Recent reviews by Harpy

PROS:
1. Good atmosphere and graphics
2. Doesn't rely on jump scares
3. Didn't get lost
4. Will make most players feel uncomfortable
5. Free

CONS:
1. I feel like the game over does it with some of the sound effects. For me I know a lot of them didn't mean anything bad. However, I doubt that's the case for everyone. I think the game could benefit from more sounds relating to something that's actually happening.
2. I don't think all of the cut-scenes were necessary. One or two kind of broke the immersion for me.

Overall I enjoyed the game. I could see this game selling for a couple dollars but I'm very happy you let everyone have it for free.

From my understanding the game didn't hit its funding goal and didn't make a dime. I think they did their best with the money they made from beta sales and unfortunately the funding's gone and the game's dead. I believe it's now only being developed by volenteers.

However I really love the game and wish it didn't fail, let me try and pitch to you what it's all about:

The environments and lighting are interwoven with the gameplay, it's not just to look pretty. Sometimes you're shooting out lights to conceal yourself, you get cozy but then the sun comes out and you're scrambling for cover. Other times you find yourself stuck in a pitch black room with the sounds of footsteps and hissing robots all around you, everyone's too scared to turn on their flashlights else a hoard of screaming robots charge you... then out of nowhere the room is illuminated with a spinning red light sending you and your friends screaming and running away. The game seriously does a beautiful job of incorporating environment into the gameplay and makes for one of the most unique experiences I've ever had. The game makes me feel so claustrophobic and on edge even to this day - 6 years later.

I hope the dream's not dead and that one day something or someone can bring the game back onto its feet. I can't bring myself to give the game a negative review even though the content's limited and the development cycle is dead, it's $10 and I feel like I got my money's worth.

Classic game for a class based shooter.

They fixed there game pretty quickly. Servers now give you a game.

Gameplay is fun, a little confusing and the first person wobbly physics can make you motion sick. However - the game is funny and when you get into fights they are pretty damn fun.

Recommended.

UPDATE: added one more Pro, I feel the game deserves it

I've played the isle once with a few friends. Although the game concept is good and the over all aesthetic to the game is great (dinosaurs are high quality, maps look beautiful) the community and developer(s) may have goals that are too ambitious for the team size and current computer specs.

Let's start with some Pro's, then Con's.

Fairly frequent updates (what I've seen) the devs do work hard, especially the head dev, I've watched him work and it appears he's busting his A** off to get this game where he wants it.

Good graphics - the game as I said is aesthetically pleasing (if your computer can handle it) and the art style appears to fit itself well.

Game has a ton of potential. I think if these big (but not horribly difficult to fix) problems are fixed, and the gameplay of the game is finnished I'd happily change this review to a possitive.

Unfortionately, I don't know what else to say.


No real gameplay (atm). You can only be a dinosaur, 60% of the game is roaming because their doesn't appear to be any real objectives or game play, the other 40% is waiting 30 minutes for your broken leg to heal (litterally appart of the game), which makes you walk slower than what'd be considered "bareable" by most gamers, especially on such huge maps. If you break a leg in an area filled with dead dinos (you'll see why this is bad in a later part of this review). Good luck closing your game if you're on a decent / below average gaming rig.

Toxic community. No game or developer is immune to critisism (most devs I've talked to are fine, evidence of that is commented below this review), I find it hard to even write this review because some of my friends practically worship the "game". Large part of the community comes from a game called Primal Carnage, who's server owners will ban you from server's for simple disagreements such as a review like mine.

Game requires high end graphics as a minimum requirement. It could easily allow more playerbase in if optimizations such as despawning dinos after death were put in.

One of the most optimized maps in the game is a community made map. It's heavily critisized and hated for not achieving the extreme ammount of detail everyone in the community dreams about. This simply put, is not realistic. Every game has flaws, because computers have flaws. This map ironically is played on a lot of servers because the other default one's are incredibly difficult to run on the server's end, and the client's end (aka player). Things like render distance, entity spawning and tons of work in optimization need to be put in place. Last I checked, this game was not optimized in almost any way acceptable. If you do get this game, I do recommened playing on said map. It's playable and still very pleasing to the eye (graphically speaking).

Work flow. The work done in the game feels backwards to me, dinosaurs and maps are created, even released without extremely important things like ensuring corpses delete themselves to preventing lag, or adjustable foilage render distances, minimal graphics settings or simple things to do on the maps. Updates worry me because I feel it's just more things that are going to break my game, or freeze my computer.