coopasonic wrote:I watched some videos and I am starting to lean against.
OK, I went from leaning against to spending the whole weekend playing with my 11 year old son. I got the Legendary edition I think it was ($150, includes two extra keys). Yeah, I generally go overboard but I watched a bunch of videos and I figured this would work with X(11). I was right. He loves it.
I am not sure I can even say what I like about the game. You could describe it as a co-op third person tower defense game. In 75% of missions (in my experience thus far) you are protecting something from an incoming horde of husks. I don't know the names of all the types, but there are the standard zombies, the fatties that have more health and do more damage, the pitchers that throw mystical bones, the witches that are the mortars of the games, the hive-heads that are AoE attackers attacking with bees, the mini-mites that can leap over things and attack in little packs... that will tear you up and then there are the mist monsters, which are the mini-bosses. I've only seen a couple so far, one that will take out a wall in one hit, one that flies and I don't know what he does besides bring the pain.
In the defense missions you get some time to gather materials and explore the map and find the thing you need to defend, you do carry over materials from one mission to the next, everything except blu-glo which is used to power various things on the map. You will always be looking for nuts and bolts and rotating gizmos as they are used to craft ammo and weapons respectively, there are other mats for each, but those are the key pieces. Once you find or place the thing to defend, you spend some time clearing out the area and setting up defenses. Early on you can do all the work with guns and melee weapons, but as things get tougher, you will want traps to soften up the enemies. You can build structures to try to force the enemies into your traps, but they can go through your structures if they feel like it. There is a nice variety of traps that you can place on floors, walls and ceilings of different types. When you think you are ready activate the thing and kill, kill, kill.
There are other mission types, like survivor rescues some you just have to find, some you have to save from a horde, some won't leave without the medkit you need to find. There are also radar tower expansion where you have to find some places where towers need to be built and build them according to a blueprint that is nicely implemented. Another is Encampment destruction where you need to locate and destroy increasingly difficult enemy encampments. There may be more, but those are the ones I have seen so far.
A lot of the missions are repetitive, so what keeps it interesting? Loot and upgrades. There is a bunch of loot in this game. Weapons, traps, mats, survivors, heroes, various types of XP... so many things. Basically everything you get can be leveled up. You level them up with specific XP that you are generally rewarded with or you get from retiring/recycling resources of the same type. In addition to leveling everything up, you have your own skill trees and research trees that let you improve lots of things. So many things. Damage, health, building strength, pickaxe strength, backpack size, weapon evolutions, hero evolutions... and lots more.
There is a stupid amount of stuff going on in this game. Wait, what are those survivors for, oh... yeah I forgot squads... and expeditions... and defenders... and collections... and transformations... yeah, I can't type all day. I have to do some work.