Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor

Probably the most polished survivor game but one of the worst in terms of gameplay if not the worst. Their idea of having a lot of content is basically locking everything behind an endless grind. After a few hours when the novelty wears off it becomes repetitive. There's no satisfaction in finishing a dive, it's just plain boring.

All the runs feel pretty much the same. Once you've played a couple times you don't really see much more. I really tried giving it a chance and seeing if things changed once you leveled up your character more, but it just never hooked me. Most of the upgrades are boring incremental (+3% damage) changes instead of interesting decisions between unique choices. It feels like you make a decision when you pick which weapon to take, and then the next 15 minutes are just running in the same circles over and over again getting the obvious upgrades for your weapon. I borderline don't recommend the game, there's something under the cruft that _could_ be good, but it's not there as of yet.

precis: I think it's a great game, but it has a paratext problem. (By paratext, I mean stuff outside of the game about the game or which references the game. Guides, walkthroughs, suggested builds. Also community chatter more generally) I very much have enjoyed DRG:S, however I can't recommend it 'as is,' and so I must recommend against it. As it stands, the game relies far too heavily on paratextual resources for it to be a friendly experience out of the box to newcomers; if downloaded before going offline for an indeterminate amount of time, chances are good a beginner would get stuck. The feedback to skill and knowledge gaps comes from the community, but those skills and data aren't really present anywhere public-facing. Discord is not public-facing. Even if it were, that so much is hidden beyond, e.g. 'the bonk,' yet absolutely nowhere in the game is it discussed, is not acceptable. To be sure, the many community members who are generous with their knowledge, suggestions, and demos are welcome to post wherever they please; I found some great community-supplied resources in the discord. My problem is that discord is THE place. The forums are kept up to date with announcements from the discord by volunteers, which again, generous, but not acceptable behavior on behalf of the developers. Such a long time in early access, and discord as the only (current) meaningful place for developer engagement, causes me to wonder if the game sort of stopped being developed for the public and started being developed for the community. So much information is filled in by community members that it I believe Funday have begun taking their role for granted. Here's a quotation from the discord, just short of a year ago: [i]"We have for a long time discussed having a codex in the game which could double not just as a bestiary but as a way to explain mechanics (like the miner's manual in DRG), it just hasn't been very high priority among all the other things we wanted to do. No promises but we are aware of the need/interest."[/i] If you still do not understand my perspective, please, do me a favor and go into the game, tell me how a player can identify what weapons any particular class can use. Don't use any of your own memory, steam guides, or anything outside the game. Where can they identify all (and I mean a known complete list) overclocks and to which weapons they apply? They can't. That's the problem I have in a nutshell. If, at this point, you're wondering if I have any problems with the gameplay itself (once you have access to sufficient background information), I don't! Personally I wish there was more space to get that "feeling invincible" at the end of a run, but that's not really the direction this game went, which is fine. Graphics are nice. I found the character chatter annoying and turned it off, but unfortunately this means I miss some audio cues for which there is no visual replacement (esp. 'hoarder down'). The vomit sounds from the rollypolly elites are far too nauseating, and I really don't care for the human-sounding scream the hoarders make, so I have to mute all audio. If you are willing to tolerate the numerous external resources, or don't care because you want more DRG content no matter what, go for it. Almost certainly you'll have a great time. But enough people have bounced off (and they have) the lack of information that you'll be in plentiful company should you find it frustrating.