Galactic Force (PC) Review

Galactic Force looks and plays like a Sci-Fi Shooter from the early 2000s. There is nothing wrong with that and I am actually quite fond of games from this period. Galactic Force however is just a small scale game from the developers of games like Pixel Battle Royale, Rebel Forces, the Masked Forces games and some other asset flips. The Sci-Fi scenario may sound cool, but the game doesn't really utilize it. All guns in the game for example have a laser lightening effect to signal that they are 'futuristic'. This lightening effect however is not only weird and rather hideous, but also looks identical for all the weapons (including shotguns, which is just absurd). There are only 6 weapons in Galactic Force (Knife, Pistol, Shotgun, Sniper, Laser AR and Rocket Launcher), which is noticeably less than in the Masked Forces games and except for the lightening/laser effect of the weapons, none of them are new in GF.  

The presentation is generally pretty simplistic and you could put the gameplay in any kind of scenario (which the devs did in some of their other games). You can give Galactic Force credit for not screwing up as much as a couple of other BR games did, which really held those back, but Galactic Force on the other hand feels like a very bland experience.

There are a variety of different game modes aside of BR, like DM, TDM, Doom or Coop Survival against Bot players or Monsters (DM, TDM and Doom also have Arcade versions, where players can use all weapons). This is once again very similar to the other Freeze Nova games. The Doom mode is in Galactic Force probably the best mode as well, because it can compensate the bad hit detection and gunplay (which generally feel pretty identical to the Masked Forces games). It however also feels worse than in Rebel Forces, because it lacks the speed and jump modifications and because the maps fit less to the style of the Doom mode.

There are 4 smaller maps in total and all modes can be played with Bots instead of real players as well. The Bot players however aren't the smartest and barely move around. Alternatively Aliens can also be added to every game mode (including BR), they move around faster than the Bot players, but can only attack in close combat and are also not particularly skilled. Battle Royale can only be played in Solos and allows up to 20 players (like all the other modes except for Survival).

From the maps, I probably had the most fun for the Doom mode in Erus, which is the smallest map, but it offered the best use of verticality and allowed through its smaller size fast paced combat duels (Erus is a smaller Scifi outpost, that connects multiple smaller towers through a large bridge). Best for BR was probably Bunker, because it was the largest map. The middle part of the map however did feel a bit too empty (Bunker is a more extensive crater station, which looked like it could have been from Tatooine). Krao on the other hand felt like something in the middle. A dense space station, but still a significantly larger map than Erus. Krao probably suits DM and TDM modes the best. Zion is large cave map, but it looks pretty boring and there isn't really anything in this cave. I therefore definitely liked Zion the least.

 

Result:

At least Galactic Force is one of the cheaper Freeze Nova games on Steam (79 cents), but there is on the other hand no real point of investing that either, if you consider the growing amount of well done free Sci-Fi Shooters. There is also a free Browser version of the game, but its performance is rather hit or miss and I often experienced similar problems to the Masked Forces 3 Browser version. Galactic Force is probably better than some of the most flawed games in the BR genre, but it also doesn't have much to attract players or keep their attention for more than a few minutes. I did however enjoy the Doom mode and BR in Galactic Force more than in Masked Forces 3 (probably because of the Sci-Fi scenario), but less than in Rebel Forces. I would therefore rate it somewhere in between.

 

4/10

Code2040 (PC) Review

 

Code2040 is a relatively new Battle Royale game, that dropped early February onto Steam. It had a couple of unique mechanics, which helped make it stand out of the crowd of BR games.

Code2040 has a Scifi scenario and all players are prison inmates, who have to work on a foreign planet and extract some resources. The inmate status is being used in an interesting way in this game. All players have an explosive collar around their necks and if they fail to authenticate regularly (all 12 minutes) at an authentification center, then they will be blown up. Code2040 maybe a Battle Royale game, but it isn't enough to just eliminate all opponents, the players also need to launch a ship to escape from the planet in order to win the match. This element actually reminded me of the earlier version of 'The Cycle' or 'Scavengers'. Code2040 also has PVE elements in the form of Ghost creatures, that will randomly attack players during the match, and a God like creature, which evokes earthquakes (it however is a bit pointless...). I personally really liked these PVE elements within the BR matches and think they were implemented well, but I can understand that some players might experience them as a bit too much.

Players could also choose from a couple of gadgets before every match, that helped to customize playstyles. A Soma Ball for example could be thrown as a Recon scanner, while heal grenades could aid an entire team of players and a shield gadget could temporarily enable an invincibility effect. 

Apart from the standard Battle Royale mode (which was only available for Trios) there was multiple times a 12v12 Team Deathmatch mode (called Code2042) enabled. This mode could have been a nice addition, but unfortunately I never found enough players to start a match. Additionally the developers also created a new tutorial mode (2036 Exercise Yard), that released a few months in the games lifetime, to try out weapons.

Gunplay and movement feel fluent and precise in Code2040. It may not be the next PUBG, but the gameplay is more than just decent and I do see some comparisons with this game. Gameplay overall is just pretty enjoyable and honestly also felt rather polished. The UI was very clean and well-arranged. I appreciated the various different attachments for weapons and the amount of usable items (like grenades, adrenalin stims or health packs). All weapons also offered first and third person views, which was appreciated as well.

I can honestly state, that I liked the Battle Royale map in CODE2040 pretty much. Due to a small playerbase (more to that later on), it always felt pretty large, but I would take a big map over a tiny one any day. The grasslands were really beautiful and the cities were great places to loot and actually felt like places, where people would live (which not many BR games can claim). Apart from some POI locations, there were also authentification stations located around the map (which served as something like probation offices).

The visuals of Code2040 were actually rather beautiful, like you would wish for every 2021 videogame to have, but the visual beauty came with a price. The game was also very hardware demanding and even with good equipment you could encounter some stuttering especially during the beginning of the matches. Perhaps the performance optimization could have been improved.

Sound is another area, where CODE2040 simply did a good job. The soundtrack in the menus fitted the game well and sound effects like gunshots, the emps or footsteps were precise, clear and sounded like they were supposed to.

The first two weeks the game may had a pretty decent population of 300-400 players (which is also not that high, if you really want to hit the ground running), but since than the amount of players has been dropping lower and lower every week. A big problem with the shrinking player numbers was, that CODE2040 for a long time required a minimum of 18 players to start a match, which was later reduced to 12. This may not sound like much, but can really hurt the game in the longrun. Once there are timeframes, where there are not enough players to immediately get going, the others will lose patience in the queue and start a snowball effect, which will ultimately lead to the games demise.

On prime time matches actually got going for a long time, but even than it usually took a couple of minutes and many people lost patience during the queue. In low times on the other hand, there weren't even enough players online to get a match going in any of the three server regions (EU, US and Asia). The minimum player requirement became a serious problem, if you wanted to play outside of the prime time... Even before that, the game had a problem that it would instantly start the match as soon as 18/12 players were queuing in, which made it very difficult to ever experience a full lobby (Even with a 200 concurrent player count I never got more than 20-30 players in a match). In the first 1-2 weeks of the game's life, people were apparently really getting full lobbies, but that never happened again. The matchmaking system definitely needed to be improved (at least it always showed you how many players were searching). Splitting the queue into 3 different regions obviously didn't help a dwindling playerbase either, but they did implement an auto-queue function, that automatically lead players to the server regions with the most players (which nearly always was south-east Asia, which in turn didn't help European and American players pings). Maybe adding Bots would have been a solution, but they should have also obviously focused on promoting the game more.

Code2040 would indeed really have deserved a much bigger and better marketing campaign, since the gameplay was actually pretty strong, but you barely heard about the game anywhere. The developers didn't seem to have put out any adds or invested in Youtubers or Streamers to market their game. I am also not the biggest fan of Streamers promoting products, but you have to find a way to let people know about your game (I only accidentally discovered the game by browsing the Steam search for new games). The twitter page of the game hasn't been updated in over a year (!) and their Youtube-Channel is hidden under their company names with all videos only having Taiwanese (at least i assume it is that) subtitles and descriptions. I really have to say, the developers did an absolutely awful job at marketing the game (and they did receive a couple of offers of help from the community, which all have been ignored).

The lack of players also quickly lead to massive skill gap problem, where a lot of players already knew each other and some Squads and Players just kept winning, while the new players quickly gave up or never even found a lobby to begin with.

Since CODE2040 is a F2P game, it was also selling Skins and Battle Passes within the game to finance itself. Some cosmetics could obviously also be unlocked for free, but not very many. It is furthermore interesting since CODE2040 kind of offered two different Battle Pass versions. There is the regular Battle Pass for Season 1 and Season 2 as well as Character Level Pass (this pass unlocks additional cosmetics rewards). You needed to unlock both with the real money currency and there is no way of gaining them through just playing the game. The problem with the system is, that there often weren't enough players to even get a match going and nonetheless the devs focused on releasing this cosmetic content instead of fixing their game first.

I also experienced some technical issues in the last months of the game, which gave me a black screen at the beginning of a match or through me out of the match completely. These issues only started to pop up towards the end of the game and obviously didn't get fixed anymore.

Edit: Meanwhile the official servers for Code2040 have been shutdown, while I was writing this review (official shutdown on 10.11.2021). The last 3 months after the cancellation announcement there were never enough players online to start a match (with the exception of the last day), which is a really sad end for this overlooked game. A lot of this could have been avoided, if the devs reacted quicker or started to actually listen to their players.

 

Pro:

- Smooth Gunplay and movement

- Cool Scifi-Scenario

- New gameplay elements implemented well (authentication collars, shadow creatures, escape ship, individual gadgets)

- Great BR map

- Beautiful visuals

- Fitting soundtrack and sound effects

 

Contra:

- Small playerbase/ Long queue times (Awful marketing of the game)

- Hardware demanding game

- Skill gap?

- Too much focus on skins instead of marketing/patching

 

Result:

The story of Code2040 is a nearly tragic tale. The gameplay was smooth, the Scifi scenario well captured and the visuals didn't disappoint. I also really liked the authentication collars and the need to escape with a space ship from the map. The lack of support and low playerbase however quickly lead to a deadly downward spiral the game never managed to escape. Most players, who did play Code2040, liked it, but many more disliked the game, for not even being able to experience it. At this point all hope was already lost. It saddens me to see that a game like Code2040 dies so fast, but many trashy mobile BRs manage to survive for years. This game had potential, but never received the support it deserved.

 

6.5/10

Magic Legends (PC) Review

 

Magic Legends was an ARPG by the well known MMORPG developer Cryptic Studios (Neverwinter, Star Trek Online, City of Heroes). The game tried to utilize the famous Magic the Gathering IP into an RPG Setting. Financially however the game seemed to have failed, since Magic Legends never left the Open Beta Stage and Server Closure was announced after only around 3 Months (Release: 23.3.2021; Cancel Decision: 29.6.2021; Server Shutdown: 31.10.2021). There was also a console version in the planning, but those plans never got realized.

One of the biggest mistakes was advertising the game as a MMORPG (which the devs initially did). I was actually pretty hyped by that announcement and expected something like a new Neverwinter in the Magic the Gathering universe, which would have been pretty cool. The game was however never intended to be something like this (Third Person RPG). Magic Legends was always planned as an ARPG in the Style of games like Diablo or Baldurs Gate. I was really disappointed by that customer deception and ignored the game therefore for a long time. An ARPG could still theoretically have an MMO core, but Magic Legends was limited to 3 Players in Dungeons or World Levels, which was everything but Massive Multiplayer. A lot more players could appear in the HUB areas, but that isn't enough to classify Magic Legends as an MMORPG (the MMO tag was probably attached to the game due to the always online requirement of the servers).

The gameplay of Magic Legends was indeed for the most part pretty similar to other Action RPGs. You play your planeswalker in an isometric perspective and will mostly engage in a hack'n slay playstyle. The special elements of Magic Legends however are the strong focus on Magic Spells and its Card System. Players have to choose one of five classes at the beginning of the game, which symbolize a Mana sort (manner of magic). There are white (plains; Angels and white energy focus), black (swamp; Necromancy focus), red (mountains; Fire focus), blue (island; Aqua focus) and green (forest; Nature focus).

Abilities in Magic Legends are represented by cards and players have to collect them in decks, that they can use in combat. Players can only use one of 4 cards, that are randomly chosen for them. Once they use one of their abilities, it is being replaced by another card from the deck. I personally found this to be a pretty cool feature, but a lot of veteran players disliked it, because it was making it very difficult to use combinations and often resulted in just spamming what ever cards where next chosen (a valid point of criticism).

Players would start with only cards from their chosen Mana class, but could later on also collect cards from all other Mana sorts. The whole world of Magic Legends was divided into 5 different areas, which all represented one of these 5 Mana sorts. Throughout the story players would progress through all of the regions unlocking new potential abilities for their decks. I do like this idea of separating the world into different Mana regions, but have to agree with the critics that this could have been way better handled than Magic Legends did. The environments partly reflected their representative Mana sort (like lava or jungle elements in the background), but often also looked rather generic. This was definitely some wasted potential to utilize the Magic IP more efficiently.

The story was also another disappointment. For a game with strong online component, the story was rather short, but still felt pretty stretched. What was actually happening wasn't much in the scale of a RPG, but it got way too much extended by notorious fetch quests that didn't add anything except waste time. With a better pacing the whole game could have probably been beaten in around 20 hours. The quality of the writing was therefore also not the best. Voice Acting was unfortunately pretty underwhelming either, which is pretty surprising. Magic Veterans further told me, that they felt, that important Magic the Gathering characters made an appearance in this game, but weren't well written and didn't match their backgrounds from the card game. I did see some potential, but overall story and quests were generic and lackluster.

Apart from the Story players could theoretically also engage in PVP via Arena Duels between players, but those weren't very popular and the focus of Magic Legends was certainly on the PVE area.

Other big problems of the game were grinding and Over-Monetization. Some cards could only be unlocked and improved via the ingame shop (levelling up the card, which makes it better). Players could either grind special missions, which however where limited to a small amount per day, or pay with real money to get them faster. Dungeons were also limited to 2 or 3 runs per day, which for most players felt way too restrictive. The game actively encouraged players to grind old missions, but at the same time restricted players from doing so. Many found this to be pretty off-putting.

The Cash-Shop on the other hand was very extensive. There were many XP-Boosters and Spells sold there, plus cosmetic items and even a Battle Pass. Some of these were also hidden behind lootboxes (who doesn't love those...?). There was for example a hidden sixth class of the Dimir Assassin, which was hidden behind these lootboxes. Alternatively players could also grind for months or pay triple digits to unlock the class directly in the shop (later on the Dimir Assassin was moved to the BP, but the problems of the cash shop persisted). This was certainly an awful system, that especially in a game with an Open Beta status felt to many players like a big middle finger from the devs (I didn't even mention that you could also buy character renaming options and additional deck slots for money as well). At least you can give the devs a bit of credit for giving all players a full refund, who invested money into the game. This also shows you how bad the situation must have been, if they were ready to write off all kind of profits and the development of the game was certainly not cheap.

Unfortunately we're still not done with the many flaws of Magic Legends. Movement on Keyboard didn't feel very precise, since the game seemed to only be using 8 directions to walk. With a gamepad movement felt much better and that is probably what they had in mind while developing the game. A bit more irritating was the overusage of effects. In a lot of battles the effects were so overwhelming that it gotten difficult to identify, what was actually happening on screen. The developers should have definitely optimized the effects better, so that players could clearly point out, which attacks or movements caused which reaction. A minor inconvenience was the exclusivity to the Epic Games store, which probably kept many players from experiencing or even hearing about the game (A future Steam and Console release could have really given the game a second chance for life).

The two other massive problems of the game were Glitches and Performance. Performance has been improved with patches (it supposedly was really awful and unoptimized at the release), but was still far from good. Lags and performance problems out of nowhere (and admittedly also when there are too many effects on screen) were still common occurrences till the very end. Releasing a game in an unoptimized state seems to become more and more normal, but I still find it irritating. Magic Legends also had automatic downloads during all loading screens on, which was atrocious. This could be deactivated in the options through downloading the entire client. It is however deeply annoying, that this wasn't done per default.

Glitches are what negatively influenced my experience the most. The devs really tried to fix most of them, but I still experienced game breaking glitches in the last days of the game. I encountered glitches were enemies simply became invincible, making it impossible to progress and other glitches were quest relevant NPCs never appeared, making them impossible to complete too. I also sometimes encountered enemies, which didn't put up a fight and just stood there taking hits without any reaction. The last one may only be annoying and immersive breaking, but the former ones really ruined my experience. I was really trying to enjoy the game and I still see a lot of good Magic Legends, but something like this is ultra off-putting, especially if it occurs multiple times. Visuals Glitches, which the game also obviously had plenty off, were only minor irritations in comparison.

 

Pro:

+ Card System for Abilities

+ Deck building throughout the game

+ One Region for each Mana sort

+ Simple, but effective gameplay

+ Complete refund for all players

 

Contra:

- Story was stretched and Quests are rather dull

(- Some Bad Voice Acting)

(- Mana Sorts could have been better utilized in the different regions)

- Incentive to Grind, but daily Grind Restrictions

- Invasive and extensive Cash-Shop

- Overusage of visual Effects (Chaotic)

- Unoptimized performance (lags and framedrops)

- Too many game breaking Glitches

 

Result:

For me Magic Legends was a disappointment from the start, since I expected an MMORPG, like it was advertised. Nonetheless, Magic Legends still had a lot of potential as an ARPG and I really like the card system for abilities and the whole deck building aspect. A dull story, grindy experience, bad performance, annoying cash shop and game breaking glitches however are very hard to overlook. I still found enjoyment in Magic Legends, but the game was unfortunately not more than mediocre. The flaws are many, but I still believe the positive impressions of the game felt slightly more impactful than its many problems. I am still a bit sad about its demise, but Magic Legends was overall certainly a disappointment for the developers and most players alike.

 

5.5/10