Recent reviews by Dagrond

I played this a lot before they moved to the Steam platform. We met every week. It was a mess, but we laughed. Then we finally gave up, it was just too hard to play. When it went to Steam I thought maybe the dropouts and odd behaviors would go away. This is still broken.

But even then, it used to be fun until they nerfed all the DNA oddities. Now it's just buggy. Uninstalling again.

Five years later review: After not playing this out of frustration five years ago I thought I would give it another try. Lots of improvements in the new player guidance - but not enough. It is still an absolute struggle to learn how to play this game. When it does try to tell you something it flashes off the screen before you can read it. After pig-headedly clawing my way through the first quest-line using lots of outside searches, I spent 15 minutes trying to fiqure out what to do next. I couldn't. So I'm not gonna, got better things to do than reverse engineer what might be fun.


Original review: The quest system is just to hard to figure out. And then it breaks where you have to drop the quest and can never get it back again. Sure its fun to just shoot for an hour or so, but forget about following anything to make sense. Very disappointed in them not following through. Could have been really great.

WORST keyboard port ever.

Lara Croft with a light-saber: minus crafting and that tight ...

Hat's off to EA for some decent QA for once. Keep raising that bar. I didn't particularly enjoy the game-play that much, but I'd buy another title from ya.

Story is good, unfolds well. Going in-and-out of cut scenes was not actually bad. I was fearing the worst when I started. Combat works good enough to get you involved and become the character. If you want a challenge, turn it up to eleven I guess.

The skin gathering, leveling tree and weapon/tool upgrades are really just handed to you. You can't make a "Build" per se. Just play it out. At least that is what I saw on my play-through.

Map levels are good. Interesting hidden and hard to get to areas. Decent puzzling involved in getting around. The general UI and Story Directorship could use some clarity back to the player in a couple of places, But you can make it through using what is at hand. Eventually.

I'll say its worth a play. Unless you're a fanboy, don't pay full price.

No technical issues as mentioned in other reviews / no Rockstar issues. Not playing online though. (win 10, i5 w/64mb cache, 16mb mem, nvidia 6xxx, 4TB 10k rpm drive.0

I really hate the crappy save system. You get NO CHOICE whatsoever.

Story is engaging, well voiced. Believable characters and characters they are!

I enjoy hobo hopping a train without paying and just flushing out the map.

Missions are fun enough, can be repeated with specific goal challenges if you like that.

Fashion is reasonable without buying anything. IRL.

Don't like the survival aspects that it has (weapon wear, hair gel wears out, hair growth so you actually have to go and get trimmed again) but I'll get over it. Just didn't expect to have to manage that. Don't care to manage that. Personal issue only. Plays accurate.

Some things don't work well. Like when I got a bounty on me of $15, I went to the Sherrif to get arrested and clear it up (later found there are better ways). But he didn't care. Then as I was leaving he got mad, yelled shot me. Cuz I had a bounty.
It just didn't gel.

Or when I had my horse at a hitching post and approached him in such a way that he got turned around but was still teathered and he got wild. Kicked me in the head and I flew across the street. Funny as F.

Never hit the windows key - lag gets HUGE and you'll have to restart.

But over all, seems things hold together with no real issues.

10 hrs - offline/story mode

THAT was fun.

I kept saying to myself "I remember that" as the story unfolded through the cinematics and cut scenes. Yet is was a fresh play of a new RPG. I enjoyed traversing through the story given and had no issue with figuring out UI elements. Questing was clear and easy to knock them out.

Things that I would address:
Combat pointing with the mouse was frustrating. I would rather have key bindings and just use the mouse to move.
Character customization (face/body) would be nice
Character view is static, I would like to be able to change the viewport to some distance back (scroll wheel maybe)
Climbing is clunky because you have to have the climb icon before you can use the ability. Need it more Lara Croft.
After I stole that one guys stuff from his cave and he wanted to fight me, I beat him down only to have him drink a potion and go to full health again. This happened five times in a row. I finally just walked away. He didn't care. I think if you have an NPC that you can't kill, some indication would be nice. Maybe he curses you and walks off, I Dunno. With no feedback it was a long 40 minute battle that ended in nothing gained.

Things that didn't work"
Could not get mouse sensitivity to change (less) no matter what the setting
TAB controlled UI wheel would just hang there on the screen for me. Stopped using it.
Severe lag at the gate to the new colony
Achievement for collection bottles and relieving oneself did not show on Steam even though I did them

Kinda funny. And it actually has game mechanics to build up your farm. But it is seriously grindy, and I am beating my mouse so much it needs a break.

The bloom is so bad from in-cab that I can't play. Especially at Indianapolis. Other views are reasonable but I don't care for that arcade style of view.

Its a little disappointing because the series IRL is fun to watch and its nice to play in that space. The tracks and trucks in game seam in good shape. I'm not going to uninstall it and ask for a refund because I am hopeful for a fix. But if you like racing from the cab, then I would not recommend at this time.

Anyone else, sure go for it on sale.

Tough game. lot's of fun meeting the challenges. In the end I stopped following the story and just went to kill all dogs. ALL DOGS. LOL, lots of fun.

Good survival stuff. A little just survive, two parts Stalker and some good plot pulling you in. Pleasently surprised and the way the are continuing to work on it, I am looking forward to many more nights getting scared out of my chair.