ANEURISM IV Reviews

Flat out, don't buy it, and if you do or already have don't play on official severs. (Context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA-uj1u54h8)

GLORY TO THE CORTEX! GLORY TO ANEURISM IV! This game is like a GMod dark RP server but with actual stuff to do. Being a member of the proletarian has never been more fun!

I would say "Just go play Garry's Mod DarkRP", but that's also in the worst state it's been in since 2008. So instead, do literally anything else. The gameplay loop is as follows: >do a menial task for 30mins-1hr (doing laundry, mining resource nodes, fishing, etc.) >earn enough amenocyte to do ANYTHING else >be confused on how your new class functions >eventually die from natural causes or getting shot >go back to 0 amenocyte and repeat and god forbid you experiment with the sandbox and commit a crime, that sentences you to literally re-enacting Sisyphus and pushing a boulder for 5-30 mins, then AFTER that you get to do your menial tasks for 30mins-1hr. WOOOO The only appeal to a game like this is the community, and I've had my ears blown out by mic spam, children, and racists alike. But what did I expect? It's DarkRP. EDIT: Also, while [b]UNCONFIRMED[/b], I've seen rumors that one of the community moderators associated with this game, "AyAyron", also known as "Kuna" or "KPTKuna" has a history of malicious activity on gmod RP and [h3]STREAMING PORN TO MINORS.[/h3]

Apparently this game's community is rotten to even the core, with even Vellocet employees/moderators negelecting to keep the community on the official game servers from breaking real life laws, such as hosting links to CP through the billboard system for example. Avoid purchasing this, or if you do, play on community servers instead of the official servers, because a year or two tops will eventually have the devs and community manager and whoever else probably only thinking about player counts on their official servers, and no thought about the actual quality of the game/servers, which is a thought process I've already seen happen in certain rp servers on gmod. Also the steam name of the community manager is such a redditor-like name it's not even funny, so is ban appeal thing where the dude obviously is trying to boost his ego through acting all high and mighty when someone pleads to be unbanned. (the bans are likely for the official servers, likelihood is that the ban can't affect your ability to join community servers). Oh, also throwing this link out there incase: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA-uj1u54h8

Aneurism IV - A Game That Hates You ANIV is what I would essentially call a Garry's Mod DarkRP Server but juiced up to 1000, and I mean this in a positive way. The game takes the core concept of that gamemode, removes the annoying Pay2Win of most servers, the KOS-boxes people build in their bases, and most of all, the annoying Admins who act like children and go on powertrips and tantrums when you so much as just think about breaking one of the 200 server rules. Every aspect of this game has been hand-crafted to immerse you into a world that is run by a totalitarian government, taking influences from Soviet States of the past, the book 1984, and Soylent Green. The graphics, music, sounds and ambience all set out to let you know that this place is alien to you and doesn't want you. Sirens blare during wartime, beckoning for you to come to the factory. Speakers in the city blare out state-propaganda to remind you of your place and purpose in society. The music during gameplay is depressing but at the same time has a twinge of hope and discovery in it, peaking your curiosity. All of this backed with the footsteps and chatter of fellow workers, gunshots in the distance as a member of the Cortex puts down a rebellious Cultist, and the sound of Proles screaming at eachother because somebody stole the other's laundry. In ANIV, you are one of many, and everybody is out for themselves in one way or the other, charity is a hard thing to come by in this cruel world. Every person has no name, they have no individuality, they are assigned a number that stays permanently until the server resets, and throughout your time playing you will get to befriend numbers, and become rivals with others. And while in reality this may not be a fun place to live in, it certainly is a fun place to explore and experience. As a cog in this massive machine you will perform a lot of manual labor such as: - Mining and then forming ores into ingots to put into crates. - Gardening crops and creating alcohol in a distillery. - Washing, drying and then folding laundry. - Participating in the assembly of warheads to fuel the war effort. And you won't do any of these things alone, all of these activities have other people doing them, and they ALL want to earn a living. While some people will work honestly and chat with you about their day or the current events on the server, others will try to get a leg up on their competition by stealing ingots from others, stealing laundry, insulting and bullying eachother, pushing others around and even hitting or killing them if pushed too far. Or you can serve ANIV in a different way, by becoming a member of the Cortex, the police force that governs the city and brutalizes those who seek to threaten and destroy the prosperity of all by means of limitation orders, striking wrongdoers down on the spot as Judge, Jury and Executioner. This will lead you down a powertrip where you can become a class traitor and oppress those that are below you on the hierarchy, which feels especially rewarding when you find that one Prole who had been messing with you prior. Or you can become a "Scum", Zealots whose goal it is to destroy ANIV by all means necessary, causing the rot of the city by bombing infrastructure, killing Cortex and Proles and sacrificing the bodies in a Ritual Pit to bring about "The Darkness", an event that turns the city into a lawless wasteland, legalizing murder for every single person in the server for a few minutes and causing utter chaos and paranoia. Does all of this sound fun to you? Then I really suggest that you check out ANIV, and that for your first time you go into it as blind as possible. This game deserves to be viewed from a fresh set of eyes for your first few hours, and once you've seen it, there are plenty of community resources to help you along in figuring out everything that you didn't understand, or you can even ask people ingame to help you and teach you as most seem very keen on helping out new players (while also teaching them some harsh realities in the meantime and not to trust people). But here comes the part of the review where I have to get a bit critical: ANIV has a problem, it has several, but at the forefront of all its problems is its community that I just praised for its resources. Because this game is quite edgy in setting and tone it can attract some weirdos. It is very commonplace for things in the game to get quite personal, crashouts are aplenty and it is not uncommon to hear several slurs hurled towards your way. Antisemitism, Racism and other forms of bigotry are incredibly rampant. People can, and will form such a hard vendetta against someone who doesn't fit in that they'll make it their mission to follow them around for hours and grief them until you leave the server. And god forbid you're a woman or your voice clockable as trans. In that case every interaction with a person becomes a 40/60 dice roll on whether or not you'll have a person stalk you for 20 minutes to become one of your simps, or one of your dedicated griefers. However what people didn't factor in is that just how unemployed some of these losers could be: There is a Karma system in the game, one is a currency that you gain by working, unlocking new character classes, the other is a hidden number nobody can see: Killing people for no reason loses you karma, and often times people will bait you into attacking them only for them to hurl themselves down a furnace, causing you to be "credited" for their death and lose you points and currency. Or people would become Cortex, stand in front of you while you are hitting a metal ore with your Pickaxe, causing you to become a wanted player and give them a free reason to kill you while ALSO earning them points for it. Griefing is prevalent in ANIV, and people have found creative ways to do it. The only winning move is to walk away from them, swap servers if they follow you, or take a break until they log off or get bored. I tried reporting these kinds of players as I've seen the Community Manager claim that they'd be doing something against them, but after posting hard-evidence of someone saying the hard-r including name, SteamID etc. They just said "We can't do anything about it" with a head shake. Either you kick Nazis out of your Bar, or it becomes a Nazi Bar. Make up your mind. Look. This is a phenomenal game and certainly the most unique title I have played so far in 2025. But what I have mentioned so far extends to the behavior of players and is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the issues this game has, but I felt it more necessary to mention what is the biggest problem first, since Steam will not allow me to write a longer and more comprehensive review due to its character limit. There are way more issues such as: - Skeleghosting - Proles bodyblocking during gunfights to bait point loss - People posting links to exloitative content of minors on the in-game bulletin board It is clear that the devs have bitten off more than they can chew when it comes to all of this, but I truly support Vellocet and their efforts to improve the game, I just doubt that such a small team of devs will be able to -truly- fix all of the issues plagueing the game in a reasonable timeframe. And to close it out: After 60 hours, you've seen everything the game has to offer. Afterwards it is up to you to find your own fun as there is nothing else left to discover. Most choose to engage in PvP as Scum or Cortex because those are the power-roles that quite literally exert all their power over the rest of the server. There is no endgame as a Prole, Corpsman, etc. The true endgame everyone ends up going for is Cortex vs Scum because that is the only thing that'll test your skill in the endgame. I love this game and I wanna see it succeed. But it has a very long and bumpy road ahead of it. Good Luck to the devs in trying to find a balance.

Aneurism IV is a complex web of a game. While the game itself is essentially an elevated dystopian horror-themed Gmod RP, everything about it is complicated by the community, the developers, and the opaqueness of the gameplay itself. The game itself doesn't hold your hand, and rarely will any of the citizens of Aneurism IV, either. While the gameplay elements aren't complex and are fairly quick to learn, there are no in-game tutorials or explanations to contextualize the general gameplay loop that acts as a backbone for the game's roleplay. If you're lucky, your cries of help will be met by a player who will teach you all of the game's "fates" and jobs with ease. If you're unlucky, you'll repeatedly have your belongings stolen and suffer a pipe to the skull until you quit the game in frustration. The community seems to ebb and flow in character and toxicity, but as someone who has been playing the game since the demo, I have one major observation: the community is nearly always characterized by the most polar extremes of its players, for better and worse. Aneurism IV players both loathe roleplay and excel at it. Aneurism IV players will call you every slur under the sun and will beat anyone who says a slur over the head with a pipe. Aneurism IV players are on every end of the political spectrum, and will overshare and impress their opinions on everything from gender norms to racial disputes in game, and yet they are also absolutely tolerant/intolerant of any and all opinions. It's so fortunate, then, that the basic gameplay loop of Aneurism thrives on strife and conflict. On Aneurism IV, everyone loathes and distrusts one another. Someone who is a law-abiding officer at one moment will die and become the lowest of the low just to exact revenge on That One Guy Who Was An Asshole. What is less fortunate is that the developers of the game ALSO seem to not know what they want, to be all extremes at the same time, to be both universally accepting and overwhelmingly stifling. What I can say about Vellocet is that sometimes they put out really great, compelling, fascinating patches. Other times, they break their own game so terribly that it's quite literally unplayable. For a new studio, this is not surprising: what is, however, is that they seem to carry with them some deep conflict from Online Communities' Past that means their own official servers have regularly faced cheaters, exploiters, DDoSers, and egregious trolls. In the days of the demos, Vellocet-haters would zoom around the map, beating you over the head with a pickaxe so fast that you've turned into ground beef before you can have the thought to run. In the early days post-release, this opposition would run around servers spamming recorded material so egregiously vile that players would regularly sacrifice all of their social currency just to kill them. These days, the biggest problem has been DDoSing, a problem so prolific that the game was completely inaccessible for nearly a week. Vellocet has made it clear since the beginning that they will not moderate their official servers in any capacity aside from exploit, so I don't anticipate that these toxic dynamics will ever change, or that the trolls who seem to have some personal quarrel with the company itself will ever stop. Aneurism IV is complicated. It's a game I really like, and I really dislike. If it were more properly optimized for small groups, it's a game I'd only play with friends rather than with the masses. Simultaneously, I've had some of the most fascinating, hilarious, intense, heartwarming interactions with other players while roleplaying, and I don't know how to feel about any of it. Generally speaking, this game deserves an 18+ rating and shouldn't be played by children, both due to the community and the gameplay itself, addled with addiction and guns and cold-blooded murder. It's also not a game for the faint of heart, the sensitive, the easily agitated. If I could, I'd give this game a flat neutral rating: Play it if you like dystopian horror, absurd comedy, and petty conflict; avoid if you are sensitive to bigotry, find it difficult to teach yourself new game systems, or dislike roleplay. As it stands, though, considering the toxicity of the game's community and the opaqueness and denseness of the developers, I'd have to suggest most people avoid the world of Aneurism IV. Hopefully, that is only for now.

The kind of game where it's the interactions with other players that make it a truly incredible experience. People bringing up the repetitive nature of the game are missing the point. For example, I can go to metalworking and refine iron ore and get different memorable experiences each time even though it's the same monotonous process. Once, a couple of jerks block the mine door and demanded entrance fees, to which a fight broke out ending in their deaths. Another instance had everyone working in coordination to refine ore at max efficiency. Another time I haggled with a Cleaner to sell some parts I looted from a dead miner for credits to feed myself. You can be a janitor, janitor-cop, cop, Judge Dredd, store owner, banker, cult member, 'Scum', a medic - there are a ton of options to play with, and many ways to play them. I see comments complaining about the toxicity, and i say screw 'em. For every dude calling me the hard r, i had someone give me a warning about a shootout or a tip on a neat trick I could do. Every instance of someone stealing my repair kits is balanced by someone else offering to sell their stash of repair kits at a discount. You play long enough on a server, you'll get a reputation and recognise others. I'd take some foul language and angry autists than the voice-recording intrusive crap or heavily censored communication games have nowadays. I should say I don't play with any friends and i don't use discord. Rarely use the mic. You can get by just fine with the typing feature. I will say though, it's a little rough around the edges and some mechanics need fixing. A lot of visual filters/simulated goggle effects that you can't turn off. Feels like a EA title and it irks me a little that it isn't. But the price is more than fair, and the current sale makes it a STEAL. Give it a shot.

Police brutality and systemic oppression simulator 10/10

What seems like a cross between Cruelty Squad and a Gmod Roleplaying server on a copious amount of Benadryl, is actually a pretty decent experience.

theres nothing quite like drugging yourself up on every single substance you can get your hands on and shooting up a half the city's population and police force before coming back home and playing some Aneurism IV 10/10 best laundry folding simulator I've ever played