Dear god, this is possibly the best $5 I've ever spent. I was really disappointed with what I saw today when I went to check out the first day of Steam's summer sale, but this looked interesting enough, and I have a mild obsession with sharks, so I figured, "Eh, for $5, why not?" What a damn gem I found. Depth is an asymmetrical multiplayer game where one team of four plays as divers, equipped with various kinds of harpoon guns, and a team of two plays as sharks. The divers have to protect their little treasure finding robot called S.T.E.V.E. (I don't remember what it stands for; I didn't care) from vicious sharks while it goes to search for treasure. The sharks, meanwhile, have to eat the divers and damage the S.T.E.V.E. to get those pesky fleshsacks out of their home. The scoring system is a bit like Battlefield in that each side starts the game with 30 respawn tickets, and once one team's tickets are exhausted and their last member is killed, the team loses. If you're playing as a shark, rather than choosing weapons, you choose your species, and each species has different abilities. For example, Great Whites are slow but immensely powerful; makos are a little weaker but wicked fast; threshers are the weakest but the fastest, most agile, and smallest (meaning they're harder to shoot); hammerheads do extra damage to weak walls in the environment, etc. You can also either buy or unlock through earning treasure (similar to how Overwatch's loot boxes work) new skins for your sharks, although these are purely cosmetic. They add new playable species over time, and from what I can tell, they take community feedback into account when deciding what species to add by way of contests not unlike the contests Splatoon did (Cats vs. Dogs, Mustard vs. Ketchup, etc). While there's no career mode, story, or campaign so to speak, you can play solo offline with bots filling in for the other five player spots. For most people, this won't matter, but as one who thinks about whether or not a game will be playable when the multiplayer servers are offline, this is a big deal to me. That's what pisses me off about Destiny, Overwatch, and The Division and why I swore off buying anymore "online only" games like that; it will literally be unplayable in the future. It's not a big deal to most people, but the fact that I could play solo with bots is actually what tipped me over the edge and convinced me to buy it. Depth is a simple yet wildly addicting and entertaining game. The concept is interesting, and the way they balanced the teams - having the diver team have twice as many members as the shark team - is a great way to keep things fair while also keeping it from being everyone against one guy. While I wish there were some kind of career mode or progression or something with the single player, the fact that you can play solo against AI bots at all is a huge plus in my book, although this is one game I have absolutely no problem playing online despite the fact that I'm terrible at it. It's currently on sale for $5 in Steam's 2017 summer sale from a normal price of $20, but if you're one who enjoys online multiplayer and are interested in a unique asymmetrical game, I'd say that even with the full sticker price, it's worth it. My Rating - B |
I'm a teacher.And I like to play video games. I like to collect video games. I like to talk about video games, and I like to write about video games. During the day, I teach high school history; during the night, I spend my spare time gaming. Then I write about it. Archives
March 2024
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