Recent reviews by rocketait

Good game, has some cool ideas. Development is slow but meaningful (new types of things added not just asset creation). Game seems to have a scale that has not been filled yet. Its got a few bugs and limited instructions (but this is to be expected in Early Access). Spend 20 hours and found thing to be fun, multiplayer seems to run OK though a lot could be added.

Game devs called it "released" (was more or not the same crap we get every patch 1 or 2 more dinos and nothing to fix the game part of the game) just so that they could make an announcement of a new dlc they been working on while the games in early access. who puts hidden QR codes for some paid dlc in your release trailer!!! (that’s lower then Electronic Arts crap, ultimate day one dlc! But its not even really day one as the games beta quality) what are they thinking!

Pro’s
There is content, lots of it. The Devs are not game developer they are content developer. And they probably would have made a good if a game studio contracted work out to them. I would have to guess that 90% of their team is making assents. The other 10% are braking (maybe managing) their hosted servers. Sadly, they charge you for most of this content in DLC’s. but at least even in the base game there is a lot of it (and the hosted community servers is a nice bonus, even if they are unplayable because of balancing)

Con’s
Game is not optimized and is in worse state then most early access games and it is now “released”. You fall though floors, you’re dinos get stuck in each other. You/dinos get stuck floating on stuff. Everyone crashes at some point. The base game is still called shooterGame from the template they used because they don’t have anyone on their team that can program a game. This game feels like one big mod on another game and the performance suffers because of it. Also because they don’t have a disk they have to fit onto they just don’t care about file size at all 200gigs or so (ya some are unpacked cached files or something but still). Also they couldn’t make something balanced if they tried (dino’s released in recent patches are just in every way better than the dino’s already in the game). This is kind of a moot point though as they have two main game type pvp and pve and they believe they can balance on config for both. The way they communicate with the community is horrible, only way to find info on game is though wiki with more adds then words. Patch notes have no data and are displayed in a horribly unorganized manner. Community managers and ark twitter normally is full of cat pictures and off topic info that finding out why the servers are still down or when the dev kit is going to be released is almost impossible.

Cool idea, tons of content. But I feel like I’ve been robbed when I paid for the base game as they have developed two payed DLC during early access (this upcoming one had to been being made all this last year) and as the games should still be in early access (this feels like a beta (bugs and all)) I would not recommend buying the base game.

Solid 4x game, nothing drasticly new or diffrent then other games though. ship design is good but limited, wish there was more ship models, 6 does not fill like enough when roles are already set. An example of this is one ship gives a 35% space reduction on firghters another 35% space reduction on bombers, these ships fill like they must have a fighter/bomber on them and that if i try using any other ship as a carrier its just wastful. The ship roles just fill to deffined which is not bad on its own but with just 6 ships its limiting. I currently own the gold addition and i have seem people complain about the battles and you not having much input on the output of them. but coming from games like spaceHo and other 4x games where you press go and its all done with the ai, a game where you have limited input is kind of nice any more and i would fill i need to fight ever battle and get bogged down.

Pro's
nice graphis
solid gameplay
turn based 4x
action filled battles

Con's
confusing tool tips ("-30% supper deathrays" is that bad/good and apllied to me or enemy?)
limited ship design
hidden funtionality (use the ctrl button!! raly/warp other stuff)