Deep Rock Galactic (2020)

I love Deep Rock Galactic. It is simple, mindless and repetitive, but it has the ultimate gameplay loop that keeps me entertained for hours.

In the basics, you play as a grumpy dwarf that is sent on mining expeditions to collect resources, both for the mission, and minerals to use yourself for upgrading and purchasing new gear. You select various missions, which play in dimly lighted, randomly generated caves and complete your mission, while collecting all kinds of minerals and items to bring back with you to the Space Station. Accompanying you is a “Mule”, which is a robot on legs in which you can store the mission items and collected minerals. Throughout each mission, many different minerals can be found and mined, including rare artifacts and upgrade materials. When playing alone, a drone named Bosco comes with you and can shoot enemies and mining minerals.

Speaking of enemies, throughout your expeditions, you are constantly hindered and attacked by the local wildlife called Glyphids. These are spider-like aliens that want nothing but your swift demise. There are many different Glyphids and other alien races that are present at each level and each one is as annoying as the last.

There are four classes to choose from: The Driller, which specializes in breaking through rubble and digging tunnels, the Scout, which can light large areas of the cave, the Engineer which can create platforms to reach high places, and the Gunner which obliterates Glyphids in rapid succession. Each class has its unique play style, weapons and tools and, when combined with other players, real teamwork can be achieved. This class design is one of the best aspects of the game. For example, your Engineer places a platform high on the rock and your Scout reaches it with his Grappling Hook and mines the minerals.

Each mission earns you rewards like credits, mined minerals and experience. When completing certain tasks, you also earn skill points that you can use to improve your character. When reaching level 20, a special mission can be played to promote your character, resetting it to level 1, while keeping your upgrades and skills. Do this three times and your dwarf has become the best of the best. After 15 levels, a statue will be placed in the Memorial Hall in honor of you.

When returning from a mission, you arrive at the Space Station, your hub of operations. Here, you can switch your class, modify your dwarf with a million different cosmetic items, play dumb video games, drink beer, shake your booty on the dance floor and spend your minerals upgrade your weapons and gear, or purchase new items. The amount of stuff to do at the Space Station alone is mind blowing.

There are about eleven different types of missions that you can choose from. From simple mining missions to Egg hunts, Dreadnought extermination and Liquid Morkite refinery. Although this could get a little repetitive over time, the constant switching between these mission types, the randomly generated caves and the slightly different secondary objective make the experience unique enough each time.

I really like the graphical style of this game. It is cell shading polygon and not meant to be mind blowing, but it still looks pretty nice. The animations are fluent, the controls just work and the soundtracks are fantastic.

I like the constant grumpy commentary of the dwarves when they are calling the Mule to their location, when you shoot your teammate by accident or when you arrive at your mission at the beginning. You can hear immediately that this game does not take itself seriously.

Later in the game, you unlock Deep Dives and the Forge. Deep Dives are just three missions crammed together in one large mission, while giving you a ton of XP and resources upon completing them. If you are looking for a real challenge, there are also Elite Deep Dives. The Forge can be used to crafts cosmetic item sets or “overclocks” that can give your weapons the little boost they need to become unstoppable.

On top of the many, many things that you can do in Deep Rock Galactic, the added seasons and specials events make it even more fun. When Christmas arrives, you can play special Christmas themed assignments to earn unique cosmetics and a ton of resources. You also got the seasonal Terminal, in which you can earn special tokens to unlock new weapon skins and minerals.

In harder missions, on higher difficulty levels, hazards are introduced in each level and some of them are God awful, like the Low Blood sugar for example in which you take damage every second and need to kill enemies to collect their healing crystals.

Another small complaint with this game is the “High Ground” glitch. Enemies can attack and hurt you when you are above them because of some Clipping, making them stop underneath a platform or ledge, while going full Rambo on you. Meanwhile, you cannot do anything about it.

But in the end, I can only praise this game. It got a sh!tton of stuff to do, unlock, collect and experience and keeps you entertained forever because of the seasons, events and new content.

Definitely recommend this game!

This game follows in the same vein as Vermintide and Killing Floor where it's about doing runs, level up and get gear while just murdering enemies, preferably with friends. Though this one adds very specific mining-related quests, which makes it quite different from Vermintide and Killing Floor.

You can play this game solo or with randoms on the internet. But this game really shines when played with a group over voice chat. There are a lot of goofy stuff you can do in this game beyond the core loop of "do mission, level up, get cosmetics".

Deep Rock Galactic is a great game for when you want some mostly braindead fun and yell over the voice chat, maybe with a drink.

There's a variety of weapons between the 4 different roles that you can unlock and try out. There's also a lot of cosmetics to unlock throughout the game to make your dwarf look as glorious as it can be.

Before missions you have the choice of getting a drink with your buddies and dance a bit. Between every mission there's a "drink of the day" that gives you various effects for going into the next mission.

TLDR: Solid game that knows what it wants to be. Perfect for goofing off with friends, and shoot aliens.

Intro

I'm going to start this review with a bold statement: Deep Rock Galactic is one of the best games ever made. Period. It does what it sets out to do SO well it has two grown men in their 30s feeling like bright-eyed children again, emotionally shouting at each other "this game is so good!" multiple times every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday night in giddy delight.

It can perhaps best be (though nowhere near adequately) described as a mashup of three different games. Take the four-person co-op survival/extraction gameplay of a Payday 2 or Left 4 Dead, the mining and terrain destruction of Minecraft, and the different classes as well as live service aspects of Destiny 2 which include seasons of content which last about six months and revolve around a battle pass system.

That description does zero justice to the ways in which the small team at Ghost Ship Games run game design circles around the games that influenced them. This is perhaps the most balanced game I've ever played, and it is also perhaps the most fun game I've ever played. Those two rather ambiguous concepts "balance" and "fun" seem to be the guiding lights that every design decision must serve.

Balance and Class Differences

Let's talk about balance for a second, at the root of which sits the game's four classes, which are much more distinct from each other than you might be used to from playing things like Destiny 2 (Payday 2 as I understand has skill trees you can freely invest in, and doesn't lock you into a class perse).

Gunner

The class to play if you just want to shoot things. Primary weapons include a minigun, a heavy autocannon, and guided missiles. Likely the first dwarf to kill things and the last to run out of ammo. Support tool is a bubble shield. Traversal tool is a zipline launcher which has very limited uses but places permanent ziplines the entire team can use to (slowly) traverse chasms or get up to high places.

Scout

The class to play if you loved the grappling hook in Doom Eternal. A good scout has three jobs, none of which involve fighting. As a scout, killing bugs is a bonus, and you'll find yourself quickly overwhelmed and running out of ammo if you try to stand and deliver for every fight.

The first job of a good scout is to use his flare gun to light up the caves for his team. It's the most powerful light source in the game, orders of magnitude more effective than the hand thrown flares every class gets by default. The second is to use his grappling hook to quickly and easily collect the secondary objective item as well as mine high up minerals the rest of the team has no hope of reaching, the most important of which is nitra, which is what you need to order ammo resupply pods. Keep the caves bright and your team flush with nitra and people will think you're an amazing scout player.

Engineer

The true support class, Engineer excels in just MAKING THINGS HAPPEN, locking down areas with his turrets, deleting high-priority targets with some of the most powerful heavy weapons in the game, and using his platform gun to create bridges or stairs for teammates or funnel bugs through chokepoints. Usually the first to run out of ammo and beg for a resupply.

Driller

The driller has two primary strengths, clearing crowds and clearing terrain. All three of driller's primary weapons decimate hordes of weak enemies by bathing them in fire, frost, or acidic sludge. His hand drills and satchel charges allow him to dig tunnels straight to objectives or create underground bunkers to huddle in. The first time a driller digs you a tunnel STRAIGHT back to the drop pod, ignoring the entire cave, you'll forever love and appreciate all driller players.

How They Come Together

As you can see, there are multiple things to consider on every mission. There's what to do about large hordes of weak enemies, there's what to do about strong high-priority enemies, there's how to navigate the terrain, how to mine minerals, and how to complete primary and secondary objectives which may be out of reach or require modifying the terrain or may require you to stay put in a small area.

These various factors are part of what makes the game so mechanically deep and allows different classes, builds, and weapons to all feel viable because they're all good at SOMETHING. A scout may have TERRIBLE horde clearing capability, but they're essential for completing objectives and obtaining enough nitra for resupplies, and can be effectively built for eliminating high priority targets. Not to mention they're usually the last person alive and so make for great clutch medics and can save a whole team from wiping.

Engineers have terrible sustain (that is, they run out of ammo super fast) but they're great at locking down a particular area, creating choke points, and doing crazy amounts of burst damage to something that NEEDS TO GO AWAY NOW.

Driller gets the whole team from A to B quicker than any other class, as long as B isn't literally on the ceiling, and while he's not the class of choice for quickly getting rid of a major threat, large hordes are no problem and he has amazing sustain.

You get the picture. Every class brings something valuable to the table, and you have a variety of options within each class in terms of what you want to lean into. Are you an Engineer who always plays with your friend and your friend always plays driller? Spec fully into single target damage and let your driller friend deal with the hordes.

Fun at the Forefront

This game has made me realize how many, let's call them interactions, there are in games these days, even games I really like, which simply aren't fun and where fun seemingly wasn't considered by the developers. The absolute best example of this, if you'll allow me to whisk you back to 2006, is in Gears of War when the game forces you to slowly walk down a hallway with your finger to your ear as some NPC talks to you. Who thought this was fun? Nobody. We all simply put up with it because the part where you're actually shooting things was so good. This is an example of putting SOMETHING ELSE as a higher priority than fun. What that something is, I'm not sure. Story, I guess? Immersion? Cinematic feel? Whatever it is, it's not fun. If they had a fun first approach, they'd just talk to you over the comms while you're actually fighting enemies instead.

How many games make you carry something TOO slowly, or clamber up on a ledge TOO slowly, or wait WAY too long for your grenades to recharge (DESTINY 2 I'M LOOKING AT YOU), or just completely take away your run button for thirty seconds because something serious is happening and somber walking is appropriate for the situation. Games these days so often place something as higher priority than fun. Story, immersion, realism, etc. Can't have Kratos climb up on that ledge too quickly, it wouldn't look REAL enough, and THAT'S what's most important.

Deep Rock is the opposite of that. Every single way in which you interact with this game is fun. Everything FEELS good. Everything SOUNDS good. Every type of objective is fun. And if you think it's not, you're probably missing a mechanic. There are these missions where you have to dig big blue gems out of the ground and carry them back to a base and the carrying speed is SLOW. I said to my friend like, man, my only complaint about this game is I hate carrying stuff around. Turns out, you can just throw them! Something I was completely oblivious about for, oh, let's say 15 hours of playtime. And you can throw them pretty damn far. And they're clearly designed to BE thrown because they're huge, they glow, and they show up on the map after you mine them, so there's no possible way to lose them.

The only bad thing about this game is how bad it makes other games look in comparison, how starkly it reveals their self-centered motives. It's like if every date you ever went on was some dude taking you to the most expensive restaurant in town, talking about himself the whole time, and hoping he impressed you enough that you'll sleep with him. And you thought, hey, that's just what dating IS. Then Deep Rock comes along and genuinely wants to hear about your interests, wants to check if you're having a good time, and wants to give you the best orgasm of your life. It's a game entirely without an ego and it's only agenda is for YOU to have a great time.

ROCK AND STONE TO THE BONE!

I don't get it, same as valheim i just couldn't get into this game. I couldn't find anything fun about it.

My friend and I played for a few evenings and we regret putting as much time as we did.

It feels like work trying to get these minerals and then trying to get them out, and you may or may not be attacked, and if you get attacked is very tedious killing all these things. Nothing too exciting

So I'm currently 100 hours in game playing almost everyday like a cocaine addicted and I just can't stop, this game is really great not only for de low poly but charming design, not only for the great soundtrack and really fun missions.. this game is great because of the community, yeah I know absurd right? look in literally almost every online game that I passed through it was beautifully toxic, like magnificent noxious, sometimes I just asked myself why am I playing this?? usually the game is great but the community just make it harder.. But well this don't exist in deep rock galactic or at least not for now.

If you press "V" on your keyboard your Dwarf will shout ROCK AND STONE and that's the magic of the game, if you got revived by a teammate? shout Rock and Stone to thank your teammate, if some shit happened? Rock and Stone and keep it up, if you completed a mission, event, killed a Dreadnout just Rock and Stone. always cheers your drinks with other Dwarves, ask if you are going to start something, ask if they are ready, be nice. That's a cooperative game and with 4 Dwarves in sync it's just awesome .

(Picture of me in the beginning of the game and 3 other random guys dancing and falling drunk)

People in this game are just the best thing :)

I really hope that everyone can have the same experience that I had with the folks that I met in this game, tho the game can be experienced solo with a cute robot "Bosco" to help you in missions, the game is much better online with strangers or even friends!

Also, Kudos for the developers, everything in this game is free and even the season pass which has a lot of things and according to the developers, everything in this season pass will remain in the game and you can get later, so we don't need to have the fear of "missing out" like a lot of company's do cof cof.

well I conclude my review here.

sigh

Rock and Stone

Intro

In this game you get dropped into an underground area with various objects, resources and enemies. You have to gather certain things while fighting the enemy. Much of it involves looking at a wall holding a button.

Review

If the above sounds familiar to you it's because this game is very similar to Payday - another co-op game in which you have to balance fighting and gathering. DRG isn't quite as bad and some actual thought went into various mechanics. But it's still kinda tedious. I generally don't like gathering things in games. I hated how The Witcher opened an inventory menu while picking flowers and i got a mod to make it instantly in Kingdom Come: Deliverance. And in both of those games gathering is a side-thing. In DRG it's 75% of the game.

And on top of that there's also a really annoying "find the right terminal" menu interface and a tedious upgrade system that requires very specific materials. No, thanks.

I've been engaging in DRG for over a half year now since I bought it and for a good reason. The developers keep delivering new content that keeps the game fresh and listening to the community through and through. DRG is an FPS game with some elements of roguelike and elements as well as co-op functions, where you play as a space dwarf making his career through mining missions under the alien planet Hoxxes IV. You can choose and jump between four different classes with each benefits that'll help you carry out your missions in your own way. Going solo has its benefits as you're being assisted by a drone partner but with right team-mates, you're settled for optimal results during the co-op mode up to 4 players. And can I mention that it feels encouraging to do teamwork? The players I've met have varied experience but always have something to work to their strengths and something to learn generally. In most multiplayer games, there are bound to be egoists and players gifted with extra saltiness but in DRG, the missions we do together get the best benefits of us working tightly and assisting where our mates would do well. Regardless of difference in ranks and levels, each mission rewards each team member equally. Or rather, in proportion with whether they've been around since the mission start or when they joined in afterwards. And the spirit of saluting makes us work through mission, before and after with high esteem. So far, so good!

Working in an alien planet, there are many dangers and challenges that await due to the varied environments and hostile bug creatures. The latter come in many kinds and sizes, so a tactical maneouvre might be necessary to handle swarm encounters at higher difficulty levels. The gameplay keeps itself fresh with a variety of underground environments (and mutations) and the progression is satisfactory. Most of the music treads a decent balance in sound department as it normally lays subtly in the background during the quiet parts of the mission, only picking up in intensity depending on the situation and atmosphere. The sound design gets my special attention because it's well directed enough to give the interactive objects and creatures distinctive sounds. Even the sound effects on mechanical objects ring like ear-candies to me. Each playable class dwarf share most of the recorded lines, notable pitch modulated for distinguishment's sake but hey, they are decently recorded and have a wide enough diversity of lines to keep things from sounding repetitive. Should the devs afford and choose to give each class their own lines (akin to Team Fortress 2 and Overwatch), that would be an optimal plus!

As the game is getting close towards its conclusion of EA (around mid 2020), there's plenty enough of contents that warrant a full-fledged, functioning game in its current state. This is what it's like when you take the procedural, mining elements of Minecraft, the class and loadout feats of Team Fortress 2 and the co-op immersion from Left 4 Dead/Killing Floor. For me, it warmly counts in the top list of 2010's games.