ground with some occasional bushes and items on top of them.

The playable area of the map shrinks during the match, like in nearly all BR games, but Farm Fatale has a bouncing wall that keeps players from stepping out of the zone. That is certainly a funny idea (in practice however the walls will be bouncing the players all over the place without any control. Sometimes the walls even ported me through a mountain). At the end of the match the ground will be flooded by a pink swamp (the game calls it 'gas'), that will kill all players, who touch it. In my experience all matches ended with the player as the winner, who wasn't at the ground anymore. This is definitely weird as well, since the winner of a BR game should usually be determined by killing other players and not by jumping on top of buildings or mountains.

There are 5 different weapons in Farm Fatale. Every player starts with one weapon and can find the others in chests or from defeated enemies. There are throwable knives, a shotgun, a Uzi, a Sniper Rifle and a Rocket Launcher. The TTK is pretty high in this game and weapon damage and hit detection are sometimes pretty random. In some matches I have had precise rocket launcher hits making 10% damage, while shotgun shots over 30 meters did significantly more. On other matches the damage was more explainable. In any case you could never one-shot anybody. Even with a sniper it will take at least 3 head shots to put an opponent down. Because of these big randomness-factors of the gunplay I am not the biggest fan of it.

Farm Fatale has a player maximum of 20 per match and at the beginning required at least 2 humans to start a match. They changed this by implementing Bots into the game, which I think is a good solution for all BR games, who struggle to maintain a stable population. The Bots work alright, nothing groundbreaking in either direction.

Temporarily servers were broken for around a week, but seem to have been fixed and work problem-free since than (you can unfortunately not say that about every BR, there are more than enough broken games out there).

The visuals of the game are pretty minimalistic and in my opinion rather hideous. The game mostly lacks details in the environment and the randomized maps don't always work to the games favour (I have once got stuck inside of a mountain). There are at least some visual customization options, but sound and controls can not be changed (you can switch the main menu sound volume, but not the ingame soundeffects, which makes it useless). 

 

Pro:

- Farm Setting and animals

- Full Bot support

 

Contra:

- Criteria for eliminations pretty unclear

- Hit-detection and damage output sometimes random

- Rather hideous visuals

- no real customization (controls, sound etc.)

 

Result:

I really want to like this game. A Battle Royale on a farm with animals jumping all over the place is truly something unique. The visuals are not impressive and lack of customization is annoying, but the gunplay and lack of permanent eliminations is what really put me off. The game gives you the feeling off not always being in control, with the weapons behaving too random and not being able to actively eliminate other players for good. I understand what they were going for, but this concept just doesn't work really well in a BR setting.

 

3.5/10

Back 4 Blood Open Beta (PS4/PC) Review:

 

Back 4 Blood claims to be the unofficial successor of the legendary Left4Dead Franchise. Obviously it is impossible to verify this by an Open Beta and I am not going to in detail explain the L4D formula and every gameplay aspect. I will just state, that Back4Bloods gameplay is indeed very very similar to L4D, but there are also some changes. I will try to simply express my impressions of the game in contrast to the original and my expectations. What I can already say so far is, that Back 4 Blood will very likely be a fun coop Zombie Shooter and it will almost certainly be inferior to the L4D games.

The first thing that really shocked me was the default controller settings of this game (If you play on PC with mouse and keyboard it isn't an issue, even though default sensitivity on PC is also too low), which are unexplainibly awful. It is imperative to deactivate Motion Blur (which you honestly should do in every game), but even than the default sensitivity feels very floaty and off. I was ably to improve the situation a bit, but It never felt as smooth as other FPS on consoles. What was even worse is the Aim-Assist of the game, which is a complete miss at this point. You can choose between complete Auto-Aim, where the game will do all aiming for the players instead of just assisting them and giving you massive aim resist, if you try to aim yourself, or zero Aim-Assist, which of course makes the game much harder than it should be. Every Console FPS since more than 10 years uses Aim-Assist settings, which smooth the aiming process, but don't completely remove and certainly don't punish players for aiming for themselves. Back 4 Bloods Aim Resist however is so strong, that you will really get punished every time you touch the right analog stick by missing the shot. This is unacceptable and explainable (like the devs have last been playing on console in the early 2000s or something). Tweaking the settings didn't help, since 10% and 50% aim assist felt identically overwhelming. If the game releases like this it will flop hard on consoles.

The majority of the gameplay thankfully still feels like L4D and the maps are decently designed. That being said, Back4Blood still lacks the special charm of the predecessors. L4Ds visual design has such an unique look and in combination with the animations and sound effects created such an amazing atmosphere between Horror and pure Arcade fun. Back 4 Blood visually seems to aim for a more realistic setting (mostly due to the newer graphic engine), but at this point lacks the special charm. Animations and soundeffects are just much more generic and could also be out of any other game. Molotovs and Pipe Bombs for example looked much cooler in the more than 10 year older games. Gunplay also doesn't really do anything wrong in Back 4 Blood, but it doesn't feel as satisfying to kill Zombies as in L4D.

Characters are thankfully not as annoying as I first thought, after watching the trailers, but they still fall of short. Hoffman is probably the one I like the most  and even he can't compare to the Bills, Nicks, Coaches or Rochelles of this world. Back 4 Blood characters are just a bit too edgy and fun driven, where L4D also had a certain humor factor, but always mixed with the intense Horror Survival atmosphere. L4D characters feel more like real people being thrown into an apocalypse, while Back 4 Blood characters feel like they have been designed on a drawing board.

The same goes for the special infected. Even though they resemble their L4D Counterparts. They feel far less unique or scary. You just quickly shoot them and forget about them. Even this gigantic new boss creature felt way less impactful than the Tank on L4D, who on Expert used to scare the shit out of me.

Most of the unique and new aspects of Back 4 Blood, like the card system, are okay and don't really hurt the game, but I really wouldn't have needed them in the game either. The same goes for weapon attachments, the ability to buy weapons and items between missions with gathered resources or different ammo types for different weapons. They are okay, but i very personally don't see them as a necessary change either. This however is certainly a matter of personal preference.

I experienced some massive issues in my playtime, like on one mission I wasn't able aim down sights anymore in the middle of the mission and nothing could stop that from happening. Only quitting the game solved the issue. On  another mission two of my teammates glitched through a wall and fell to their deaths. The weapon of a teammate of mine always got invisible after he put an attachment on it. And there were also some massive frame drops out of nowhere, which only lasted for a few seconds, but nearly made the game stop. The PC-version of the game had less of the former issues, but on the other hand crashed multiple times in the third mission of the first campaign. Make of that as you will...  

Matchmaking is also not working perfectly. If one of the players disconnects for example, we could never find a replacement player during the campaign (even 1-2 missions later). A Bot  would take his place, but Bots are also not great in this game. L4D Bots weren't perfect, but still smarter than Back 4 Blood Bots. B4B Bots only really move, if human players move, otherwise they mostly stand around and shoot a little bit. If you want to be revived, you better hope you stand somewhere near them. I did like, that you could take over Bot characters, if the player character has been eliminated before. Interestingly matchmaking issues would also be resolved if you were queuing for a sub-mission from the main menu.

Something to further keep in mind is, that Back 4 Blood will in contrast to L4D not feature free additional campaigns and massive Mod support for thousands of custom maps, but instead focuses on paid additional DLC, very likely no mod support and other monetization aspects. This is frightening me a little, since Back 4 Blood is supposed to have reached Gold status now. It however so far seems to be far away from a polished and ready to release status (I don't even want to imagine how the game might have looked at the initial release date in June). If the game doesn't take the necessary amount of time to be polished (I would say at least 3-4 months more) and focuses to early on additional paid content, than it could lead down a dark hole.   

 

Result:

Back 4 Blood is no Left 4 Dead 3, even though the gameplay is very similar. My impressions might sound pretty negative, since I have to compare this game to nigh perfect predecessors. There are significant technical issues, massive controller issues and a couple of elements feel noticeably worse than in L4D. Nonetheless, Back 4 Blood has some really good potential to be a fun game. The game however desperately needs more work and time to be put in it. The devs need to listen to player feedback, than I could see Back 4 Blood becoming a 7-8/10 game. The 9-10/10 region of the L4D games so far seems impossible to reach, unless a miracle occurs, but the foundation of Back 4 Blood is certainly not terrible or as average as some people make it sound. The fate of the game is now in the hands of the devs/publishers. Let's hope they don't screw it up.