Recent reviews by Luden

Now, when I installed this game all I expected was a poorly executed popular social deception game wanna-be. I'm a huge fan of Among Us, and it had got me hooked on a desolate space genre vibe, so naturally this seemed different enough to satisfy that itch.

What I didn't expect was a story campaign that would genuinely leave me feeling empty once I had completed it... At the time of this review, the story consists of 4 chapters/instalments and takes less than 1.5hrs to complete.

It's a narrative driven experience as the gameplay and objectives are very simple. You have to fight and survive swarms of enemies while trying to get from point A-to-B while carrying reactors or trying to escape to safety - and overall it is something that requires very little concentration or skill.

It reminds me a lot of Stanley's Parable - the way you're travelling about while listening to someone ramble on making you forcibly exhale out of your nose and grin from ear to ear from time to time.

The voice acting is phenomenal. I'm not talking about God of War Kratos level of immersion or professionalism - but more in the sense that it fits the character so well.

The level design is beautiful. The environment feels natural. What blew me away though was how navigation was handled. What I feel some games nowadays can't seem to nail is managing to successfully show the player which direction to go to progress. The direction to progress is sewn into the environment by using simple but effective subtle change in the lighting.

The writing is simple, but it is exceptionally witty. It's a somewhat mostly self-monologue that you're an unfortunate fly on the wall for. Run errands while someone lounges about and chatters to you about their totally inappropriate thoughts and feelings for the current situation you find yourself in.

While this game seems to brand itself as a social deception game first and foremost, anyone who picks it up for that and that reason only are sorely missing out on this hidden gem.

Did it move me to tears like The Last of Us? No. Did it take me on a journey like God of War? No. Did it present me with challenging puzzles like Portal? No.
Was it meant to do any of those things? No. But in here you will find a game that is nothing short of charming, witty, and crafted with love.

For a free to play game its story has NO business being this good. Please develop it further. I need Steve's rebellious and sassy personality back in my life.

In all honesty, this game really went no where.

I'm all for indie game titles that I can follow from Alpha to their 1.0 release, but honestly, if someone told me Scrap Mechanic had been abandoned long ago I wouldn't be surprised... I've heard nothing from it since it rocked the Steam shelves back in 2016 when it entered Early Access. Youtuber's hyped it up as the best and most fun sandbox game with dazzling potential down the line, and so many people bought into it - as did I. However, in my grand total of 4 hours played, it never showed promise that there was going to be more. I couldn't imagine it being more, or where it would go. It got sorely put back on the shelf.

They've only just added survival? After 4 years?
I don't know, this was just a little bit disappointing.

This game definitely has its flaws.

However, I am very biased and I am prone to really overlook these issues. It definitely could be better, and it definitely should be in most departments, but I don't mind. I'm content. I'm just immune to some of the complaints people usually have.

I love it. It's flawed. I try to support the devs as much as possible. I appreciate what this game is, and what its future holds in store.

I'll be playing this game until its server's shut down - and let's hope this won't be for many years to come.

GL&HF <3

The hours say it all.

Nominated for the Labour of Love award 2022.

It's just a bit naff.

Low spawn rates, or in some areas excessively high spawn rates.
SOME areas are pretty, the rest are just flat and boring.
Valguero is a far superior map as it balances dinosaur spawns, flat buildable areas, and aesthetics all together effectively. Whereas Crystal Isles can't seem to combine all three in any given area, it's one or the other.

The crystal wyverns were cool, until I realised the ember wyvern is just a fire wyvern, and the tropical wyvern is just a reskinned frost wyvern.

I truly believe there are genuinely no negative reviews for this game. It's buggy, yes, however this game is in active development and they're working very hard to crack down on these issues. Anyone who has marked this game as "Not Recommended" are doing so for valid reasons, however, I do really feel that steam is really missing a "Neutral" option for their reviews. as I feel this rating would've been a lot more accurate following what they had to say.

Personally, I wholeheartedly recommend this game. It's great, it's fun, it's exactly what I was hoping for. It's got a long way to go, but they've started off on the right foot. I'm thoroughly enjoying what it has to offer so far, despite there being some crucial game elements not implemented yet.

PROS:
-You know exactly what you're paying for. It's a Mount & Blade game, if you liked Warband, this game is going to feel incredibly satisfying because this has absolutely hit the mark.
-The community is lively. Everyone is giving this game some love and the modding has already hit the ground running. Nothing major has been released yet, but there's so many people working on the typical huge map and faction stuff. This will definitely get the love and attention that Warband got.
-It's gorgeous. Honestly, it feels so amazing to run around the battle field when it's as eye catching as it is.

CONS:
-It's early access. I don't see this as a con personally, although my next point is probably what makes this a negligible point to make.
-I do have to agree it doesn't feel like 8 years worth of development, however, the game runs incredibly smoothly on my machine. No frame drops, just very stable graphically. This is an incredibly strong foundation to work from, and I'm huge fan of supporting early access games, and I've seen some really flourish come release. This is absolutely smashing the early access stuff - they're very quick to patch the game, I've genuinely never seen anything like this from any game, let alone one titled as early access. The devs are doing good, maybe cut them a bit of slack.
-There have been save game breaks and other pretty janky bugs and glitches. If you're looking to be able to pick up this game and follow a save through to the bitter end, you may not get that experience right now. I've had no issues of this calibre, but there are people who have. So be cautious.

If you're not up for dealing with the complications that can come with an early access title then don't buy it right now. This is where I really agree with those who have rated this as not recommended. It really does have it's problems that do need working on, so if you're unsure based on those reasons, then give this a miss for the time being, but keep a close eye on it. Otherwise, take the plunge and sink hours away.

Pre 1.0 Review:
I used to be a major Terraria fan until this little game propped up in my view. I was instantly sold on this game and I have been keeping up with the Dev process ever since. This game has come a very long way since I first saw it. Admittably I haven't been playing it as much as it deserves to be, but there's nothing better than coming back after so many months to see a completely new game before me.

Chuckle Fish honestly has to be one of my most favoured Indie developers of all time, and are probably better well known for the beautiful HarvestMoon-esque game 'Stardew Valley' which was published recently. I just wish that people would realise that Chuckle Fish have been involved with a barrage of beautiful indie games that all deserve this love universally.

Beautiful game.

I am too busy indulging myself in this game to give it a full review, however I will sum it up with: Yes.

I first made my review for this game back in November, 2015 when the game was in very early development. I rated it as "Recommended" and this was the original review:

/////////

I have an Albino T-Rex called Fintan. He's baddass.

9.5/10.

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However after following this game's development over the past five years, I feel that now would be a good time to potentially revisit and update my review.

I no longer recommend this game.

To be frank, this game still has many of the optimisation errors that it suffered greatly from upon release. There are still numerous texture glitches, and I feel these issues are getting worse and harder to address with each update.

The Updates are horrendous.
Firstly, this game is a hog to download, install, and update. It's so poor at making updates quick and easy, it genuinely makes me question whether my PC is on it's last legs.
I have a 100MB download speed, and it has taken me well over 11 hours to download and install 12GBs worth of updates to celebrate the Crystal Islands map release and ARK 5th anniversary. Let alone trying to update and manage my remote-host ARK server to accommodate for these updates as well.
I have to put a whole day aside to get through one update, and because of how much of my disc it uses up trying to allocate and calculate space, I cannot play any other game. It makes Chrome look like nothing in terms of RAM usage. I have no idea why it is like this, and frankly, I am too terrified to reinstall the game knowing it could literally take years.

The DLCs are sporadic in quality, are any of them worth paying for?
The developers have certainly dished out some nice DLCs, some of the best being for free. However, their blatant money grabbing DLCs grossly outweigh the positives of the free DLCs. Their models for the DLCs are very varied and strange. Some just being one upfront cost, and others costing an extortionate amount for a season pass that is actually only two DLCs (or more, who knows, it's really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hard to understand).
While Scorched Earth had many moral problems surrounding its release, it's content was certainly a nice example of the dev team's taken on keeping content fresh and imaginative, and the ability to create new wilderness bursting with diversity to explore and conquer. Although, it quickly got boring because it felt very self limited and while the new environment was fun and the challenges were different, I began to miss a lot of the aspects of the base map.
However, DLCs like Aberration and Extinction, while they were very picturesque, left me feeling there was a lot to be desired and both catered towards a much more apocalyptic and space sci-fi target audiences, which made me feel rather uninterested and left out.

Will I continue to play ARK despite my many complaints?
Yes, I do still own the game, and I have been a fan of this genre and many other indie titles. I am also fortunate enough to have enough time and patience to be able to deal with the painfully slow downloading times. As well, I have a good enough PC that the majority of the optimisation issues, my PC can just about churn through without slowing it down too much.

I became friends with the peace loving Gandhi and it turns out he betrayed me and turned out to be the hugest warmonger ever and his OP army raped my underpowered army in a mere 5 turns. 9.5/10 +1 for realism.