Recent reviews by Alektorophobian

Honestly...i's Ark. If you like Ark Evolved, you will like Ark Ascended. It does take quite a beefy computer to run even at medium graphics though, though loading into the game initially seems to be a lot faster, even with mods. This round, I'm just hosting locally using this free app called ASA Dedicated Manager, that lets my husband and I play together without having to stay tethered. They did add some quality of life stuff, like a lot m more vanilla tracking options, but they seem to be pretty buggy so idk. As with Evolved, my husband and I pretty much exclusively play in the massive mod Ark Omega, which you can buy through the mod store for ASA for $10 (it is phenomenal and made by one single guy, definitely worth it). I'm about to get burnt out on ark again as I usually do though, so I probably won't come back until they release the ASA version of Aberration, my favorite ASE map.

It's a pretty fun little game, it reminds me a lot of the "amoeba" stage at the beginning of Spore, which I always enjoyed. There are some frustrations--not being able to rotate parts on a connector (they always face directly out from the center of what you attach them to) makes options for how to arrange parts quite limited, and progression towards new part types is slooow. The lack of rotation means you have to make your critter expand ever more wide, but then you have to break down the parts to fit in almost any passages, and rebuild it all from scratch after, because there are no sort of blueprint/configuration presets you can save rather than have to remake it from scratch. Final gripe, why the heck does the build screen take you to a diagonal view?? It's so hard to get everything symmetrical. Making the orientation point straight up would be so much easier.

Started playing with my husband about a week ago and have only stopped due to real life requirements (like getting the kids off to school and working for The Man) and/or exhaustion. We're relentless save-scrubbers though, so take my advice at your will. If you don't have the time to play through multiple times, and/or are adverse to looking up game guides, there's a ton of content you most likely will miss out on because you had to choose a side, or you never even realized the option was there in the first place (will never get to know what could have been with Minthara ;_;). Amazing writing and characterization (except Gale, he's too similar to plenty of skeevy guys I've known in real life...which I guess is still part of good writing, but not the variety I want to keep around with me for 100+ hours). The turn based-ish combat is confused at first, but provides unique opportunities for how your party's moves can influence/trigger each other--like have one character throw a grease jar all over an area, then have a second character toss a fireball into it and set it all alight. And you can shift your party characters out easily which is nice. Karlach is best wife, most wholesome character in all of gaming ever. Fight me.

It's fun so far but quite empty. Still really irritated that they took the log sled out, requiring many back-and-forth trips to carry logs two at a time. Kelvin is fun though quite slow and can be a bit of a chore to keep safe sometimes. My husband and I played together for a couple hours the first weekend since the game released and found it ridiculously hard, we were getting swarmed by cannibals on the very first night, unable to make any progress at all. A week after that we tried again, and the cannibal spawn rate was way down. At this point, we've gone to about half of the caves, especially the one where you get the rope gun--because multiplayer seems to be glitched where, even when we both save individually, my husband can't keep the rope gun in his inventory (but somehow he does keep the better axe? It's very strange)

Biggest gripes are that there's basically nothing in-game to guide you to which caves you should visit first, so there's a ton of trekking around the island unable to move on until you find the exact right cave with the exact right item, which takes many real-life hours and can quickly burn you out. There's also basically no story yet, not even an explanation for why Mz-three-legs came to be that way. I assume they'll add more later, but don't play this game at this point expecting any deep story.

BTW speaking of Virginia, there's definitely an undertone of sexism in this game--like how the female versions of all the enemies are "weaker" and "more scared," and the female side of the Twin enemy is just a v****a stuck on a torso with b**bs. but looking at the design of the Virginias enemy from the first game, can we really be surprised to see similar treatment of feminine forms in this one?

Chopping trees down is cool tho. Just wish they'd bring the sled back, or at least give us some way of carrying more than two logs at a time, because man does that get old.

Cute for a free game, but three major gripes:
- no sensitivity option for mouse. I had to crank my gaming mouse DPI way up to be able to turn without having to pick my entire mouse up and move it over twice
- at first the dialog skips by too fast to read, then it goes super slowly?? I almost wonder if this is a horror mechanic, but it seems weird. Dialog should wait for an input before skipping, and should have the option to hold down to skip through quickly to the next choice.

Also, at the end, the ladle part glitched out for me so I couldn't complete it. I picked it up then it just vanished into nowhere, making it impossible to complete. I had to alt+f4 the game and look up a youtube video of someone else playing it to see the last ending ;_;

I only played for less than an hour, but immediately disliked it. The tutorial is way too short, and barely explains anything. There's no option to click or hover over anything to get more info--not resources, not villagers, nothing. I build a hunter's tent and the hunter never went out, just stood there uselessly--I looked it up on a web search (never a good sign, for a game) and they said the hunters are supposed to go out at night..so I passed several days, and he still never went out??

There are question marks in some of the panels, but they're for entire concepts, not particular buildings (like, the ? for the hunter's lodge is literally like "this is a building panel! this is where you assign workers!" thanks, I had no idea e.e

Just not a good building game. There are better ones out there. One I'm keeping an eye on is Manor Lords--I played the demo some time ago and really liked it, so I'll be spending my money on that one instead, thanks.

Requested a refund after an hour, because this game is so dull. This game is awful. It's like an unfinished game from the 90s. Font is impossible to read on splitscreen unless you're ten inches away from a 55" tv, no explanation for most features, just really really outdated and dull.

There are things that are enjoyable about this game, and it is nice to explore the sadly lacking genre of evolution (I'm still pissed that Spore was so empty, and I check yearly to see if the Creatures game series will ever be revamped). But like other posters have said, the controls are very awkward in this game, and what worries me most is that the developer hasn't had an update since September 2020. Even with covid and the holidays, that is a LONG time to go without an update for such a new game.

Really the stupidity of the AI is the most frustrating part. It's a whole process to get followers to pick up different items so you have what you need while you scout--they have NO AI controls themselves as far as switching hands to the spear if they're attacked, or putting items down to eat food, etc. All of it must be done manually, and it is always a pain.

I understand they're already working on a sequel, and that is especially distressing. It feels like they hyped this game so much so they sold a bunch of copies, but then promptly abandoned it to bilk some more sales for the next one. Fix the game you released already!

I can't really say what it is about this game that addicts me so, but I just keep coming back to it. the variety of spells and perks you can find with every random roll is so fun to experiment with--sometimes the combinations look awesome, sometimes they're catastrophic, but it's always exciting! (and managing to survive a level with a scrape of health is exilirating).

My only two critiques are that this health is VERY stingy with letting you heal--even when you find health upgrades, you don't even get the extra health unless you survive to the next level. And the rare-to-find healing wands need a particular effect that you also have to find (like a boomerang spell modifier) to use for yourself. I get making healing a rare occurrence, but I think it's a little TOO random. The other critique is that the game levels jump to much, much harder after the third level or so. If you have had the good luck to find some decent random spells and perks by then, you can handle it. But if you end up with a crappy role and no decent weapons, you're screwed.

I appreciate the continuing content updates with fun new content to experiment as well! And the limited flying/levitation adds a new dimension that i find severely lacking in games like Spelunky.

Disappointing that it's not multiplayer, but it sort of has a timeline for the story so I get it. Can be very easy to sink a lot of time into without having much to show for it. Just exploring the underwater caverns can be fun. Got kinda stuck at one point where I couldn't find the resources to go deeper, but that's where the next story arcs were. I have to reference the wiki a lot to figure out how to proceed though...