Recent reviews by Fear

Well, if you like old school ARPG...
If you are a 40K fan...
You will probably love this.
If you are not an old school ARPG fan, not really into WH40K you might not like this. I can see some of the complaints where it might get a little repetitive. The story is great, it is 40K. The art and atmosphere is great, it is 40K. The feel is great, it is 40K.

You however, are not worthy, HERETIC.

The perfect game to play with a 4090 in 4K

No regrets.

Garlic.

Much like the PS version, it is awesome.

This game is complete garbage, from the sales pitch and hype prelaunch it is everything I look for in an exploration game. Things to do, random wandering and exploration. The implementation of it all coupled with the lack of content and repetitive iteration....

Just terrible. This game is the last straw with me on prepurchasing as well. I will never do that again. Steam also denied the refund. Do not walk away from your PC with a game you might be refunding running. A trip to the bathroom and taking the dog for a walk goes 22 minutes over two hours.

Good job steam. The one game in years that I felt was worthy of a refund. I could not even get an entire evening of enjoyment out of this piece of crap.

Paid DLC for an Early Access title?

Yes please! Probably the best 20$ I have spent in a long time. It adds some really fun survival mechanics to the game. New creatures, a new map with loads of exploring to do.

My disclaimers from the main game remain, this game is less enjoyable on aging or lower grade hardware, unless you are willing to put up with lower graphics settings.

I get what I consider a decent frame rate for epic settings ~50FPS
Using an i7 5820K @ 4.4ghz, 32 gigs of ram with an EVGA 1080 FTW

Steam controller is a good buy, it took me a little while to get used to it but once I got my old hands to feel natural on it the feeling became natural. It seems to be durable, it is not rechargeable but does use rechargeable batteries should you desire to use them. I personally use it wired to the PC and wireless to the Steam Link.

Pros :

1. Fiddy bux, not a bad deal.
2. Comes with and uses AA batteries.
3. Comes with wireless "dongle", works wired or wireless and will pair (most of the time, see cons)
4. Infinitely customizable.
5. Did I mention it was only fiddy bux, comes with bluetooth "dongle" USB cord and a right angle cool USB adaptor to make the dongle stand up, (not sure why you would want to....)
6. Works flawlessly with games designed for or optimized for it, and fairly well on some that are not. (see cons)

Cons:
1. It is bluetooth and like most PC bluetooth stuffs can be a bit wonky on sleep wake cycles of your PC.
2. If the game you want to use it with is not optimized for it... good lucks. There are some profiles out there and you can set your own up but some games just do not like it.
3. Stupid prompts to go to big screen view when plugged in to my PC. If I wanted to go to BS view I would, stop bugging me.

A bit of why I got it. I am fully PCMASTERRACE but more and more games are coming out obviously designed for the console and poorly ported to the PC for KBM control. Some of these games just play better with a controller, I hate it but it is truth and a reality that we are going to face more and more going down the road. I hate the XBAWX controller, love the PS controller but it can be a bit wonky as well using emulator software to make your PC think it is an XBAWX controller. Sony should just come out with their own adaptor and fully embrace using their controller as a PC peripheral. I think at this point I would still use the Steam Controller, when it works right, with the right game it is a thing of joy.

Update for 2021 - 2,617 hours well wasted :)

Decided to updatate my review on this game. Still an awesome game, I am still playing it. The paid DLC adds some fun gameplay and new survival mechanics to the mix along with another official map. I am still happily wasting time on this game.
Optimization has come a long ways with the game, this game is still very much a game for newer systems. Old hardware will struggle with it.

To answer some questions from below;

Yes, 1500 hours now well wasted.

Yes this is still EA/Early Access

I had one single experience with "hackers" but they disappeared mysteriously.

Harawanagangsta - I have many other games. Oblivion was a ton of fun, but cannot hold a candle to Ark. I will be giving Skyrim another playthrough when the new version hits in 2 months :)

I am giving this a recommendation, but with some caveats.....

The game is amazing, it is one of the most beautiful games that I have played. The environment is amazing, the creatures are amazing. It is a ton of fun both from the PVE side of things to the PVP side of things. For an EA title it is one of the best that I have played. In my opinion it is better and more playable than some AAA fully released titles that I have played. I have too many hours in as it stands now and cannot stop playing for long, still.

The bad.......

You need a powerful computer to have an enjoyable experience with this game. Do not get it thinking that your midgrade from 4 years ago PC that plays some AAA titles that were developed for consoles very well will play this very well. It will not, Ark will most likely bring your potato to it's knees. The minimum specs for this game will lead you to a bad experience.

The public servers for this game are pretty lame. PVE servers are for the most part rife with structure spam and griefing. The PVP servers are for the most part dominated by a few alpha tribes. Not to say that either will not be enjoyable, they will for a bit, maybe even longer depending on the tribe you align with. They need more active moderation, which is coming according to the developer.

The developers for the game are great, releases and new content have come at a break neck pace. With that being said sometimes it seems the important things are not being addressed in a timely fashion. The developers have also not hit a single target release date/time that they have set. Not a huge deal but don't hang your hat on any specific time they set :)

I am recommending the game, but also very serious about the performance issues if you do not have a well maintained powerful system.