So…where should I start? Right, INSOMNIA: The Ark is not a good game, not a complete disaster but damn the game feels outdated. Of course this is not a Triple-A game, the goal on Kickstarter was seventy thousand US dollars and that was a couple years ago. Mono Studio are the developers behind the game and if I am not mistaken this is their first game. Published by Hero Craft which mostly publishes video games for mobile phones; honestly this feels like a mobile game and plays like a mobile game. Did I mention the game costs thirty dollars? No I didn’t because it sounds ridiculous. No one should pay more than ten dollars, at least as it is now. I am not saying this is the worst game ever but usually unfinished games do not cost more than ten dollars.
Let’s start by getting the good parts out of the way. Guess what? There are none. Seriously I couldn’t find a single thing I liked in this game and I’m a major fan of the post-apocalyptic sci-fi genre. First of all it looks and plays weird, there is some kind of blur effect which I could not get rid off and the mouse control felt extremely sluggish, like there was some form or mix of acceleration and smoothing.
There is no control remapping and you cannot change the resolution of the game…I mean seriously? While the game runs pretty decent without any drops from 60fps on ultra settings there are some areas that dropped the framerate down to 27fps. Even when dropping everything to low I couldn’t see any framerate change. The game does not look good so there is no excuse for the poor performance. Thankfully I had only a few crashes which mostly happened when exiting the game.
There is no voice acting in the game, everything is in text, text with boring context; not so funny jokes and a general attitude of “who gives a fuck”. This gets old way too fast and from some point on you just click the next dialogue line without caring a tiny bit. Also the introduction cinematic subtitles use the smallest font size I ever seen in a game.
While there is probably something interesting in the story the whole presentation makes it impossible to follow it with a smile. You wake up, you choose a class (laughable character creation by the way) and off you go on your merry way to punish some hungry rebel scum. While you’re doing your thing you occasionally encounter some kind of apparitions, or ghosts if you prefer, that you do not have any kind of interaction; something that will probably mean…something along the way. Having said that I really doubt the story will become better or more interesting and the lack of voices and facial expressions doesn’t really help.
Animations are not ok and sometimes weird things are happening like NPCs snapping to a different animation like there is no transition between them, which makes them look a bit creepy like Samara from The Ring. The melee combat is ok, it works, for the most part even if the collision detection is almost non-existent. The shooting is…I don’t know how to describe it exactly other than the movement feels like a third person shooter but the aiming feels like a coin-up arcade game, like Time Crisis or something. Even the healing is weird, you got some sort of stimpacks that you inject directly into your neck like Nuke from Robocop, ouch, that shit still gives me nightmares.
There are no quest markers, and while some people like this, including myself, let me tell you this is not fun, especially when the map sucks. You do get general directions from NPCs but as I said the dialogues are not fun. There is also untranslated text, Jesus, which was a problem for me but if you speak Russian you will probably be fine. Last thing, the gamepad controls are messed up, for some reason the right analog stick did not work and there is no analog movement, so basically there is no reason to play with a gamepad, at least for me.
I will be honest, the game does have some potential if the story improves along the way, but in my few hours I did not feel that. Of course the game needs major patching ASAP and even if that happens I highly doubt it will ever become a game worth thirty dollars, but hey, you never know right? My advice is that if you want to play this game just be patient and give it some time and of course make sure you buy it from Steam or anywhere else with a refund policy.
* On Sunday the 29th they released a 4GB patch which I did not try out so everything I described above was with the Day-One patch.
Computer Specs: Case: CoolerMaster Cosmos S CPU: i5 4440 GPU: MSI 960GTX 4GB Mobo: MSI B85-G41 RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws X 8GB HDD: Crucial 275GB MX300 PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower 1200W OS: Win7 Monitor: LG 23″ 1080p
Chris was born in the early 80’s along with the very birth of home gaming. After spending many maaany drachmas on arcades, his father decided to buy him a PC instead of going bankrupt. He lived through the advancing and development of the gaming industry, having played TONS of games on all platforms. He is always honest and will never hesitate to give his true opinion on a game no matter what. Loves stealth games and dislikes microtsansactions, DLC and pre-ordering…who doesn’t after all?!
Contact: Email
Nice impression review.
Totally agree with most of your thoughts, and after also reading a lot of negative reviews/feedback on STEAM as well, it indeed seems this game requires a lot of optimization, at least in it’s current state.
“No control remapping” is kind of unacceptable for today’s games. Sounds like an unfinished product ?
“There is no control remapping and you cannot change the resolution of the game”
and just like that I’m dropping it like a rock.
We’re in 2018, it’s super insanely rare to have a game on PC that doesn’t support resolution changes, let alone remapping. I’ve played older games from the 00’s that allow for remaps.
The resolution can be changed just fine, and key remapping yeah, they dropped the ball on that one, but it’s coming in a future patch. Meanwhile, there are instructions on the Steam forum to do it editing an .ini file.
Neither of these things are true.
Do tell.
Dude, no disrespect, but you shouldn’t really be writing video game reviews. This one is god awful.
So this is a ‘bad game’ because of blur, weird mouse movement, no key remapping, and no voice acting? WTF? How many hours did you put into it, 2?
That you can’t change the resolution is utterly false, there was a bug related to the resolution that was fixed in the first patch.
Key remapping is coming in a future patch, meanwhile you can edit an .ini file to do it.
No kidding. Besides the author would get his a$$ handed to him 100% of the times in combat if this was a mobile game. Mouse and keyboard is the only way to play this game.
I hope you are correct regarding the resolution change and the key remapping related stuff. I was under some other impression, even after reading some reviews on STEAM.
But hopefully this should get patched. Btw, I deleted my previous comment, because it was irrelevant.
From the first patch they released: “Game freezes when the resolution is changed mid-level should be fixed.”
Regarding the remapping a dev said that they didn’t think it was a priority because they are focused on fixing bugs, but it’s coming.
I had zero problems for both of these things.
I can vouch for everything you said as well(I am running it at 5760×1080 + KB&M).
I feel just because this is a Russian made game some are being extra harsh to it. I don’t understand why, the thing is I have seen this happen to other Russian and Ukraine games so it doesn’t surprise me.
It’s odd I have played way worse indie games and they have been praised… [ shrugs ]
“I feel just because this is a Russian made game some are being extra harsh to it. I don’t understand why”
because theres alot of liberal/sjw shills who think russia made trump win and hillary lose. so they hate on anything russian.
Yeah man way to inject your psychopatic political nonsense in a completely unrelated conversation.
what i said is true and easily confirmed. what exactly was (((pychopathic))) about it? are you jewish? you sound jewish. jewish and mad. if your not jewish its very obvious your a good goy and support israel at all costs. even above your own people. traitor.
It seems like the author would definitely hate Fallout 1 & 2 by the looks of it. This game is definitely not for casual console gamers. I like real time combat in this game playing a gun-toting character (the melee fighter experience would definitely feel drastically different as you’d have to don a heavy bulletproof armor). I also can praise a very nicely drawn dieselpunk setting. The story is not so clearcut and I’ve yet to unfold it after 32 hours in the game.
There is definitely stuff that need fixing but in my opinion nothing that would prevent a person from enjoying the game.
I am really enjoying it as well(and yes it’s not perfect) and to me your comments are spot on. Not making excuses to this specific game but some times we need to realize what an indie game is. FYI to Chris, this is their first game.
To me if your not into indie games and understand that they are not perfect by definition then don’t play, buy and support them.
On a side note/rant there is nothing I dislike more than someone comparing indie games to a high profile AAA games or full priced games, and I am not saying this article does that but yeah that bothers me.
Exactly. By the way negative STEAM reviews for this particular game seem way too dramatic and overblown to me. I was a bit afraid to buy after reading them but did anyway and I’m glad that I did.
Yeah man it was brutal and some times I feel they should just dump Steam reviews(it’s just a Troll app and useless) all together and just have a return policy and let every individual just make up their own mind.
I am a huge fan of Fallout 1 + 2(and even the new ones) + Metro and the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series so I was really interested in it. Those reviews where brutal, then I played it and was like “what?” I am really enjoying this why do I even bother look at the reviews.
All well not much you can do, I just watch YouTube vids and dev info + articles and make up my own mind. I feel that is the only way to go now a days.
You mean to say we can’t fully trust any review posted on STEAM, be it for any game, AAA/AA or an indie title ?
Even I don’t bother much about reviews, but when I see too many red flags, it kind of makes me skeptical to buy that game.
But nonetheless, you have a point, and could be correct as well.
Passages like “I fire up the game and after 5 minutes of playing it freezes and only hard reset saves the day” or “when I load up the game my system reboots” can really scare off potential players but luckily they seem to be groundless as I’ve never experienced this with any game so far (knock on wood).
Indeed.
Yeah I truly feel they have become pointless/useless and almost like YouTube comments which I also ignore. Let’s face it people enjoy to hate and shame that is like a legit hobby now, it’s our weird jacked up culture/fad right now. I just want no part of it, normal life is harsh as it is I don’t need more sh|t in my life especially toward my hobby that is supposed to make me happy.
I have played games since the Arcade, Atari 2600, + C64 days and can easily watch a person play any game on YouTube with the video muted and easily know if I will like it. Plus I also read stuff on the games web site or articles that actually give you useful info and are not concerned about trolling.
Personally I trust that over any review or opinion any day, maybe I am just weird but it seems to work really well for me 🙂
This. All of it.
Yeah this game is just dripping with personality. Loving it, warts and all.
“There are no quest markers, and while some people like this, including myself, let me tell you that it is not fun, especially when the map sucks.”
So you’re one of those people that loves all the handholding and GPS in the Witcher 3. This game is more akin to The Witcher (2007) where if you have at least half a brain you’d find your way around on the map easily because unlike TW3 (where most of the terrain and buildings feel copy-pasted) there are actually landmarks in the world of TW1.
Yes no quest markers as a negative made me laugh out loud. Not to mention that it is very easy to figure out where to go in the game (I have played it more then three hours.) “There is no glowing arrow, what am I going to do!?’
Off topic Chris but why in the world are you running a 1200 watt PSU in your rig? With your specs I doubt your rig pulls more than 250 watts under load.
Actually, I was wondering the same thing, haha. That’s kind of overkill, even for high-end GPUs of today (that too it’s Silver certified).
I have an 850 Watts PSU, even though my current PC doesn’t require that much wattage, but I just bought it, because I was using an R9 390X GPU at that time, and I used to overclock as well.
Nothing wrong with having a cushion. PC hardware is expensive and it’s better to have too much PSU than not enough. The 390X wanted a lot of power especially with a heavy overclock.
I have a 750 watt PSU in my rig with a 980 Ti and I’ve used my Kill a Watt meter to read how much wattage my rig draws under full load from the wall outlet and it’s never gone over 425 watts under load.
The new RTX2080 that’s already selling has 650W PSU requirement.
With i7-4790, 16 Gb PC12800 Ballistix RAM, GTX970 Strix, Asus Sabertooth Mark 2, 60 Gb SSD drive (I know I gotta upgrade it) and 1Tb HDD I currently have a 1000W PSU which is also overkill but I feel will be enough for new GPUs if I ever scrounge enough money to buy one.
Inded. Btw, what’s the make/model, and brand of your 750 Watts PSU ? But I assume you are using a high quality PSU.
Because a lot of peeps actually SKIMP on the PSU. And most importantly, many aren’t aware that WATTAGE number alone means nothing when it comes to any power supply.
The main concern is the “quality” of the power, the quality of the components used/CAPS, as well as the total AMP drawn on the +12V RAIL (output), the efficiency under load, “ripple suppression”, among other factors.
A cheap generic/standard low-end PSU is prone to failure soon, than the units made by reputed brands like SEASONIC, Corsair, BE QUIET, EVGA Supernova, PC Power & Cooling, ANTEC (except *earthwatts* series), XFX, Super Flower, OCZ, just to name a few.
The OEM also matters a lot, instead of the actual PSU brand.
I’ve always given the topmost priority to PSU when building any RIG, and I mostly go for Tier 1 and/or Tier 2 units, because a TITANIUM/Platinum PSU is going to be much more efficient under 50% load, than a bronze/silver or a generic 80 plus certified PSU.
But the exact Wattage requirement still varies from system to system, and if we plan to Overclock the GPU/CPU, then the PSU should have enough headroom as well.
I’m using an EVGA Supernova 750 watt. johnyguru rated my PSU very highly and they have the proper diagnostic equipment to do a thorough testing for the things you mentioned.
It does my heart good to hear someone point out that a quality PSU is critical and shouldn’t be skimped on. It’s not common knowledge unfortunately.
A cheap PSU will probably just die before it’s expected lifetime but before it does it probably has been damaging the other hardware all along due to providing unclean power. Shortens the lifespan of other hardware too. It can take other hardware out with it when it goes as well. I have seen pictures posted by PC repair guys of scorched cases, burnt motherboards etc.
I always recommend looking at results of a PSU review at jonnyguru or from cmaris at TPU before buying.
That’s true buddy but they gave me an offer I just couldn’t refuse.
That actually makes sense then, if you bought the PSU for a good price, under some deal.
It never hurts to have a higher wattage PSU, even though the extra power won’t get fully utilized in any system under load.
Having some extra headroom always bodes well in the long run.
So you played all of 3 hours ?
WTF ?
Dude, no disrespect, but you shouldn’t really be writing video game reviews. This one is god awful.So this is a ‘bad game’ because of blur, weird mouse movement, no key remapping, and no voice acting? WTF? How many hours did you put into it, 2?That you can’t change the resolution is utterly false, there was a bug related to the resolution that was fixed in the first patch
sigh ! *copy/paste* SPAM bot spotted. ‘Do NOT reply’. Originally posted by @Martin. Scroll down the comment section.
thanks. Keep reporting such accounts.
geez, its in early access or something.
You might like the game or not but the way you describe the game’s problems cursing and such, felt like reading one of those amateur reviews from Steam.
Also never review a game if you haven’t played it until the end. (no matter if you enjoyed the gameplay/story, you have to finish it before talking about it)
I’m playing it and aside from the camera control/shooting mechanics, the game is quite interesting (even by that), the open world and exploration is on point (limited but you find stuff at least), art design is cool and different from other games), story as usually in these type of games is developing quite slowly but at least it has proper dialogue and interesting bits (if you compare this to Mass Effect Andromeda’s dialogue/writing, it is way better).
I also played the first couple of hours but I never told to myself “this game is garbage”, in the contrary I am trying to find the time to give it an opportunity and see how it develops.
PS: I could change resolution, I had the patch that fixed the issue.
It’s not a review moron.
But it is in a way, mr semantics, or is it mr moron?
Any idea if this game has Russian voice acting? I need voice or no game.
It does not. Well some radio news are in Russian but the dialog is devoid of voice over.
Voice acting is not important.
I don’t get this review. It’s a game made by a small team and given that it’s an extraordinary accomplishment. Most of the problems listed are only problems if you have the attention span of a fly. I shudder to think of this reviewer trying to play an old school game. The world building is phenomenal and the fighting is fine once you get over the fact that you can’t play with a joypad.