Deep Rock Galactic is the Best Game

          Gruff dwarves, majestic spelunking, and corporate overlords come together with a singular goal in mind - crafting an awesome atmosphere.

          A spacefaring dwarven empire worships the almighty profits while your boss, who reminds me of Colonel Cambell, calmly sacrifices you for the sake of the shareholders. A corrugated spaceship, devoid of any soft corners, blasts massive drop pods into a hostile planet.
And we haven’t even started playing the game yet.

          In Deep Rock Galactic you navigate mazes of cramped attrition as your team of miners bombard and shoot their way through minerals and beasties alike. It features light rpg elements and deadly swarms of countless bugs coming for your family jewels. Even seemingly easy missions descend into Cals-very-bad Caverns as you progress. You’re running out of ammo, you’re running out of life, and most importantly - you’re running out of light. The dynamic lighting is reason alone to buy this game. Just to watch a lowly flare bounce its way down a crevice briefly illuminating the gnashing maws of glyphids (big mean bugs) on their way up to greet you.

That doesn’t sound “fun”
          My love of Co-op PvE is wildly apparent and I can gush about the incidental humor of sending a teammate carrening to their death. I can talk of setting up defenses even as you’re being overrun or calling a pivotal supply pod in the nick of time. I can scream about the idiot comrades lost on the other side of the map while you face a humongous predator. But thats not the dwarven way. Instead, I’ll ( calmly and tersely ) tell you that at the end of the day I still die about half the time. Little to show for it but meager experience points and a poor performance review. I’ve disappointed my business dad. The company talks about firing me. I think I’m a clone of myself and I remember dying planetside a moment ago. I fear that they’ll send me down again any minute now with only the promise of a new hairstyle available on my return.

And its very good.

 Too many explosions for my computer to handle

          You upgrade each class from a shared pool of resources in slight ways that never feel game breaking. When you play online it is less the level or equipment a stranger brings that matters and more the head on their shoulders. The real progression is your own knowledge. How to press forward quickly? Is that mineral on the ceiling worth getting? How best to cross this gap? Can I get through this fight with my last 6 shots? Questions like these abound and a good team can make or break you. Since you share your reward, online play is often cordial and helpful. Revives come freely and the balance isn’t so unforgiving that one rotten player ruins the team.

           From helmet to boot, everything about DRG creates a well crafted style that meshes with the equally grungy gameplay mechanics in a satisfying grind that makes the failures just as much fun as the successes.

A base near the end of one of the more stationary missions

But what is the game?
          Deep Rock Galactic is a 1-4 player online co-op FPS with destructible environment and a healthy dose of mining. It features 4 classes and modicum amounts of progression are made using various currencies that carry over game to game. The procedurally generated level selection refreshes every half hour and chooses from three different difficulties, 6 mission types, 7 biomes and new mutator modifiers. Not even counting the modifiers thats 126 different tunnels to die in! At the end of the mission - collecting minerals, hunting monsters, or salvaging - you have 5 minutes to find the drop pod back at the start of the maze.  It's a mad scramble as bugs assault you from every corner and the path back seems tougher than you remember.

          DRG is currently in Early Access (updated monthly) and is being developed by Ghost Ship Games. They prize the co-op experience above all else, and they’ve laid a solid bedrock for games to come.This game is a geode in the rough, and the parts that have been uncovered so far truly shine.