Recent reviews by Zaelrae

Original Message (Positive Review): Absolutely loving this game, it's an amazing concept and beautifully executed. I can see myself playing this for many more hours to come. For Super Earth!

Edit 1 (Negative Review): Sony enforcing PSN on PC players is just disgusting behaviour because now they are knowingly cutting off majority of the world from this game, including people who have already paid for the game. Not to mention the whole "Oh it's for your safety" BS, they can't even safely look after their own data. Just look up all the leaks and hacks. Now yes you can argue, oh just use a VPN and it's not like Sony is the only one to get hacks. That's not the point here. We shouldn't be settling and allowing these sorts of things. When did we, as gamers, get so easy to pushover? Games used to be amazing, fun to play, so easy to replay and still enjoy it every time.

Edit 2 (Positive Review): Now that the whole Tyranny of Sony BS is dealt with -- for now -- we can finally return to spreading democracy for Super Earth! But now for an actual review again.

This game deserves all the love it got at launch and continued to get, up to Sony's screw up, even now after the events of Sony's Tyranny being ended the game is still one of the best games to drop in a very long time for modern gaming. I hope that AH can keep powering through and making this game even better in the future. 8/10 Highly Recommended.

If I had to pick one personal hate with this game, it's that if a single person goes on the shuttle it starts the timer. I've been encountering way too many trolls recently who just instantly call in extraction and board the shuttle straight away, leaving everyone else behind. For example, times where I've hunted down every sample in a map and on my way to the shuttle only for some random to just hop in and leave me behind, completely wasting all my time and effort. The shuttle leaving should be a vote system instead of just first to board starts it, or at least make it that half (or more) of the active divers in-game have to board the shuttle before the countdown begins.

Edit 3 (Negative Review): Sadly we were wrong, we thought we Liberated Sony from the tyranny that took hold. We have been lied to. Sony is removing yet more countries able to view the Helldivers 2 store page. They agreed to take back PSN, which they did, but they never said anything about allowing those countries that wouldn't have had access anyway because of PSN, to have access again to this game.

We live in a truly disappointing and sad time where corporate greed and a failure to care for the consumers has ruined even gaming and the entire industry for it essentially. Xbox & Sony have failed all of us. Time to start avoiding any titles owned by Microsoft/Xbox and Sony/Playstation.

Skip to after this paragraph if you want ratings and any edits.

So to start, I came into this expecting nothing but I was honestly surprised. They have done ARK justice with this even with how bad the time up until now has been. I don't see how or why anyone is complaining about crashes or bugs because I've not encountered a single thing nor have I crashed once, admittedly there's a couple visual artefacts that occur. This may be due to me using a 4k screen instead of my usual 1440p. The game does not seem ready for 4k I'll say that much as the UI and textures feel stretched to accommodate the higher resolution. It's painfully obvious and any other 4k users will likely say the same on this. Just take a look at the text, that's the dead giveaway.

Performance - I'm giving this a 10/10, I was honestly expecting performance like the original but I am happy to be proven wrong. I have all my settings cranked to the absolute max, excluding motion blur because it's the worst setting to ever exist, and I'm having no issues whatsoever. I'm locked at 60fps at 4k without a single frame drop.

Graphics - These are a solid 8/10. This is due to the game clearly not being able to render 4k properly but otherwise everything is absolutely beautiful and being able to roam the island with these new graphics just brings back precious memories of the first time exploring ark, seeing all that's new and enjoying it.

Gameplay - 9/10. They removed the one feature I've always loved which was the ability to pull items from nearby containers into your own, admittedly this may have been from S+ but I don't recall if it was or not, now you have no choice but to go around searching for the one item you needed in your storage or just go out gathering more.

Overall Opinion - 9/10. While yes SG and WC have done ARK dirty for a long time now, including raising the price of ASA just shortly after launch, RIP late purchasers, ASA has breathed life back into ARK. I was ready to instantly refund this if they didn't deliver but they have. I have regained some small hope that they'll go on to bring ARK back to the number 1 survival game. Also the addition of the in-game mod browser is going to make finding good mods far easier and managing what mods you want to use simpler and easier also. I look forward to when the first lot of good mods start to appear and can't wait to play around with them.

Edit 1: My overall opinion is dropped to 5/10 due to;

- SG/WC raised the price of the game just a few hours after launch.

- Non-dedicated is permanently stuck at 180m-200m tether distance regardless of what you actually set it too which makes playing with others pretty much impossible without purchasing a server from Nitrado, which I refuse to do. (Explained below)

- There is no way to self-host your own server thanks to Nitrado and SG/WC being greedy, no surprise there honestly.

I refuse to give a single cent to Nitrado due to how incompetent they are as a server host. Their server performance is subpar, support is non-existent or incredibly incompetent to the point in the past when I had a server with them I had to learn and fix the issues myself just for my server to run better. Their prices are way too high for the options they offer. If you want a good host for games, go to BisectHosting instead. Don't give Nitrado anything just for this game.

Edit 2: My opinion has one again changed, WC/SG has backed off the Nitrado complete exclusivity and allowed self-hosting again just like in ASE. Major win for the community here so overall I'm back to a solid 8/10. Also the issues I was having with the game in 4k have gone, it doesn't feel stretched and pixelated anymore.

My sole reason for not going back to the 9/10 I initially reviewed it are due to the fact that they still have NOT fixed the non-dedicated tether setting issue which prevents players, who either can't afford to rent a server or have the knowledge or ability to self-host their own private server, from even playing with their friends without the insane frustration of being trapped in a 180m bubble around the host.

At time of review the game looks, sounds and feels great for the most part. The only issue I'm having is the performance issues, I'm running a 5900X paired with a 7900 XTX and I'm constantly stuttering even with all settings at low or off, hdr and auto rendering off and even my fps limit capped at 60 instead of 120 and I still constantly stutter or freeze in the city. Making the starter mission rather infuriating trying to beat the first boss when the game freezes every couple seconds. It's also not just the starter mission it happens on as after I finished I tried another mission that took me back there to destroy artillery and I'm getting the same freezes just trying to roam around the city. Looks like I'm waiting for some post launch patches so it's playable. What a shame as I was so hyped about this game.

**UPDATE 1**

Since my initial negative review there have been several patches, one of these seems to have fixed my issue and I can now run this beautiful game at max settings without a single frame drop. Thanks devs for getting onto it quickly! My review is now changed to I would definitely recommend this game to be played by all.

As much as I've loved this game over the years I can no longer in good faith recommend this scamming and scummy studio to receive any more money from their victims. If they didn't pile lie after lie like a throne to sit upon and engage in such scummy practices I wouldn't have finally decided to commit to leaving this review.

To summarise, they promised a FREE upgrade to UE5 (Just like what Satisfactory did but they actually did it! Shocker I know!), instead now they're going to charge for it. They're showing next to nothing in regards to ASA or ARK 2, not to mention the constant massive delays, so we have next to no evidence to see if the games even going to be any good.

Fun fact for those who don't know, UE4 can EASILY be AUTOMATICALLY upgraded to UE5 with a few button clicks. That's it. The minor assets they've been "teasing" over the months would have literally taken like a couple minutes at most. At this point it's painfully obvious they're trying to milk as much money from this game as they can before releasing ASA. I'm honestly surprised we as a community have allowed things to get this far but enough is enough.

On a side note, I approve of the transition to make use of Overwolf as it's definitely a great MOD MANAGER and far easier to use than most others, definitely better than the Steam Workshop that's for sure. I'm not likely to approve of the PAID MODS however as that's giving 25% of the price to this scum of a company which I'd rather not see get anything.

Early Review after a few matches.

• Tutorial - Simple and straight to the point, the way a good tutorial should be. Would barely take up a few minutes allowing you to get into the fight as soon as possible.

• Gameplay - Excellent gameplay and replayability so far. My only gripe with it so far is the fact there's no OC and AS servers. Really leaves the OC and AS players trapped with high ping regardless of server they connect to. I've personally found that only US West has given me the best ping to be playable.

• Graphics - Beautiful graphics with barely noticeable stuttering with animations. Only animations I've really noticed to not be smooth are the animations to do with the dropships. Otherwise I'd say flawless.

• Overall Thoughts - 9/10 - I've loved the Starship Troopers franchise since the movies growing up and I'm so proud to see a classic becoming relevant again so many years later with new games. This game has a LOT of potential to become a great addition to the franchise and I look forward to watching it grow during Early Access. I would rate this full stars if not for the lack of OC/AS servers and the animation of the dropships being obviously stuttery.

Received this game as a sponsorship on one of my streams quite some time ago, upon trying to actually play the game it was completely dead and didn't load into any games, so naturally stream review ended then and there, apparently there was 1 person online, that being me. Sad to say I can't give the game itself an actual review as I never got to try out any gameplay. Looks fun and decent but would be an idea to fill in slots with AI bots to make up for the lack of players.

I've sunk the past week into this game and gotta say I'm absolutely loving it so far! The combat was a little difficult to pick up at first and yes there were a lot of times it annoyed me half to death but once I got the hang of it and learnt a whole lot of tricks it became so much more fun and instead I've been enjoying the story switching between a full knight in the best armour I could find and a noble outfit when I'm just strolling through towns. 10/10 would highly recommend this game and especially the DLC! Oh and you should definitely put off the main storyline as long as possible so you can level up and get rich for a horse. If you can get a horse before going on the hunt with Capon you'll get different scenes than you would without it! ;)

This here be a good game, 10/10 would buy again

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A great and funny game, truly reminds me of the old Dungeon Keeper game but with some good comedic relief added in!