Block N Load

Rip 2 a real 1

i miss you

If you are in the comments right now missing this game, look up block n load 2 on steam... someone tell me I'm dreaming.

Good bye, my old friends.
really miss the old day as i had played since beta.

First of, dont get me wrong, I love this game, I wouldnt have played it for 2000+ hours if I didnt. I made quite a lot of friends through this game in the last three years and learning to play each hero is fun.
The gameplay is one of a kind, it's a unique mix of building and class based objective gameplay, however, there are some serious issues with this game:

Tutorials

There are none. The practice ground can give you a few pointers about movement and the tutorial video provides tips about basic game mechanics, but the base setups shown in the videos are absolutely useless. Your best bet would be to search some gameplay footage on youtube and study the defenses and tactics of some high level matches.

Playerbase

There isnt much of one. You can queue on the EU server and during peak hours on the NA one, but the Asian Pacific Region has been dead for ages.
The players you get can be very... unskilled (I blame tutorials and the minecraft-esque design of the game), just make sure you dont interrupt the queue once you start, because it will reset the matchmaking progress (check out this guide to see the number of people queueing).

Optimisation

The wonky subject of "But my PC has the best graphics/processor/memory/usb-adapter ever, why wont it run smooth?!"
As far as I know, Unity is supposedly not the best engine to code a game in and BnL only runs on one processor core, making the performance horrible for many people. Turning down the graphics helps a bit. Sometimes.

Ranked

That gamemode is pretty much ded a joke. People who played the mode the most in the beginning had their matchmaking rating inflated to ridiculous proportions when they finally reached the leaderboards, making them unable to gain more than 2 League Points per won match, but making them loose ~20 points when they are deafeated.
Newer players who got stomped by the older pros lost a ton of matchmaking rating (MMR) when they were in the bronce/silver league, but didnt loose any League Points (because that isnt possible in these low ranks), which enabled them able to catch up really fast once the "first wave" of pros stopped playing ranked because there was no challenge left.
The position on the leaderboards do not indicate the skill of a player listed there, as the messed up MMR punishes the ones winning more matches, making the leaderboards pointless.

Hero Design

Skill heroes in general are less dependent on blocks (the only teamplay-related blocks they have are speed & jump pads) and Nigel is the token "sniper" hero of the game, which seems to make him the favorite pick of low level players to get them MLG 360 n0sc0pes.
These players are mostly useless for the team when they camp in their sniper towers at the back of the map, but the real issue with skill-role heroes is the ninja:
"O.P. Juan Shinobi" is basically the "noob hunter" hero with his teleports and he's so easy to play against noobs that "pressing m1 to win" is a fitting comparision . He is bad against actual defenses, but even if newbies would build these, the concepts of "maintenance", "rebuilding" and "block economy" are lost on them 95% of the time, so a ninja can pick them off easily.
I'm pretty sure ninja is one of if not the major reason many people quit the game, check the global achievement statistics, only ~22% of all players who ever played the game have reached lvl 6!

Loadouts

Speaking about lvl 6, there is a lock that prevents players from changing the blocks in their loadout before reaching said level.
Seriously: When I play a game which advertises a fully destructible environment and the feature of designing & building my own defenses, I'd like to be able to do that and experiment with all the possibilities the game can provide me, not be stuck with some idiotic pre-selected loadout.
The default loadout is just horrible, nobody should be forced to use bricks / forcegates to build and the hero block (which, depending on the hero you play, will be used less than any other block in your loadout in most matches) is fixed to the first spot of your loadout (this has technical reasons as far as I know, but its still a bad feature).
The players who do not care about supporting their team (regardless of intention or lack of knowledge), the ones that are supposed to be hit by the lock, wont place any health/ammo/radars etc anyway, which removes the whole point of the lock.

"Progression"

Progression system of the game is an absolute grind, both in terms of gold to unlock heroes & perks and in terms of leveling up both.
Even if you buy doublers (there are separate ones for gold and exp), they on double (duh!) the amount you receive during a limited timespan; if you grind without doublers, do every one of the daily three quests, the time assault in under 4 minutes every other week etc etc you will still need >1 year to unlock all heroes and perks.
It took me ages to do that, and fun fact #1:
I got the first nine heroes for buying the full-price version of the game, I didnt need to spend gold on them, and I was too impatient to grind for all heroes, so I bought four.
Fun fact #2:
I did all of the gold-grind before the block-progression-update was released, which cut the reward for the daily missions in half.

Fun fact #3, concerning the exp grind: The player- and hero-levels were reset in September of 2015, when the game became free to play. Since then, the number of heroes has increased to 15 and it took me more than two years to level up every hero to 100 (at around 1-2 hours a day, I finished the last one just a few days ago).
Do levels matter to everyone ?
No, but if you care about stuff like this then I cannot recomment Block n Load to you, I wouldn't want to do this grind myself if I hadn't already done it.

Updates

In my opinion, a game does not need to receive continued updates to be considered "alive", but in the case of Block n Load it was at least nice to get some value changes (damage, health etc) every few weeks during the recent months.
Are there going to be any new code changes (new features, new heroes)? Chances are no, but who knows, the game is currently under evaluation from Jagex.
Evaluate what, you might ask. Well, profit of course.
Again, dont get me wrong, I know a game (especially a free to play game) has to make money to cover it's monthly cost, but the last big update introduced the "block progression" into the game, which enables you to level up your blocks by collecting "dust" out of "Bounty Blocks" Lootboxes.
100% recommendation though if you always wanted a gambling-simulator in your minecraft-styled game!

Dont let anyone ever tell you anything about the gambling "not affecting gameplay":
The blocks are an integral part of the game, upgrading them is *of course* going to affect the gameplay. In the most extreme example: Have fun dying to, lets say, an enemies landmine while thinking: "If his lootbox didn't drop that specific dust the last time he opened one, would I still be alive because the mine would have done less damage ?"

Now, you dont exactly *have* to buy the boxes with real money, as you can get one free box a day for free and there is a low (30%?) chance of dropping one more after each match, but the amount of dust (and gold) needed to level up a block does increase exponentially, if I remember correctly, it takes around three years to level up every block to max level, have fun grinding for that only with the lowest tier of gambling-earnings~!


TL;DR
The game has issues, try it at your own risk.
Ask away in the comments if you have questions.

Very good game I think

Gameplay:

• 2 teams
  
• Each team has 5 minutes to build defenses around their base and cube(s), including anything from trences and walls to turrets and glue
  
• Each player has a number of block points and different items cost different points. For example, sandbags are stronger than bricks, but take longer to put down and cost more
  
• Each class has a special ability or weapon. Eg Ninjas can climb walls, the builder can repair items, the soldier has a rocket launcher etc
  
• Once past rank 6, each player can choose different blocks to use for a given class in a given game, so you can choose strategy at the same time as your team(you can see their selections and characters) to help strategy
  
• Each team tries to destroy the enemy base(s). The winner is the one that destroys all of the opponents first
  
[*]There is a cooldown timer on respawns. If teleports are in place you can also choose where on the map you respawn

It's fun to play, there are clear objectives, and games can be really close. Everything is pretty balanced.

I originally bought the game when it was in beta, and haven't played it again since then pretty much until yesterday. It still remains a good game. Why did I stop playing originally you ask? Because the size of the player base is quite small. Realistically you have to play this game in peak times otherwise it can be like 10 -20 minutes before you can joing a game. It's still a bit of a wait in peak times, but usually no more than 5 minutes, and typically around 1 or 2. It's worth the wait though.

There are many ways to play the game, and lots of different strategies. You can go for a stealthy approach, full frontal assault, defensive, or a mix and/or something else. After a while I guess it could be quite samey, but you can have custom maps and things to switch things up a little,and I'm pretty sure it would be quire easy for the devs to add more characters/roles and things and maps too.

Overall 8/10. If more people played the game, it would probably be a 9. That said, if you're impatient, this might not be the game for you

I fell in love with this game in open beta, heck, loved it so much I BOUGHT the game when it was fully released. But due to the Jagex not being able to hold a commuity for very long, they had to make it f2p, which is where the game went down hill. I see the game heading in the same path as AoP. I thought Block n Load had such potential, but after hunders of hours into this game, I released the developers wouldn't want to make that major change to seek it out. You'll have some fun until you reach the point where you play against people who know the "meta" (aka spamming everything they can. blocks, bullets and explosives.) Interesting game, very unique from many games along small studios, but terrible and disaapoint results.

oh yeah
Players are only becoming "toxic"
Perks need balancing
Blocks need balancing
Heros need balancing
Giant learning curve
Hero blocks need balancing
Finally...
Do not pay for anything in this game, only a waste of money once the game dies.

This game is very well designed, it brings a lot of new things to the table when it comes to first-person shooters, building, strategy, the problem is that the community is awful, if you like competitive gaming, responsive, mature team-mates that respond to threats, help you tactically, build the necessary blocks that are needed, etc, forget about it, you will not find this in this game, most of the times you'll be matched with 10 year-old kids with no developed motor-functions, and nearly autistic levels of lack of spatial awareness, you'll spend most of the game yelling, "BUILD HEALTH BLOCKS, BUILD THIS, BUILD THAT", while your teammates ignore you completely, and a formed squad of enemies destroy your team and you can do nothing but watch they win, doesn't matter how good you are, doesn't matter your K/D, you cannot carry the team by yourself. So this is this game in a nutshell, I believe they already mentioned the community being this awful somewhere in the reviews but I had to play the game to believe it, I'm just here to reinforce this and tell you guys why I have stopped playing this surprisingly good game.

Another con? Matchmaking, it takes a loooong time, just a bad stupid design for a matchmaking system, instead of creating a room and filling it, they get 10 random people, if they click OK within 15 seconds a game is created, if someone fails to do that the whole match is disbanded and they try to create another random group of 10 players using the same stupid method.

What else do you need to know, yes, they aren't updating the game very much, not that they need to, the game is actually very well polished, it has barely any bugs, the biggest problem in my view is the community indeed.

Well i've been a little lazy to write an actual review, but here goes. As you can see I know pretty much everything about this game and have played it for a good portion of time.

BlockNLoad is a 5v5 shoot em up style game where you try to destroy their objectives while defending your own. To do this you have a wide variety of 14 heroes all with different weapons, tools, and blocks at their disposal to use to win. Each hero has their perks and stats making them worth taking for the most part. This game is not just another dumb minecraft type shooter, believe me, it's anything but. This game has immense competitive potential and quality, and quite sadly should be alot more popular. If you want to try this game i highly suggest it, it is very addicting, and you can have loads of fun with it.


Pros:
-A massive progression system
-14 wide variety heroes
-Sexy graphics
-Loads of awesome skins
-Many different maps
-Many different strategies
-a in game map maker
And a bunch of other stuff, just try the game.

-Cons:
-Only a couple developers
-Some bugs that still arent fixed
-Some current balance issues, ahem vander ahem.

Basically just get it, it's f2p and it is very enjoyable. Have any questions? Join this Discord server here for the BlockNLoad NA and ask questions!: https://discord.gg/VEASeJR

great game, but really needs to fix the que up feature, where you can only join with 3 friends to join a 5 man team, only type of match you can join with more friends is the ranked (which is in beta) and isnt open 5 days of the week.
would love for this feature to be fixed because would like to actually play a causual fun game, with my mates.

So this Will be my 2nd review for this game. In my first review I had 244 hours total. Now I have 1,115 hours. Hopefully that shows how fun this game can be. But there are a ton of things both right and wrong with Block N Load. First of all The game has a horrible tutorial so don't even bother with it. The playerbase is usually helpful to new players but when players with over 1K hours keep getting games with new players they can become quite hostile. There are 4 regions to play on Oceania,Asia,Europe,and North America. The game has a bundle of fun mechanics and skins and perks and great voice lines and visuals. Now as before where I was very new to the game a lot of my attitude has changed but most still reamins the same. The game has potential. There are a lot of problems. But in my opinion the Fun Filled moments are worth most of the hard times. I've had more fun than ever possible playing this. I've also had the most frustrating times of my life in this. But i've also made friends that I absolutely Adore and Love to play with every day. I just hope you take a positive mind and treat each game as a learning experience.

My favorite pass-time game lately. Not a Pay-to-Win game. Only cosmetics cost cash, def worth playing, What the block you waiting on?

You can play as...

An Italian Construction Worker
An Evil Toy Robot
Some weird Pipe-Smoking Austrian Gentleman
An English Hunter Gentleman
A Mexican Ninja
A Genie from a Lamp
A Siberian Yeti
A Weeb-Bait JPopStar
A Mad Doctor
A Living Lightbulb
A Sci-Fi PornStar
A Fat Texan Hamster in a TankBall
A Crazed Killer Klown
Rambo

11/10

game is free now so.. YAY! :P also note that only queing 2 (3 now) people together is a temporary fix to veterans like me pup stomping with other veterans will be changed back relatively soon :)

the game is great fun when you start out, and the more you play the more strategic depth you find.
Now i have been streaming and playing this all through out beta too, and have had a chance to interact a lot with the devs, and 1 thing that really matter here there is that the devs CARE, they listen, talk and reason like i have never seen devs do for another game.
So sure maybe something could be balanced a bit different maybe there is a bug here and there, but all in all the game is great fun, and the devs are working on it, and the interaction is AMAZING.

Pros:
This is a very fun game. It makes you work with your team and the way you play is determined by the character you picked. Every character is well balanced. You get supplies by breaking blocks, the longer it takes to break the more supplies you get. Also I found the maps to be so fun and beautiful. Over all I really like this game it’s so much fun, but it’s not perfect.

Cons:
The flaws are that if you are new you may find it hard to go against those that have played longer. This could be that they are better, but most likely it’s because the games leveling up system is broken. If the person played longer than you did with a character, their character gets to wait less to reuse their ability “F key” than you along with other benefits. Also if you’re looking for a match and find one, but it’s already in progress three things could happen.
1.) You join and see that the game barley started and have fun.
2.) You join and see that you are about to lose.
3.) You don’t join and may get penalized from playing for some time.
Yep, the game will penalize you for not joining a game which most likely is about to end. Also when the games over you have to leave back to the main menu in order to look for another match. So, this means if you had a close game and wish to have a rematch, will too bad you can’t.

The game requires to be very tactical and work as a team. Also on average a game may last you 20-35 minutes so make sure you have time to play and have some fun. Bye bye.

Well, I've never written a full-blown Steam review for any game, ever. Even if it's really good or really bad, I don't normally have the motivation to do so. That changed when I started playing Block N Load.

It's a spiritual successor to Ace of Spades, which was bought and remade by Jagex. Unfortunately, that alone would turn quite a few people away, because Ace of Spades didn't fare very well. However, almost all of the problems people had with Ace of Spades have been fixed up here.

The game is relatively simple: You get to pick between six classes (more will be coming in the future), including an insane scientist, an evil robot, and a Mexican ninja. Games are two teams of 5 versus 5, where you have about six minutes to build defenses and traps to protect these large machines called cubes and your team's base, then when time's up, the game starts and you can raid your opponents.

There are tons of different blocks that do different things. For example, my personal favorite is the fake block: It looks exactly like a connecting block, but when the opponent steps on it, it breaks away and he or she falls hopelessly into your trap, which could be bear traps, caltrops, sentry guns, poisoned dart-shooting tiki heads, or you could even make them fall off the map entirely. Another block is the Force Gate: You and your teammates can walk through it like there was nothing there, but your opponents cannot; they'll have to go around or destroy it. The variety of different blocks allow you to attempt to set up an impenetrable defense (although NOTHING is truly impenetrable!)

The strategies required in this game are far deeper than you might expect. Just throwing bear traps everywhere won't cut it. You need to think about where your attackers might approach or where to place radars and respawn pads. Since nearly everything in this game can be destroyed (including all the blocks and items you can place), you have to hide them away where the enemy can't find them. In addition, occasionally a powerful weapon called the Blockbuster will be sent in, giving you shielding and increased cube/base damage for two minutes... unless your enemy gets it first! Because the Blockbuster is only given to the team that can get it first, it becomes a frantic race to the center of the arena to grab this powerful item.

So, what are you waiting for, Blockhead? Come on and give it a go!

By the way, a tip for new players: Although it seems like a good idea, do NOT cover the cubes/bases with blocks. Trust me on this. You'll just end up giving any attackers free cover.

Many call this game the unholy marriage of minecraft and TF2, which is true mechanically speaking, but the game has a lot of charm all it's own too.

Pros:
-Easy to pick up the game
-Runs on just about any pc
-Queue times are reasonable and often quick
-The mechanics of the game are fun and make every game experience unique because you have to think on your toes when defending or assaulting, following a "meta" would only serve to make you easy to predict and counter.
-It's NOT free to play, which given the nature of this game, is a good thing. Plus no unreasonably long grinding for class leveling.
-The devs hold polls and take community input and seem to put a lot of effort into the gameplay and balance.
-

Cons:
-Only 5v5 but later on 10v10 will be included
-Variety in maps and characters and weapons are a bit lacking, but that's already planned to be improved later on
-It's easy to get griefed in this game, but luckily the game isn't free to play so you see far less of that in this game compared to others.
-The game needs a some what better anti cheat system. You wont see hackers all the time, but they do rear their ugly heads. Hacks I've seen so far are speed hacks and damage hacks, and no I they weren't using a block buster when I saw this happen.
-Team reliance, I love team games, but if you have really bad team mates, you're probably in for a loss, make use of that surrender button if that happens.

If I were to rate this game on a scale of 1-10, I'd give it an 8, it's a lot of fun for 20 dollars, I've been playing since the free weekend event for steam release and I already have 40 hours on the game writing this review.

The game could use some work and more content, but luckily Jagex seems to be getting on that as they recently opened a poll to vote for what features the community wants them to take priority on, things like 10v10, map editors, more weapons and classes and blocks, etc etc.

My first reaction:
Oh look, some crappy wannabe Minecraft/Team Fortress game.

This will probably take two minutes to learn how to play, and five to reach top score in every server.

I

WAS

WRONG.

This game is MUCH. MUCH more challenging than it looks.

The weapons are fierce and explosives can be unforgiving.

Not only that, The blocks you can make are astounding.

One that I enjoyed the most was the radar.

You can literally place a radar to see EVERYONE. It felt amazing being able to sneak behind a base and place a radar.

Not only that, but this game is very tactical.

The last game I played probably went on for twenty minutes, and I'm sure games can go to an hour if both teams are skilled.

There are traps. Support characters. Attack Charaters. Defense Characters.


Honestly, this game is much better than people let on.

8.6/10

RECENT UPDATE:

The game has been updated to be free to play. I also have like 100 more hours under my belt. Here is more review info.

You can play as the heroes in the free rotation, but once they leave the free rotation, you have to buy them with either A) gold, or B) platinum. Platinum can be bought with real life money, and gold is gotten in game. BUT! BUT BUT BUT! It isn't pay to win. Characters are just that, characters. No characters are better than others, they all excel in different situations.

Then there are perks. Perks can ONLY be bought with gold. Perks upgrade characters (they have downsides too tho) and give them better offensive, defensive, and hero roles. AKA: if you're good at this game, you get better.

This also brings a lot more uniqueness into the game.

EXAMPLE: Just because someone is Nigel (the sniper) doesn't mean you'll know how to counter him right away. He could have a gun damage upgrade or a fall damage upgrade.

In the game are skins, to add even MORE variation to your choices. Skins can only be bought with platinum, but holy crap they look good. Devs did a good job on them.

Also, if you bought the game when it was p2p (like me) you got a bunch of skins free and all the starter heroes unlocked.

This game is a few skins, a new gamemode, and a new hero away from being the best multiplayer teamwork-oriented fps game out there.

I have re-earned my faith in JagEX.

8.9/10

I realize now I'm being way too "HOLY SHIT THIS GAME IS GOD" so I'll list some cons as well.

PROS AND CONS:

Pros:

+most characters feel balanced, and all have great skill ceilings.
+most maps are great, and it's rare for me to say "not this map again" when playing
+I have a bad computer, and the game runs well at low settings. You HD 50 gb ram PC master race people will love that.
+game is constantly being updated with new heroes and skins, as well as bug fixes
+daily challenges add an extra goal to gameplay and gold earning.
+very high character customization. First you pick a hero, then perks, then blocks, then skins. Every hero can feel different with different setups
+devs are actually listening to the community
+large userbase, not too long of a wait when joining games.
+all guns feel different and fun


Cons:

-now that the game is f2p, heroes aren't free. You have to pay gold, which is earned through playing games, to buy characters. This is ok, but the problem is that new players will always be the same characters.
-A few characters need nerfs and buffs.
-ranking system is completely broken. You get placed with noobs even at gold rank. They should fix this.
-some maps are badly designed, in my opinion. Like "Block". "Block" is a multicolored map where being a skill character is necessary to win, really.
-cubes can be damaged by stuff that isn't your tool (guns, explosives), but devs said they'd patch this. Will remove this once fixed.
-lower ranked players are toxic, and immature.

love this game, its like minecraft with 100000% more action.

Very good fps game where you can be creative and build your own cool looking base.

the game can be hard for new players but as soon you understand the basics you will also start to kick ass and having tons of fun.

Having a good friend helps alot in this game like one that try to def and other one attacking.
That is what i was doing when i was new to this game.

I've been trying the game during a free weekend and definitely gonna buy it, it feels varied, fun and has competitive teamplay potential.

The game encourages emergent strategies using destructible environments and building. Digging feels balanced, e.g. sneaky tunneling can be countered with radars, heavy defence with explosives and so on.

Pacing is medium to fast - feels more dynamic than, e.g. TF2 for me. Maps are not big, you can quickly get to fights, build respawn pads and respawn is quite short. Individual contribution to winning can be big and satisfying.

There's a room for mastering and skill - map control, shooting (headshots), movement (two-block-climb-jumping), deciding when to attack or defend. There is some depth and learning curve is gradual, you can start with just shooting and assaulting the front lines if building is too much for you from the start (tutorial shows just the very basics, unfortunately). The interface is intuitive and informative.

Currently ranked matchmaking (is there matchmaking at all?) is not available yet so you get very randomly skilled and behaving people (I haven't noticed any serious griefing yet though (EU server)).

I've never written a review before but this game has compelled me to.

It won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I strongly reccomend trying it. I have played for free since it was released recently and i must say that I've laughed out lound more than once. At first the game seems innocent, childlike, a minecraft-ish experience.. But that is far from the truth. as soon as you're taught to get out your LMG you realize that this is a violent game. It's the funniest thing i've seen in a long time, has the best effects sounds especially for the guns, and the shooting is tight and VERY responsive. I've now purchased it, I reccomend you do the same, unless you don't have a sense of humor. If that's the case then you'll hate it.

Most of the negative reviews for this game are complaining about it being pay 2 win, being too expensive or just being made by the same guys as ace of spades (which we all know was a real badly executed game), when in actuality this game is in beta and is a free 2 play at the current time, so anyone who isnt happy with the current price can play free 2 play until the price drops far enough (Hopefully its one of those games that are in beta for like a year). You can pick up this game for free at the official block n load website, so price complaints shouldnt matter at the minute. This game, despite the fact that its blocked based and an FPS, its almost completely different. The game feels a lot like a moba, but it isnt, so dont let that statement turn you off. you must defend from 1 to 3 bases depending on the map, like tf2 control points except you cant camp back. You must destroy the all the enemies bases to win, and there is five minutes at the start to build your defences. This game allows for a lot of creativity and is pretty good when you get down to it. Jagex have learned from thier mistakes as they just recently made an update that fixed almost all problems i had through character balancing and bug fixes. This is a brilliant game, but sadly i also do not approve of the price for this title. Although this is a pre release with lots of bonus content, i think that if the price was maybe 40% cheaper, it would be a very fitting price and i would reccommend you buy this game.