Game Review - Terminull Brigade

 

Game Review: Terminull Brigade by Pew Pew Games / Level Infinite

Score: FAIL

"Terminull Brigade is an action-roguelike co-op hero shooter set in futuristic digital worlds. Dive Into The Nullverse, Master Your Rogueteers to make the last stand against unfolding shadow algorithms. Choose your Rogueteer, unite in the virtual realm, and participate in the rebellion to free enslaved digital worlds. Your destinies are coded in ones and zeroes. Launch the Terminull and free the Nullverse."

Terminull Brigade launched July 30th on the Epic Games Store and it wouldn't even let me log in.

It's a couple of weeks later and I check it out again, obviously starting from zero.

If you look at the screenshot (taken on a Saturday afternoon PST time), it shows the reasons why it's almost pointless to start now or start late.

• It's basically forced co-op. After enough time as passed trying to matchmake, you can choose to enter solo, but it doesn't appear scaled for your smaller party size.
• Early levels can be passed solo, but this is really not a sustainable model before you're stuck.
• It's just over two weeks and the keen players are already miles ahead. There's basically no reason for them to backtrack to help anyone, which is why queues for newer players will be hard to fill.
• You must finish levels with certain qualifications in order to unlock the next level.
• This is theoretically fine as it forces players to be adequately prepared. But it also means everyone is constantly at the highest allowed level to get the best rewards and develop their characters.
• I suspect at some point, players who rushed and possibly got carried will end up underprepared and under-skilled, and continue to get carried. Encouraging players to rush to the latest content invariably has consequences.
• If you're new you could try to join a new server and have an equal footing start with everyone, but if you're not dedicated, you're just going to be left behind anyway.

These are core mechanics problems which plagued SYNCED, where players had to push ahead to catch up with the server but there was no incentive to actually help them. So they queued for content they weren't really prepared for and got carried or just held back everyone else.

I understand that urgency drives sales, and encouraging players to keep up monopolizes their attention. But with so many games out there, the ones that waste your time (e.g., waiting unreasonably long to realize you won't get a match at the time you want to play the game) will be abandoned in favor of something you can pick up and play NOW when you are able to play with the precious time you have.

More and more, I am in favor of this motto: "Play the game, don't let the game play you."

And waiting around for a timer to expire so you can enter solo and be overwhelmed in a game no longer fun is letting the game play you.

Games like First Descendent had a much better setup where all content was relevant in some way because they distributed the various crafting materials so that all content was useful to do. It had other issues like getting inadvertently carried by players with highly developed characters, to the point where you could barely do anything, but that was an issue with skill design, not making content relevant and therefore making match fills viable throughout the lifetime of the game.

This is really too bad because the gameplay in Terminull Brigade is quite fun - fast and straightforward (unlike First Descendent) without platforming and puzzles to stop you from progressing when you're here to shoot baddies and get loot.