Max and I've been trudging through the campaign on hardcore for a couple days now, and I gotta say, completely satisfied with how this game turned out. I'm still a ways from getting bored with just grub-on-cog urban skirmishing, thanks in large part to the handful of Lancer tweaks that manage to make blind-firing that fucker almost useful outside of sheer cinematic effect -- laying on legitimate suppressing fire while Max flanked around the side just felt natural and almost went down unspoken -- and an awesome new Hammerburst that actually makes getting angry and smashing the trigger faster translate into a better, albeit less accurate, stream of fire.
Butchers and Grinders are keeping things varied and cooperative, even if the medieval chain-flail locust are probably make for the single most annoying enemy in the game. In fact, haven't really found myself using their shield that much, as cool an idea as it is, simply due to how damn much it weighs your character down; machine pistol begs to be fired blind, at near point blank while you dodge around. Does make a fantastic base, when planted into the ground, for setting up a surprisingly badass minigun troika for defense in horde mode -- definitely loving the ease with which you can set these things up in some of the after-20 waves, when you're wading through piles of shields and heavy weapons during ammo runs. Still not really as sold on ink grenades as Max, but I like having the option of tossing them into choke points and setting up a kill zone as the heavies lumber through.
Probably the highest point of the game so far has been the sunken city, which just looks absolutely spectacular and was a joy to fight in. Zombie chamber was a bit annoying, but the rush at the end more than made up for all the laser-tripping bullshit, and I dug the razor hail hazard a lot more than Krill. Worm is easily the grossest thing I have ever had to do in a video game and, while not outright awful, was just incredibly, incredibly unpleasant. Good banter and "exit scene" certainly helped.
