Recent reviews by Ginko

I'm not gonna say everyone will be playing this in 6 months, but I logged 11 hours in my first session and it felt like 3. Can't remember the last game that had me so instantly hooked. It's got legs, nothing groundbreaking but a fascinating mesh of the good bits from a few games and a fair amount of dark absurdity that breathes a fresh perspective a survival game.

I don't think Ark is the closest comparison either, at first its easy to see make that connection but its closer to Rimworld in first person. Its that first person perspective that makes it satisfying. The random personality traits bring a level of repeatability mixed with the best of other games that gives me hope for its future. The dev's are onto something and I'll be livid if they don't capitalize on what they've started. So much room for growth, feels a bit like how you generally know what to expect from each Rust wipe, yet you keep coming back.

Nintendo, stay the hell away from this game.

Forced cross-play with aim assist from consoles and cheaters from PC. The maps are made like stock images of modern families, and it sucks. Mounting, slow ADS times and corner hopping. It sure is fun to have every enemy round the corner either already ADS or bunny hopping.

Its 2022, what did anyone actually expect, the game caters to everyone at the same time, so nobody is happy.

The beta's were amazing. Showed so much promise, as a 4k hour Tarkov player this was going to be a breathe of fresh air.

Essentially nothing improved from the beta's, in fact I'd argue things got worse with sound bugs, player model shading, memory leaks and game crashes that wipe your characters inventory. These crashes didn't happen for me in the beta's, and the fact that reconnecting to the servers upon crash wasn't part of the full release is ridiculous. This is not new tech to survival games! It's way to frequent and impactful to the overall experience not to mention now, even if it gets solved later.

It's just a big shame, for all the things this game does right, things that gave me hope that I might find a decent looter-shooter survival game that isn't EFT. There are frequent frustrations that I understand are core elements to the game design and will always been a pain to endure.

1. Minimal game input on understanding your team's positioning. The removal of friendly silhouettes from the beta was a mistake. The ambiguous friendly white dots on an non-zoomable map is painful in and out of combat (at least give your teammates the same arrow shape indicators on the map). Efficient team communication is often difficult because of the lack of unique monuments around many gunfights.

2. There isn't vertical audio, in fact if you are more than 2 building floors below the sound source, it flat out doesn't exist. Try calling an extract and wondering where the heck it is only to find out it landed and took off without a sound...

3. The AI are just as dumb as the beta's, they will sooner run near a players and do a screaming animation than actually attack or continue pursing the target, in gunfights where the AI are alive and around enemies, its hard not to look for directional clues from aggro'ed AI, except the AI don't maintain aggression, they stop to showboat so freakin much!

4. The insistence on completing equip animations is getting old fast. Comparing to Hunt: Showdown, I feel old and crippled waiting on a syringe to finish then fully bringing my ICA Guarantee up to chest height before being allowed to shoot. In switching from melee to gun and vice versa, I don't care where my knife is at let me use it the moment I press V, either speed up the animations or don't make it contingent on the charging up of a heavy melee strike. This game laughs in the face of players who have developed coordination with the game controls, you are capped at very low level of game mechanic speed.

5. The crafting needs of weapon attachments just doesn't feel like a thing I'm ever going to try and accomplish. I'm down with the armor crafting because I can memorize those. But there are 20+ attachments and they all have different recipes, I'm not going to care enough about a holographic sight to remember all those recipes. It seemed outlandish in the beta's and I figured a finished quest progression will let you buy the attachments instead, but nope. I've resided to never having a 4x scope because I don't know why I'd ever go into a raid specifically wanting to find materials to craft it, its a senseless amount of effort for a game so foggy and dark I'll likely never get to use its full potential anyway.

These are just a few things that come to mind, but after a couple years and two beta's, you'd have to NOT play your own game to let these simple things go unnoticed which is why I have little faith in things changing. I feel like the developers are content with these things, and its a real shame.

The bulk of my friends started playing before release, on Mari - West NA. Upon game launch the servers that were open early became locked to new players, effectively excluding myself and others from joining our well-established friends on Mari.

Amazon has established a pattern between New World and Lost Ark of treating its players like subjugated rats. I don't know if this game is decent or if I'd even like it, but truthfully I can't be bothered to find out alone on a different server than my friends. Amazon ruined this simple server configuration in New World and I don't see this game fairing much better.

Just want to decompress after a long work day. Nope, 2000+ queue for a server that had NO queue 2 days prior when I made the character w/friends. Thanks Amazon, now I don't get to touch your game before sleep and repeat. Screw joining a new server, I'm in deep on this one and its not fair to drag my friends to a new server too. Population limits are far too strict and there is no guessing if the empty server you joined will be a 2000+ queue by the end of the week.

Not like the game is even worth waiting in queue for IF you have the hours left in the day to do so. I've done the same faction quest 6 times in the first day of playing, the dev's have designed each region of the map to be self-sufficient in activities and there are so few quests they repeat consistently, creating a repetitive chore-filled quest cycle with no variety and depth to speak of. The mob variety is laughable, all PvE attacks actions are scripted with no reactive AI, and player gear complexity is at a mobile game level of basic.

Cannot judge end game more than what was in the Beta, but seemingly nothing has changed thus far from the Beta's so not much hope to PvP map control balancing. Lets just say, I've been fighting the same undead ghoul with a slightly different name and tattered jacket for 25 levels, what a waste of basic MMORPG expectations. Only redeemable features are a rewarding PvE skill progression and beautiful map. But what is that worth when the allure of a decent high-level experience proves empty and your grinding efforts in vain...