Blasting aliens to bits while mining ores sign me up. I always wanted to play as a dwarf exploring procedural-generated caves for resources. Shockingly, I have not picked this game up sooner.
One of the nice things I’ve noticed so far about the game is that yes you can play it with a small group of friends. You can also enjoy it solo and you get an NPC BOSCO that joins along and helps you in your adventures if you. Making both types of play fun.
I ended up picking this game up recently at a nice discount. Anyone that knows me knows I love a good cave. This could end up being the kind of game I play way too much. Even better it seems after being out for a couple of years it still has quite an active community.
Jumping into this while they were having an event going on. It also looks like they have been working away on quite a few things.
At first, I was not sure what to think when I looked at the store page. I noticed an insane amount of DLCs. I however did not jump to a quick conclusion. I instead click on a couple of them and was rather pleased to see the ones I looked at were for cosmetic-only items or the game soundtrack. Perfect.
This game got my heart pumping like a rabbit right off the bat on my first mission. They send you shooting down and drilling through a planet. This game also has some banging music that I could see keeping up wide awake all night while playing it.
While they explain some basic things right away. Along with a little help as you start to progress through the game. There are many parts of the game that I had to scratch my forehead and work out how to do myself. For someone like myself, I did not find it that challenging I could however see many people getting easily frustrated with what to do.
There are quite a few basic things this game makes sure you understand right away. While some crystals and other objects underground will glow and give off some light. You mostly relent on tossing flares.
The great news is you are not limited by the total amount of flares you can each while out on the mission. It is however not free for all drop as many as you like when you start. You can quickly drop four flares if needed. You then need to wait a short while before your flames recharge.
I feel this is quite a decent balance. It would be nothing worse than wandering in the dark without any artificial lighting to end a mission. It also makes it so you have to give a tiny amount of thought to how you use them or risk having to wait a short amount of time.
I also found there to be quite a few different resources you can mine in this game. I can only wonder how many more I will run into as I dive deeper into harder parts of the game weeks and perhaps even months from now if I keep playing it.
You however can’t just carry as many resources you have mined on you as you would like at once. There is a robot called the M.U.L.E that tends to follow you around. You can deposit what you loot there to get credit for it.
Each mission also has a main and side objective. Once you at least finish the main object you can choose to leave if you like. However, you need to be ready to be quick on your feet.
As the drop pod that gets sent in to collect the M.U.L.E will leave you behind if you don’t make it in time. Failing to get on board in time fails the mission as well. Something I had to learn the hard way my first time out.
Normally the drop ship will also not just show up right next to you either. It not only can be a decent distance away. It’s more than likely not even on the same elevate in the cave as you are. With this game having generated caves it can start to get rather complex.
Thankful as the M.U.L.E speeds off to get back to the drop ship quickly leaving me behind every time. It also drops poles on the ground that have arrows pointing to the way to go. The only issue is if you lose that you lose the trail of bread crumbs the game is leaving you to head back correctly to the drop ship.
Things only get even more complex as you are getting attacked and sometimes have to find a way up a cliff to find the next breadcrumb. This is also something that if you don’t notice as a game mechanic meant to help you find your way to the drop ship can make this game feel a lot harder than it is.
Speaking of combat. While out on the mission you tend to run into some aliens to fight as you explore the caves. There also seems to be certain kinds of trigger that cause spawn attack on you as well.
I have had some rather intense fights. If in one of them, I got killed. Thankfully BOSCO who is your sidekick if you are going solo like I am has a limited number of revivals. So he can bring you back.
He also seems to be a lot better at combat than I am at the moment. As I am trying to get used to this game's different mechanics and how things work.
Usually, I try and ensure I always have full shields and will let BOSCO do more of the work if I’m getting low. While shields will regenerate over time health will not. Thankfully you can find blue or red crystals that regenerate shields or health.
These are also not the only thing you can get more of. You have a limited amount of ammo on you for the main, side, and even traversal tools you have to get around in the cave. The good news is if you collect enough Nitra you can coll down a drop for more ammo.
This is something so far I’ve only had to use when things go quite bad. Like when I got lost and can’t find enough of the mission objective and ended up spending way too much time in the cave itself. Getting hit by waves of aliens over and over again tend to reduce my ammo supplies like they are trying to limit how long I can survive in a cave.
Something I’ve learned quite early on that I need to get a lot better with quickly is using the terrain scanner. At first, I felt it was a bit of a waste of time to try and use it. I would just wander around till I found what I needed.
Turns out it can provide quite valuable information once you understand the data and how it is showing things to you. Some mission objects for instance will show up on it you just need to learn to rotate and zoom out the scanner to see everything going on.
There has also been an instance where it help me understand I needed to dig from the cave I was in to reach another one many times below or off to the side. While the game will give context clues on areas you might want to dig into looking for a new cave to explore. I found using the scanner to be a lot better for making those discoveries.
It will take me some time to get used to getting everything I can out of the scanner. It also takes a moment to load and look around it. Many times you find yourself under attack and are unable to check it out.
I have enjoyed using the scanner when it shows exactly where the mission object I was looking for can be found. I have instances where I had to dig through an alien living goo on the walls to get eggs. While quite disgusting if it was not for the scammer it would take me forever to realize where to get them from.
Once you finish a mission you get a score screen. You get to see everything you had looted and turned in. Along with how long it took, how much money you made, and other stats.
I’ll admit my first couple of missions were extremely long. I was having a bit too much fun wanting to fully explore the cave network I was in. There was also a lot of learning to do on my end in trying to work out what I needed to do to win in the first place.
When you are not out on a mission you find yourself back at your base called the Space Rig. I got to say this place does not disappoint either. There are so many little terminals to explore and a few spots as well. Not to mention the views they are amazing!
Final Thoughts
That is it for me for now regarding this game. It was time I went out on another mission and see what else this game has to offer. So far I’ve had quite a blast and can’t wait for the adventures I’m about to head off on next.
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Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Deep Rock Galactic.
