izigame.me

Game is fun but definitely could use some more time cooking.
In this game, your gear is pretty simple. You have your Crisis Kit (which is this game's class system), your gun and grenade slot (which is not tied to your class), and your perk slots. The Crisis Kits come in three flavors, Fix Kit (you get a wrench), Jump Kit (you get an electric pusher tool thingy), and Splash Kit (you get a water cannon)
Weapon and kit progression (outside of perks) are tied to a free battle pass with cosmetics, meanwhile there is a separate premium battlepass just for cosmetics and sprays.
The gameplay loop is like Left 4 Dead, you run through the map, shoot hordes, and do the objectives. Occasionally the game will throw some elite mobs at you. There are Safe Houses scattered around the map that let you resupply, find currency (for unlocking battlepass/perks), and maybe a really strong gun that's temporary for that mission until you run out of ammo. Around the map will be resupply stations to replenish your ammo, and showers that can heal you and your teammate. There will be map hazards or broken down objects that can be solved (quickly) by one of the three Crisis Kits, like fires that can be put out by the Splash Kit, broken power supplies that can be fixed by the Fix Kit, or unpowered electrical equipment that can be charged by the Jump Kit. These things can be handled without the Crisis Kits but it will take much longer.
The cosmetics themselves are nice if you enjoy the firefighter theme with a Remedy twist. From an art standpoint, it's fantastic if you like the Remedyverse, and especially if you want to revisit the oldest house.
Objectives can be confusing to grasp, especially since there's no text or voice chat to communicate with teammates. Weapon/kit feedback is a bit lacking, (hard to tell jump kits charge state sometimes), and guns could use that extra oomph.
For the kits, it will be a bit confusing for new players to understand at first, especially if you're allergic to reading, but even then their descriptions don't paint the whole picture.
Take the Splash Kit for example. It's basically a water gun. What does water do in this game? The showers dotted around the map heal you, but the Splash Kit doesn't. In this game there is an element system, stay in water for too long and a gauge will fill, indicating how wet your are, the same idea goes for heat and electricity. The water gun allows you and your teammates to be "wet" so that heat hazards build up slower, and won't damage you as much. It can also be used to put out teammates that are on fire. It can ALSO be used to wet enemies, allowing someone with the Jump Kit to shock them, causing the electricity to spread between hordes of wet enemy and stun them.
Progression is simple.
You start with a free battlepass that has weapon/kit upgrades, and cosmetics/sprays. There's also a perk system separate from the battle pass. They share the same currency to unlock things, but perks can be upgraded with a couple of different currencies you earn through playing the game. These currencies you can pick up from several areas around the map or the final boss of the mission. There's also a separate battlepass on launch that only has cosmetics.
There's 5 missions, each separated into 3 parts. Initially you can only play the first part of the mission.
You unlock each part by replaying them. So the first part may take 5-10 minutes to complete, and then that allows you to play the mission again with the 1st and 2nd part, which will take a bit longer. Then finally, after that you can play the full mission length.
There's difficulty modifiers and "corruption" modifiers to tune how challenging you want to play.
So in the end, you will have control of how much time and how difficult you want to experience your sessions.
We can compare this structure to Left 4 Dead 2, which released with 6 campaigns on launch, and a difficulty slider. As of this review I have not played through the full length of all the missions yet nor at max difficulty + corruption modifiers to see how much they change up.
Final thoughts on this game, it definitely has some things it needs to iron out. Player onboarding can still be improved, and there are noticeable visual/sound bugs that can make it difficult to understand what's happening in the game. The lack of communication tools only adds on top of this. The tutorial messages in the main menu are busted if you're playing on an ultrawide resolution like 3440x1440. I'd also like to see some gameplay features added, like being able to swap my kit BEFORE I spawn into a mission when matchmaking. Ok you can swap on the elevator with K but they should just have the menu pop up before spawning.
In terms of monetization, it seems to be almost parallel with how Helldivers 2 handles theirs, but the difference is that there will always be a free gameplay battlepass, and a paid cosmetic battlepass released in future content updates.
tldr, i think the base gameplay is good. the monetization is fair, art is good.
just has some kinks to iron out with player onboarding, there should be a proper tutorial. the missions are fun to play through, could use more but that's coming down the line later this year.