Civil Warfare - Another Bullet in the war (PC) Review

 

After watching the trailer of Civil Warfare I was looking forward to the game, after seeing the gameplay I wasn't anymore. Civil Warfare is a third person BR game, that was clearly inspired by games like H1Z1 or PUBG. The visuals of the game are in general pretty average, maybe even slightly lower than that. What players are immediately going to recognize is the weird walking animation. I don't understand how developers can release a game, where the standard walking animation doesn't look like that of a human being (If you carry a weapon, it looks slightly better). It is just irritating and unfortunately quite symbolic of the average impression of Civil Warfare. Movement doesn't only look weird, but is also a bit too clumsy and less precise than one would wish for.

Gunplay is another problematic area. Not only is the TTK way too high (I saw some players taking 5-6 head shots and other taking 50-60 body shots before they died... This is ridiculous!), but the gunplay in general feels very impactless and boring. Players take so many shots and you just see blood dripping out of them in fountains without any reaction. Gunshots are more precise than the movement, but still feel bad. Spraying seems to be the only viable option.

What I did like about the game was the idea of an island map and that they later on implemented Bots. Regrettably the devs also didn't do an amazing job in these areas either. The map theme was cool, but the map was lacking exciting elements. The POIs were practically all just small towns, that looked pretty much the same and in between these POIs was mostly empty space. The map was already not that large, so that it would have become crowded at the beginning of each map, if the game would have ever got full lobbies (which it never did, even though the player maximum is just 40).

Implementing Bots gave the game at least a chance to survive, but unfortunately these Bots are pretty terrible. Most of the time the Bots will somehow kill each other very fast, but rarely attack any players. Some of them for example just walk towards human players without doing anything except to stare at them (which honestly is pretty creepy). Often players also didn't meet any of them, before they all killed each other or died to the zone. Another good idea, but bad execution.

Civil warfare also had some vehicles (which wasted an entire fuel tank in around a minute) and apart from Solo and Squad BR matches additional DM and TDM modes. At least that offered a bit of variety, but also nothing really worth talking about.

 

Result:

I really wanted to like this game after watching the trailer, but I just can't. The price nowadays is really low (75 Cents), but there are no players left and I can understand them. The map design is generally not bad, but unfinished and way too bland. Gunplay and movement are under average and the variety of modes doesn't really matter, if your gameplay isn't that enjoyable.

 

3.5/10

Crayta (PC) Review

 

Crayta was a game creation platform, similar to games like Core and Roblox. Crayta shared, especially with Core, many similarities and you will see me comparing them a couple of times. I was initially quite surprised, that a game like Roblox happened to be massively successful, while Core or Crayta have become pretty much unknown. Than I found out, that Crayta released as a Google Stadia Exclusive Game in 2020 and it cost 35 Euro/40 Dollars at release... That explains everything. Crayta later on also released on the Epic Games Store and Facebook Gaming (does that even still exist?) and made the switch to a free-to-play model. At this point however it was probably too late for a good first impression and the game never managed to leave the space of anonymity. On the 3th of March 2023 the game finally shutdown its servers on all platforms.

Since I have always been more interested in playing and reviewing games, than creating them, I can't give the most sophisticated verdict on the quality of the gamecreation elements in Crayta. I can however point out, that there was a good amount of templates and predesigned elements, which made the creation for development noobs like me a lot easier. A standout feature of Crayta was also, that two players could simultaneously and cooperatively design a game together. That was a very cool feature (if you could find a second player).

Since Crayta was a game creation platform, you could find games of all kinds of genres and types in it. There were plenty of Racing, Platforming, Shooter, Puzzle, Sport, Horror games and so on. I even managed to find some Unreal Tournament and Call of Duty Zombies clones. Like with all game creation platforms, the overwhelming majority of these games were rather small and not comparable with the quality of real games. Crayta was therefore more of a minigame simulator. A big part of the enjoyment of the game was consequently depended on the involvement of other players, preferably friends. That being said I did enjoy the games, I found in Crayta, a bit less than the best games in other platforms like Core, Roblox etc.

Some other aspects I liked a lot less in Crayta, in comparison to other games, were the camera perspective, the performance and loading times. Most games in Crayta used the default third person perspective from the Hub area of the game and this one wasn't great. It was not entirely focused behind the character and instead positioned a bit sideways of him, which made the controls and overview in a lot of games more sluggish than it needed to be. Despite changing various settings the framerate also generally seemed more unstable than in Core and Roblox. Not a gigantic deal, but it was a bit annoying. Since the visual engine didn't really look any better (probably even slightly worse) I would assume it is based on lacking optimization. Loading times were also comparatively longer in Crayta, which might also be linked to the optimization. Some of these aspects might be influenced by the hardware of the users, but watching videos of other players on YT seemed to confirm my impressions.

I do want to give a bit of praise to the Live Service component of the game. Not only did the developers regularly upload guides and tutorials to help users learn how to create games, but Crayta also featured a good Season/Battle Pass system. Every couple of months there was a new season with themes like Halloween, Wizards, Scifi, Summer Party or Tabletop games. Not only did they all feature Battle Passes, which were granted for free to all users, but they also changed up the Hub area to fit the theme of the season and also released new season fitting templates for the game creation.

 

Pro:

- Cooperative Game Creation

- Variety of Games

- Relatively strong Live Service component

 

Contra:

- Disastrous launch price and accessibility

- Bad camera perspective in third person

- Weaker performance and loading times

 

Result:

Crayta was a fun game, but lacked a good reason to exist. Other titles did the same in at least the same quality and Crayta scarred away all potential interest with its disastrous launch. There was nothing totally wrong with the game, but it was overall not strong enough to keep up with the competition and this in combination with the unforced errors ultimately lead to its demise. It is only a shame for the Cooperative Game Creation element, which was the game's best part.

 

6.5/10