Steam’s Latest Free To Play Darling, Black Squad, Has Attracted Thousands of Concurrent Players

[FlyingPenguin]

There's been a lot of talk about this game, with very positive reviews on Steam.

Decided to download it and try it out.

Free to play, and not (at least right now) Pay to win. The things you can buy upgrades for don't give you any overwhelming advantage.

Worth a shot for free.

Black Squad’s gameplay feels like a throwback to the shooters of the 90s- eschewing recent staples like vertical movement, wall-running or peaking behind cover. In their place are the identical hit boxes for every player, fast movement / res-pawn time and a limited selection of weapons. As quickly as players die in TDM they respawn and are thrown back into the fray. Combine all of this with some trappings from Counter Strike: the previously mentioned role based selection of weapons, running animations featuring a knife and a loud announcer and you’ve got a recipe for a nostalgic throwback of a game that doesn’t really care for the current trends in the genre.

Mini-Review here:
https://www.brokenjoysticks.net/2017/07 ... t-players/

http://store.steampowered.com/app/550650/Black_Squad/

[Nuby1Canuby]

Strange I click on Play Game from the Steam store and nothing happens. I looked at the EULA but there is no option to accept it.

[FlyingPenguin]

Worked for me. Tried a few rounds. Nothing stunning graphics wise but the gameplay is solid.

Maybe restart Steam?

[FlyingPenguin]

Played a few hours today. It's got a COD4/Counter Strike vibe, but with a very stable network engine. Team deathmatch is well balanced. Enemy can't spawn behind you, although they CAN sneak up behind you.

Assassination is fun. One team escorts the VIP, the other team has to take him out AND the escorts.

Weapons feel good. You get basic weapons to start with but if you install the game now, there's a free 15 day trial of some of the more advanced weapons that you have to rank up for. Gives you a taste for them.

Play the tutorial and you get grenades. Whenever you're given anything, or earn it, you get an email (in-game). You have to open the email and accept the achievement, equipment, whatever. The go to inventory and setup loadouts.

The basic assault rifle is a good weapon.

[Nuby1Canuby]

It's working now. Love these Steam midnight 22MB/s download speeds.

[FlyingPenguin]

I like the satisfying "bullet through the skull" crunch sound when you get a kill. No doubt when you kill someone,

Weapon physics feel real good. It feels like bullets go where I aim them, and the hit boxes feel real good.

Maps have a good layout.

There's bots in the tutorial mode but I can't figure out how to use them. I can spawn them but they don't do anything. No idea if you can use bots in multiplayer.

One annoying thing is when I close the game, it goes to a black screen. Then I have to reboot the PC.