Publisher: Coffee Stain Publishing
Developer: Ghost Ship Studios
Platform: Xbox One, PC
Genre: Co-op shooter

Ah yes, Left 4 Dead for miners. Playing through procedurally generated levels while dealing with an A.I director that spawns enemies to attack you and your fellow miners. While it isn't as smooth as Minecraft on the terrain, there are many ways to go till you're at your wits end. Giving a more broader term for verticality thanks to how much you can destroy terrain everywhere and traversal freedom.

Deep Rock Galactic is an easy game to explain, you play as Dwarves in a 4-player co-op shooter who needs to use whatever at their disposal to trek and dig through each levels to extract minerals or collect eggs or fungus. You have a variety of locations to spawn in on a planet to mine different sorts of resources, most required to unlock upgrades and better equipment.

After 2 years of early access, it finally got its release last May and is still holding up as one of the most prolific and active shooting games in the Steam market. After playing it, I can honestly see why that it is.

Premise

You play as dwarves working on a measly job, mining for a company called Deep Rock Galactic, an interplanetary mining company that extorts these poor dwarves in terrible working conditions against god knows what planetary terrestrials. Even then, the dwarves take their job seriously with pride and accomplishes more than most people would give them credit for(most people being the company that sort of abuses their situation, welp).

All of your missions take place in Planet Hoxxes IV, a world ravaged by nature itself. A lot of activities occur including seismic shifts, tectonic shakes, anomalies of gravity, etc. But it is also home to mostly hostile wildlife. The kind of wildlife that puts a real beating on the dwarves for trespassing into their territory or stealing eggs from their queens or killing their queens and so on. Corporate interests goes pretty long enough that each of the dwarves even though they fail to escape, gets dragged back to their station in sheer humiliation.

The whole point of mining is to collect these stuff for various research purposes as well as crafting newer technologies since this planet is also loaded with rare materials. Even ones that the dwarves will use for their own gain by enhancing their arsenal.

Gameplay

Deep Rock Galactic is a fun, deeply engrossing mining game with a robust progression system made for players to tinker their playing experience whatsoever ways they want. It is a survival shooting game first and foremost but most of the fun comes from mining the resources. You play as 4 different class of dwarves; engineer; scout; driller; gunner. Each of them uses different kinds of firing weapons, utilities, grenades and armors. All of them uses their handy, dandy pickaxe for breaking terrain.

You'll do missions going from excavations, drill-mining, egg hunting to eliminating large class creatures. Sometimes you'll do a collection of three types in the same map area. Each level you start in is different everytime, because all of them are procedurally generated. Some of these levels have events like increase in creature activities or lost caches for retrieval. The more difficult they are, the more rewards you reap. You can even task yourself with assignments for unlocking items or weapons for the dwarves.

Progressing through the game means not only increasing your player level but also levelling up each class you play everytime you finish a mission. Allowing you to have access to upgrades for all your equipment, only purchasable after spending both credits and required minerals. Grinding for each class isn't difficult, after playing for like 9-15hrs depending on which kind of missions you've played, reaching to level 25, you get fully promoted.

The game is pretty easy to understand for most players I believe, if not, there's a handy dandy manual that explains everything. To start off, you and your team has both a primary objective and secondary objective. Most of the time you'll be mining for minerals you'll find but the important part of the game is to finish your objectives before things start to get hairy and more creatures show up for cannon fodder. Munitions is limited so you need to be marginal with how much you use your equipment, thankfully if you mine enough Nitra, you can call in a droppod for resupply.

I mentioned something about verticality? Oh yeah, based on the equipment you have, you can create pathways or reach higher levels easily depending on the class you choose. Engineers, drillers and scouts are mostly useful in these cases while gunners are only useful for setting up defenses. Yeah, so gunners are mostly useful for drilling missions. You'll encounter all sorts of creatures, mostly Glyphid pawns, even if they are just fodder. In eliminations, you face giant Glyphid Dreadknoughts, destroying them requires sheer firepower and everything your team can throw.

While it is a flexible game, it also comes with limitations by design. First being your munition is limited, second being is you can't destroy every structure or it gets more difficult to travel from place to place. Third and final being is your MULE, he is a bit slow even though he can crawl around walls and ceilings to get to your location, he takes awhile. Finally, once primary objective is done, you can call in for shuttle pod for escape. Your MULE will plant designated path for that or you can make your own path as long as the MULE has landed on the shuttle before leaving. You have to also reach your escape before it leaves by timer.

Here's what I love about DRG, this game can be calming, just good mundane fashioned mining to sheer chaos. The gameplay shifts the paradigm pretty well from time to time. Of course, it isn't always perfect like the fact that you couldn't build a bigger hold with your pickaxes, it mostly works.

Whatever I've mentioned here only scratches the surface, there're tons of content to keep you going for hours and hours till no end. You want to play Solo? There's Bosco, your helpful drone whom you can upgrade, but only in solo play. You can add new kind of beers to drink from the bar. That also adds additional attributes for your later missions. You can visit the Forge once you have someone promoted and so on. Reaching endgame is easier but it also has you going for hours and hours once you've accomplished your goals.

Online Co-op

Matchmaking in this game isn't so difficult, at first though, you won't find many players to play with so solo is the way to go. But the most active matches are the ones where there're more rewards. Also, more difficult matches require good coordination and communication, so I'd suggest playing this with friends, it'll be a lot more exciting and ecstatic to play with people you know.

Best part about this game is dedicated servers which allows players to dictate how each match is played and who can get in or not.

There are different ways to communicate like using the laser pointer or the shout input. But other ways like textbox and voice chat is also found though neither are used much since players with experience know what to do most of the time.

DRG is an easy game to work with in cooperative spirit, of that I have no doubt.

Presentation

Artistically, this is the most personalized game I've played. With its cell shaded design, everything looks colorful and different yet using minimalistic. Another UE4 game(they keep making UE4 games these days), the game flourishes with bright brimming colors and prodding light effects. Everything feels like it has its own life.

Sound quality is nice, has a touch of quirkiness to it and everything that makes it gritty as well. The Dwarves talking has given me some laughs and the soundtrack goes from calm to rambunctious and absurd chaos. It's something that puts you in a good mood even in daily mining jobs.

This has a whole Cartoon Network show vibe to it, who knows maybe they could release a spin-off series based on it. I could see that happening soon.

Verdict

Deep Rock is pretty much a showstopper, it's quite an intriguing game even if not for everyone that borrows elements from scavenging, hunting and survival games all into this neatly wrapped package.

You also get to pet Steeve, isn't that nice?

8.5