Recent reviews by Syntex366

If you're here for singleplayer, this is a good buy, great story with very entertaining characters, and plenty of hours of quality playtime.

If you're here for online, take your money elsewhere, and if you don't, you're in for a Destiny 2/ARK survival kind of experience. There's a LOT of issues with Rockstar's customer service and support that leave the community suffering.

Firstly, you may see a couple reviews warning you about massive exploits that can ban accounts and possibly even hack computers. They have been patched, but Rockstar took 3 days to even bother making an innocuous tweet on the support account to alert players about them (and they were aware beforehand btw, they just tried to ignore it but finally responded when they realized that they could be legally liable) and still then downplayed the severity. for the next week they left the servers online, released FOMO content to encourage people to log in, and sent patches out for money glitches. It took 11 DAYS for a security patch for SOLELY the lawsuit level mods to be patched, and knowing how they patch, its gonna be a problem again in a week. This is how greedy they are. Your gameplay experience is COMPLETELY unimportant to them, all they care about is what affects the sale of in game transactions.

Secondly, the content they add is even more indicative of this lazy greed. In the past we've had great updates, incredible ones even. But then came last summer. Rockstar got a bad case of "dripfeed" meaning they withheld all the car content of the update and every 2 weeks or so dropped something. it took until a month before the next biannual update to get the last car. The December update? We don't have it. They got into an even worse habit. Now they take upwards of a month just to put something out on a LIMITED time, and of course they did this during the RCE attacks too, so if it hadnt been for the patch that just came out, no one on PC would even be able to have gotten the car without risking their entire account. Even worse, its not just the cars. We have nothing from this update because they have locked everything from properties to MISSION DIFFICULTIES behind dripfeed. And this isn't because they're not done, its all been update in and is in the files, they just haven't made it player accessible yet. At the rate they're dropping them, we wont get even a decent bit of the promised content by the time the next update is supposed to be out.

Thirdly, there's the content itself. Its all copy paste work. All the cars are just old, even OG cars that have re-skins and slight frame adjustments with pre existing upgrades. This big 50 car garage they promised is just a normal garage but literally copy pasted 5 times. They have no excuse. They have made entire freshly made assets in 6 months before. The Cayo Perico update put a whole new map in the game as well as some great cars, not to mention the best heist in the game's history, six months of work. This copy paste crap is beyond obviously apathetic, they've done plenty more before and aren't willing to do it anymore.

Now since GTA6 is confirmed to be in development, I get if the attention is shifting. But they need to stop promising so much and delivering so little, nobody would mind hearing that GTA online is gonna be getting minor additions from now on like a couple cars and a small business, or maybe make the updates annual instead of bi-annual. Hell they could just flat out say "We've been putting resources into the next title" so we at least know why. Plenty of solutions they don't pursue.

While I do recommend this game, I JUST recommend it, mainly because I believe that this developer deserves some compensation so that he is more inclined to continue working on this project, because it is a very good horror game, but it mainly lacks good creative writing at the moment, and it is quite short for its price. Doing everything can take typically 3-4 hours (some say less than 2, but I feel like those people just rushed the game without trying to enjoy it) meaning you're paying between 7-5 dollars an hour for this game. beyond that its just small things that are of solely personal opinion and therefore not worthy of mention in my main review, but I will list those at the bottom anyways in case anyone might agree/disagree and would like to discuss/compare their own ideas.

To start with the simple and important aspect; the horror. This game is VERY scary, and it is this fact that earned the game my positive review. Charles is a genuine threat at all stages of the game, so he does not become obsolete even with the gain of new weapons and more upgrades, he is always a danger. You never get used to his appearance, no matter how many times it happens you know the stress that will follow because you have to be shooting, aiming for his face, not overheating your weapon, repairing your train in the midst of the fight to avoid being dead in the water, swapping your weapons for the best defense strategies, The needs and stresses of combat make Charles a horrifying sight to see and stress the need to avoid him, without actually making the aspect of combat feel broken or annoying. The true horror comes in when you have exited your train and you here that haunting whistle. There is no safety outside of your train cab, you hear that while scrap hunting or walking to a mission, you stop whatever you're doing and sprint faster than Usain Bolt back to your cab, because if you don't, your dead, that is a certainty.

But then issue #1; The introduction of Charles, is bad. There is an answer why; The developer has been very openly broadcasting the development of his game on multiple platforms, notably Youtube. Because of this, he fell into the opinion that the audience he was catering to, just knew the game, so there wasn't any point in trying to have a fanciful intro. This led to the game opening up with a very blunt intro, just "yeah get over here and kill this" and immediately drops a full photo of Charles on screen. The game makes no attempt to drum up its main villain because the developer has assumed that nobody here is new, and this is a very big mistake. Charles deserves a much more built up, shock value intro than he received, It would increase the games horror aspect significantly as well as help absorb players who weren't apart of the development journey, and just blend better overall even if you did study every video that was posted on this game.

Following this, the same treatment is given by the NPC's you encounter. I experienced a lot of immersion breaking due to these characters, because they just have a very in your face, way too aware, attitude about everything in the game, and it feels like every character I have encountered is talking to me like i'm on a 50 hour save file. The map as well just labels every character and their significance to the story, while I get there were good intentions of helping the player to prevent them getting lost, it once again gives that feeling of playing on an old save, like you've already discovered all of the locations, and there are ways to do this better.

One final thing that bothers me about these NPc's is that, if Charles is such a genuine threat, reaping havoc across the entire island, killing all who cross his path, why is literally every NPC just chilling on open porches or in crappy wood shacks with spaces in the boards? Shouldn't these people by behind spiked walls and armed to the teeth to have a chance of fending him off, or burrowed underground where Charles cannot reach them? It just shatters the narrative that everyone is horrified and prevented from having any normalcy by Charles and his domain on the island when they're just out in the open on their own.

Back to some positive, The other enemies in the game are very terrifying as well, since you have no carry on weapons, you can only rely on stealth to avoid them. It is very nerve racking to have to try and navigate around them, and if they spot you, your guts are emptying as you watch that train mask charge at you with a gun in hand.

However, this is where another issue arises; they're not threatening beyond their appearance. They do very little damage and your health auto regenerates so fast that they could only kill you if you rounded up at least 2-3, which is difficult because there are so few at each spot, and sat there as they pumped rounds into you. Once you get past the first scary encounter of being spotted, you quickly realize they aren't a threat, and as long as you just sprint through their camps, they cant stop you at all.

Now our little train and the tracks it rides on. I like the whole concept of it to keep it simple. Having to switch tracks, needing to upgrade your armor, weapons, and speed, collect new weapon types, having it be your ONLY defense against Charles and other enemies, I think its a simple but fun aspect. I do have certain critiques about the upgrade system and weapons, but as I said above, they will be listed at the end.

So, in short, what this game needs first and foremost, is a creative writing revisit. Having a better story, a far less abrupt and announced introduction to Charles, and NPC's who's state of being reflects the tone of the story more appropriately, would raise this game to a far better height. Some buffing and reworking of the other enemies in the game would ensure their fear factor remains rather than fades away, and in order to counter being unable to defend after detection, introducing a carry on weapon that will work against them, but doesn't have the damage or fire rate to fend off Charles, is a good balance.

Now personal opinions;

Story: A much better way to write this story would be to have an inconspicuous reason that were coming to the island, for instance lets say we are a foreman for the mine Warren is operating, or perhaps a safety inspector who was notified of the shaft collapse that spurred the events of the game, and we're sent to investigate. This creates a perfect opportunity to show up blind to the scene, and then have Charles deliver a very powerful and unexpected intro, perhaps even having the first attack done on foot, hiding in buildings that Charles tears through, to really hit the feeling of helplessness, and only discovering the abandoned train later.

Gameplay:
A revamp to the upgrade system would go a long way in increasing the time span of the game. First, making upgrades require SPECIFIC and multiple scavenges, rather than just a blanket material, raises the need to resource gather and encourages outward exploration to allow you to put more things in your map for the player to stumble upon. Needing specific components to craft your upgrades would go a long way. Ammo and medpacks can also require more gameplay for survival.

A specific issue I had with the train was that once you upgrade the speed, if you want to just travel a short distance, you gotta keep flipping levers over and over to get to the right spot without sailing by, so a throttle-able control lever would be great, or having multiple settings, like slow, cruise, and fast, etc.

Another upgrade mechanic could be needing to go to a train depot in a safezone to do any upgrades, as you'd need a mechanic to install them. You could also create more categories, most notably having each weapon have upgradable perks individually, rather than just a blanket damage stat.

Alright i'm at the character limit that's the gist of my review and opinions, let me know what your opinions for possible critiques are.

When I first saw Brilliant studios making the high promises they did about the sequel to UEBS i have to admit I thought they would disappoint. The initial game could hardly handle 100,000 units with poor textures and low choppy animations, god forbid you have ranged units on screen cause the lag would skyrocket when they open fired, and they were promising MILLION soldier battles. But despite my doubts i was willing to give it a chance because they're not big devs so its not like they were being lazy, and I figured it might be better in some regard anyways.

I opened the title screen to the opening sequence, and I legitimately closed the game out a couple times just to watch that again. I was already happy with the 20 dollars i spent just based on that intro alone.

I have never been so happy to be so wrong in my life. Not only can this game handle an army of a million, I have so far had about 12 million on screen and absolutely no drops in frame rate, granted i'm running a 2700 super, so maybe i'm on the higher end of the scale, but still, 12 million units on screen above 50fps? astounding.

There is just so much detail now, and I have no idea how they keep this game running 50 times better than the original with the amount of visual updates they've made. Every bullet is an individual light source, which you would think would crash the game if too many were fired. I have had millions of american soldiers with their attack speed cranked up by 10 firing all at once and the game still ran smooth, I was TRYING to break it and couldn't even get a frame drop. Another one that just baffles me is the volumetric preservation of liquids, the animations may not be flawless, but the fact that it can handle liquid displacement physics, and again, with zero impact on performance, just blows me away. Even more amazing is that blood does the same, and if you turn on the volumetric blood setting at the sandbox screen bottom, the two MIX, fade into each other, water washes the blood away. Unbelievable.

The unit AI is also incredible now. Before they just kinda mobbed forward to a target and if an obstacle was there they'd just plow into it until they got pushed to the side of it by the back end. Now not only do they pre-map their routes so that they move very effectively and avoid obstacles that would slow them down, they employ actual strategies like surrounding and flanking, something the units couldn't even do on accident in the original. Soldiers with shields and weaponry will actually strafe and dodge then lunge in to attack, making unit competition about so much more than just dps and health.

And at the time i'm writing this there has been one minor update that added a couple units, and that's it. This is just the alpha and its already so good. And based on the content additions from the first game and the deliverance of their promises in just the alpha of this sequel, I fully expect and trust that Brilliant will be polishing this game from coal to a diamond, and I already have a hard time seeing this as coal, so I cannot wait to see this game in a year or two.

I could keep ranting on and on about the improvements made in this sequel, but i'd be typing for at least a solid hour. my money was well worth it, if you're in to this type of game buy it right now, you wont be disappointed.

I am very upset by the fact that the "new blocks" are just new textures for previous blocks that already existed, and I feel like I got tricked out of 6 bucks for these two packs just to get a skin that I could've gotten a duplicate of online for free. The description should be appropriately changed or the content should be appropriately matched, until one happens this is basically clickbaiting money out of people's wallets.

I wrote a pretty heated review for this game a while back. A couple days ago I thought "maybe I was just being salty about it, my whole issue was performance and I had a crappy PC, I should probably give it another chance, maybe they've improved it after the years I've been away."

Then I went to the steam page to look at the reviews. And I was right, not only is this game trash, but its developers are the scummiest individuals I've ever seen.

So some background: Wildcard Studios manages ARK, and its the ONLY project they had for several years until announcing ARK 2 in December of 2020, and then, a remastered ARK 1, called Ark: Survival Ascended. During those 5 years without other interference, they left their game a buggy unbalanced mess, even simple things like your map catching so much sunlight you cant see it if you face anywhere opposite the sun, could've just reduced its reflective quality or turned down the godrays, but no, they opted instead to make DLC after DLC, the average cost for a player to own all of these to date is well over $100, all of it buggy, unbalanced, and unpolished.

Now its obvious wildcard was always pretty scummy, but despite this clear penny pinching many of us still found the game enjoyable since we could rely on good modding support to clean up their laziness and add new fun features. And we supported them financially for it, hoping they would make this game everything it could be with time. This however was when I left, because I didn't have the faith the rest of the community did.

Now lets go back to this Remaster they mentioned; Originally they stated the following early this year in a tweet: data from old gen servers will be transferable to the new title, and the remastered game and its DLC's will be free for returning players. Sounds heavenly, players would finally get the game they'd been waiting for so loyally and patiently all these years. And it was even good for the company, this remaster would bring in new audiences, and with a massively positive community telling everyone how great the devs are with backwards compatibility and support, It would expand into new markets like crazy, and make them good money as well as be off to a great start for the future of ARK 2 being a big seller.

Then a few weeks later, they decided that they wanted to be COMPETITIVELY scummy instead.

A bundle was announced, containing both ARK:SA and ARK 2 together, with the remastered DLC's. For $80. WHETHER OR NOT you already own ARK 1. Additionally, they inform the community they are shutting down all server support for ARK 1 in august of this year, so in 4 Months with the release of ARK:SA (keep in mind, NOT the release of ARK 2 also, that's been delayed for another year). And the cherry on top, this offer will only be available for a year following the release of ARK:SA. So in other words, they reversed on the promise of "free for our community that already bought it" and opted instead to tell their supporters to go ♥♥♥♥ themselves and to give them more money, and in case they didn't want to do that, Wildcard is axing the old one apart as much as they legally can in order to force people to buy the bundle.

Now to a person not experienced with this game they might think "that's a good deal though? $80 dollars for a remaster and its DLC's that originally cost over $100, plus ownership of a sequel game that would probably cost another $60 separately?"

Let me explain to you why this is ♥♥♥♥. Despite being their only project, Wildcard for many years ignored bug fixing and optimizing of ARK in favor of pushing more fractured content in DLC's. Then they tell you they're making a remaster, tell you it will be free since you've already bought it already, and will make sure your server data is transferable in some way. Then they completely ignore that promise and charge you $60 for what is essentially all the fixes and optimizations we should've gotten for their $60 game plus $60-whatever three digit number it is now in DLC's, but also forcefully bundling it with a game that isn't even out yet and wont be for a year or maybe more, meaning you can't buy the remaster unless you invest in their "good faith" of providing you with 2 good games upon release, something they couldn't even do with ONE game, being their ONLY project, for HALF A DECADE.

Now another fun thing. Modding was what made the first game fun for many despite its flaws. That free library of fixes and features doing what the devs refused to (not COULDN'T, REFUSED). That FREE library was really great.

But Wildcard saw money there too. The only official mod support for this game will be through a website where you have to BUY them. In other words, they are attempting to take the work of community modders and cut themselves a big chunk of their pie to rake in even more cash. These people were happy to give it out for free before, but now if it is to be supported, it MUST be sold at undoubtedly ridiculous prices, and i doubt the modder will see much of any of it.

After the initial backlash, the developers decided to "make some changes" people thought "good, maybe the backlash actually made them revert to the promise they made to us and to reconsider these other ridiculous plans"

Clearly that was stupid, because not only did they not do that, they essentially RETALIATED towards the community's rightful outrage.

They removed ARK 2 from the bundle, But did NOT change the price. So now any poor sap who still supported them on the pretense of the above mentioned "good deal" opinion, has now also been ♥♥♥♥♥♥ over, despite taking their side.

This company actually hates you and sees you as dairy cows, and they will squeeze your udders chapped and bloody and feed you spoiled corn in return for your money. The fact that this review was the result of me thinking maybe this company has turned over a new leaf after all these years is just too symbolic of everything this company does to its buyers, even if they straight up bootlick this company they still get ♥♥♥♥♥♥ over and actively attacked.

Do not buy a single thing they make, do not trust their promises, and do not forgive them. They are soulless.

Oh my good lord, some bonus info I discovered just before I concluded this. They have another studio helping them out with these titles, by the profound name of...............

GROVE STREET GAMES, popular author of the GTA: Defective Trilogy, a mess so bad the mobile ports of the original games are actually better looking and more functional in every regard. This ♥♥♥♥ is real I am honest to god. Actual nightmare.

This entire review is a huge spoiler to the gameplay, continue at your own will.











After 1 day, 6 hours, and 22 minutes I have finished my entire play through of Subnautica.

I am a very critical person of games. I pay attention very much to glitches, textures, loading, lagging, nothing gets past my eyes easily, as I can be very critical of the smallest problems. But for once in my life I cannot say these things.

Subnautica first appeared to me as a type of game I greatly enjoy: open world survival. A very creative but eventually laborious and tiring task. However, as I received the distressed calls of the lifepods, I found the motive to pursue helping them. The scannable terrain also peeked my interest, and I was soon off to fill every entry in the PDA. But the true moment that sucked me into the game for countless hours was the Sunbeam event. This sudden presence of another life form of such might on the planet was astounding, and as the story of the bacterium and the precursors and their research progressed I became greatly enthused. I spent any available time I had gathering and building my base, stocking up for the long awaited trip to the deep. It finally came, and I discovered the thrilling environment down at the deepest trenches. But by far the greatest part of this game is the final hours of the sea emperors story, allowing the player to escape once and for all. It was the saddest moment finishing the rocket. I said goodbye to my fish in my aquarium, put my seamoth and prawn into their docks, and powered down my cyclops. I filled my lockers with flora and fauna samples-it seemed appropriate for the mission- and launched. The ending was spectacular. I’ve never felt more satisfied in my life than when I finished this game. It was perfect. The combination of open world with story line is impeccably smooth and perfected.
After this, the only thing I have to say in criticism is that I cannot enjoy it the same again. Thank you Unknown Worlds, for this amazing experience. Good night.