Recent reviews by Wise

Game was fun when I actually got to play, got the game early december, I think a week after launch, maybe three servers with about 60 players, now theres nothing, its dead...i just launched, no servers, no players...just me..alone....

30 hours in at the time of this review, and I feel like the game isn't getting the best reviews it should, but I'm a biased hardcore survival game fan.

Easiest way I can describe this game is think of it as Rust, SCUM and DayZ all had sex with 7 Days to Die in the back of a panel van at Cochella, and this game is the culmination of that union nine months later.

Sure it might be a few chromosomes short, but you can't help but love it.

"It's got good bones as they say!" I'm not sure who "they" are but that's a correct statement.

The game itself graphically is great, runs well with a few crash to desktop after several hours, but that very likely could be me being a glutton for punishment and an early adopter of the Intel Arc A770 GPU. Aside from that it runs fine with Ultra settings and I get a steady 60 FPS if I don't force higher FPS (there is an option however)

On PVE worlds (player versus environment, you against the AI basically) the game is good, there's certain areas that you obviously can't go until you're geared up enough, but once you figure out the pattern of the attacks from the AI, it's pretty easy to kind of cheese your way through once you get better gear/armor.

The ability to solo pull pretty much any NPC out of their fortress/encampment/etc without alerting the others in the area is a bit weak and will likely get patched/improved, at least I hope it does, as that makes the fun out of possibly getting ganged up on out of the picture and makes it fairly easy to get end-game content.

I played a few hours of PVP and while I'm not a fan of FPS PVP type games in general, I do think this game tries to center around the PvP (Player versus Player) aspect. From what I've seen on discord and reddit and other socials for the game, cheating is something that happens, but then again that is pretty much in every game. The Devs have been actively doing their part to remediate the bugs and glitches (dupe bugs, spawning bugs, etc) that have come up, so at least they're on top of it.

The game relies heavily on gun combat from about mid-game on, for both PVE and PVP as that is the primary means of killing your enemy, if you are slow to level up or get better gear, you will get killed rather quick in either playstyle as the AI outguns you even on some of the lower-level encampments (some of them already had pistols at some smaller bases), and PVP will definitely wreck you.

There are various vehicles in game, dune buggy, tanks, personnel carrying trucks, even helicopters...in PVE that will make traversing the maps easier, and PVP it certainly could make for some fun combat scenarios and base raids.

The Raid mechanic is also a cool one, it reminds me alot of the Horde night in 7 Days to Die, with a bit of tower defense like Dungeon Defenders/Orcs Must Die built in where you need to build out traps to protect the base from the waves of creatures that spawn at your beacon.

I think over time the progress of the game will definitely be good provided they add more POI and maybe different/stronger/harder enemies.

I'd like to see world events kind of like the helicopter in Rust, would give us a reason to build up base defense in PVE at least since there's no threat of PVP, the only threat is creatures if we spawn the Raids at the Beacon.

I'd give the game maybe an 8/10 so far, I definitely got my $16 worth the launch week.

What can I say this game is fun. As a huge fan of survival games I'm enjoying this better than several other EA titles that have come out. Granted yeah, there was save/join issues at first, but once you know the workaround it was fine, and they've just released the 1.10 patch to fix those problems, so I'll be testing that tonight.

People compare this to a Rust/Valheim/Raft kind of gameplay, while certain aspects of those games are here, it does have it's own playstyle that deviates from the norm. The ability to transition between land and underwater is a great concept, And swimming into the depths to loot necessary items isn't without it's peril, Hammerhead and Great White sharks lurk below and will attack you every chance they get, while on-land the other factions will fight aggressively for their small claim.

Think if Waterworld had a baby with Raft and Rust/Valheim, this is the kind of game that Sunkenland is.

The devs on discord have mentioned that they have plans to make the map larger, more islands, more stuff to dive down to, and even possibly allow for more players on a server.

Right now there is no real PVP mode, there is one island that you can build on (the one you start near Castaway) and while you CAN build on some of the faction islands, you would need to clear them first to be able to take them over. I'd love to see more neutral islands placed throughout the map so other players can take over and possibly foster a sort of trade PvPvE environment.

Overall if you're into these types of games I'd suggest it!

So far I'm liking the game, I realize VR isn't for everyone, and the exfil shooters aren't for everyone as well, in fact I HATED Escape from Tarkov, not sure what it is but I've never been good at FPS shooters and as I get older it seems to get even worse.

But Ghosts of Tabor is just different, I don't know if it's the jankiness of some of the controls, how occasionally I randomly pull my vest off when trying to get my backpack, or the in-game comms which range from absolute helpful people to complete !@#!@#holes that will shoot you the moment you turn your back on them.

The game has its quirks, it's early access and all that, but then again what game these days isn't EA or riddled with bugs upon release?

To summarize some of my recent gameplay, I entered raid on Silo with a knife and grenade and the starting backpack only. Proceeded to stab 1 Fenix (the AI bots) and 2 Players, came across a pair of people in the garage looting some corpses, I approached with my hands up to show i was not armed and stood next to them just chatting. I told them I had no items whatsoever, and one of them pulled out their backpack to hand me a can of beans.

I had pulled the grenade from my backpack, dropped the bag and pulled the pin on the grenade, dropped it on the ground and proceeded to kill all three of us.



Another game I joined the Island raid, ended up on the docks in the house, tried to juggle billiard balls, and had a dance party on the docks with 2 other random players while beatboxing. We all ended up getting killed by a fourth player that came around the corner and shot us all.


10/10 would have VR hijinks anytime.

FULL DISCLOSURE - I RECEIVED THIS PRODUCT FOR FREE

First review 10/19/2020 - will update/review again as game progresses

This reminds me of classic COD Zombies...purchase different weapons, traps, unlock areas of the maps...For a pre-release it's got all the makings of larger titles and certainly better than some other pre-release games I've played. And considering a single developer works on this game, it's pretty impressive.

Theres 3 included maps/areas of the game you can play, the third one which appears to be on a spaceship seems to be the hardest level by far, while the first two are more open/wide areas that provide ample room to move and avoid the impending hordes. Mechanics are great, it took some getting used to for the third-person over-shoulder view, but once you figure it out it's easy to fall into the action.

Random dropped power ups (Max ammo and 2xp) help to get you more money to purchase upgrades.

The group I play with did run into an issue with performance, although that appears to be the game engine not anything developer related, but we've let the developer know and he's already looking into it! Around round 15 on the first map we had horrible stuttering and lag, all four players had it so I don't think it was one person or related to issue on the hardware, seems the engine maybe just can't handle everything that's going on with it. We did not experience anything like this on the other 2 maps although admittedly they are a bit smaller and we never seem to last that long lol.

Overall I definitely see this one being added to the rotation, the gameplay is very fun, something you can hop into, mindlessly kill some zombies and get out.

The server browser is a little buggy when someone wants to join an already existing game, dev is working on that as well.

Was a great game for a while, competed with the likes of PUBG, Apex and Fortnite..then I don't know what happened...seemed like they dropped the snow map, made changes no one asked for, then there were the hackers/cheaters...obvious wallhacks when you spectate people and even people with aimbots that followed you through buildings and scenery...they kept trying to make it better nad as I understand it the client for Asia (they don't use steam version there) still has crazy amounts of people playing, but the US side seems dead..I think when I stopped playing there was something like 1000 players daily, not even that many I'd always see the same people in-game..