Well, that’s not good

I was completely unaware this was coming out. I’m curious to see what NMRIH die hards think of it before I buy/download it.

If you’re retired and in Florida there’s a whole competitive scene! My buddy’s parents got us into the game 2 years ago before they moved to the villages. They came back to visit a few months ago and I was VERY humbled .

Maybe that’s why it’s cheap to get tennis lessons now.

Just gotta hope they aren’t stealing your tennis court to play pickleball! Lol

TL;DR: it felt like there was no ‘casual’ mode

I would run into an issue where I would use 1 meta load out and would hold around a 1.0 k/d, but if I ever wanted to experiment and try some other guns or unlock some new attachments I would get absolutely shredded. I would do this for a few matches, unlock whatever I was trying to unlock, and then switch back to my most efficient load out and absolutely shred the lobby I was playing in for a few games until I averaged back to a 1.0 k/d.

I felt like the only multiplayer option was ‘competitive’ and I couldn’t really experiment with things without getting my shit pushed in.

For an IRL comparison: I play pickleball from time to time and if I casually play someone at or slightly below my skill level I can experiment a little (try landing shots in different places, work on forehand vs. backhand, etc.), but if I play in a competitive tournament and go up against a pro they will absolutely kick my ass in record time (and that’s okay lol).

I’m really disappointed on this one. The original star wars battlefront and battlefront 2 were some of my favorite games and I was looking for an excuse to go back and play the campaign, but with upgraded graphics

I’ve got 14hrs played so far and I am enjoying it still. I am currently level 21 and have beaten the first story boss.

TL;DR Jack of all trades, master of none, but does a good job of mixing things together. 8.5/10 so far.

Palworld is kind of like fortnite imo: it didn’t invent the monster capturing, exploration, crafting, or building, but it is one of the first games to mix them and it doesn’t run like complete ass. The building is kind of basic, the exploration isn’t too in depth but there is always something going on( you can find fast travel beacons, area ‘boss’ monsters, story bosses, dungeons, and there are pokemon throughout all of this), the monsters have some variety but they all feel like a mix of different asset grabs, and the crafting is simple (BUT, you can use your monsters to craft for you and take care of your base).

I’d say individually each of these things are rated 7/10 or 8/10, but when you put them all together it’s pretty great. The crafting and the base building are there, but I just come back, build some things up, and then the monsters do all that for me while I go back to exploring. Last week I went through and beat Raft and Palworld is a breath of fresh air: I’m not spending hours grinding resources and crafting shit, instead I’m wandering around finding new monsters and locations and I come back and stuff is built. The crafting and resource finding isn’t the entire game but it’s a nice accessory. Similar to fortnites building + battle Royale, I didn’t think monster capturing + base building would be that fun, but they have done a great job of mixing the 2. I find myself looking for certain monsters so that I can have them do certain tasks at base, and that’s a win-win in a way.

The game is kind of janky in parts: I’ve had monsters fall through floors, some areas feel like they were ripped right out of other games (I swear some of the old, broken down churches look like they were stolen from elden ring), and the climbing mechanic isn’t fully polished, but unlike other early access games it runs pretty well so far performance wise. I’ve gotten so used to games like valheim, cyberpunk, and starfield where the game comes out and just runs like complete ass (30fps or less) for the first few weeks. Hell, we were playing Raft last week and our host told us to stop building the boat more b/c he was scared the game would crash. I’m not running Palworld like I ran CS:GO, but it feels like a steady 60fps+ at all times which is really great. As a counter to that though, hosting a dedicated server is okay at best so far. There is a memory leak that has the game go from taking 2-4gb of ram up to 8gb+. After 8gb gets used the computer I have hosting it tends to crash and then I have to manually turn it off and on again to get things going.

In the end, I know I’m going to get my money’s worth out of it (30+ hrs), maybe even double that(we’ll see) and I’m happy with that. I’m not expecting this to be the next Skyrim/baldurs gate/fallout, I don’t expect to play this for thousands of hours non-stop, and that’s fine b/c there is other stuff out there I’d like to play anyways. Similar to Valheim (I have 58.2hrs of playtime as of writing this), I expect to play through palworld, shelve it, and if there are any updates in the future I might come back to it.

I am very hype for the release of this one. It hasn’t been officially confirmed (besides some discord comments), but AI enemy changes may also be coming which would be great.

For those that haven’t played it before, H3VR (Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, and Hand Grenades) is a VR shooter with some of the most detailed firearms in VR. It’s not as detailed as Escape from Tarkov (unless you download some mods), but a ton of firearms built into the game have full functionality, from guns where you can add grips, grenade launchers, sights, scopes, etc. to a fully functional stinger MANPADS. The attention to detail is impressive!

I have a disturbing amount of hours in this specific game mode for this game. Something about moving through the levels, eliminating enemies, and getting better guns is a ton of fun.