Yearly Archives: 2017

ARK: Survival Evolved Review: It’s finally out!

By Mohammad Abubakr

What has it been, like, 2 years since ARK first went into early access? Over the years the game has risen and fallen in popularity. Within a month of entering early access, the game sold over 1 million copies. I mean, when we were teased with so many images and videos showing off dinosaurs that can be tamed, all during the survival game craze, there was no doubt that the game would sell like hotcakes. While the game was initially scheduled to be fully released in June of 2016, it kept getting delayed until finally releasing on August 29, 2017. Was this long beta period worth it? Is the game much better than it was two years ago? Read on to learn more about ARK’s current state!

To be honest, when I first booted up the game after not having played for more than 2 years, I couldn’t tell what changed. To be fair, I’m not a huge fan of survival games and prefer faster paced shooters or MOBA/ARTS games. However, I do quite enjoy watching others with strong roleplaying skills or humor play these kinds of games. So, while I had not played the game, I continued to tune in on websites such as Twitch. It was only after loading up my old first impressions article that I realized how far the game had come.

Fundamentally, the game remains the same. A typical session will still feature the same stuff: collecting, crafting, building, taming, and fighting. The base game has not changed but has been polished very nicely. Everything just looks and feels better. The user interface is much cleaner, the process of jumping into a game is much smoother, and the visuals show a clear improvement.

Looks MUCH better compared to early access

For those unfamiliar with the game, ARK throws you onto an island (or one of the other maps) with absolutely nothing. From that point on, it’s you against the world. Build yourself a home, catch some prey, pick some berries, or go explore. As long as you can keep your vitals up, you’re free to do as you see fit. The game hinted at a story being present but most of the time you’re just playing in a sandbox, writing your own stories. Ark can be played offline or online but, like with most games, playing with others is bound to be a lot more entertaining. It can be hard to create a story for yourself, by yourself.

Aside from having to gather resources, the game uses a level progression system allowing you to level up your stats and unlock additional blueprints for crafting. This system allows you to customize your character depending on how you see yourself playing the game. That is, you can increase your health and damage if you’re planning to fight for your survival or increase your weight capacity and speed if you’re hoping to appease your creative side. Additionally, it helps guide you into the game rather than overwhelming you instantly with hundreds of items available for crafting.


Last man standing wins! (Credit: Ark Survival of the Fittest Trailer)

What sets ARK apart from other survival games are the dinosaurs! The game is set in prehistoric times (although you can eventually research to craft guns) with dinosaurs roaming the world. These dinosaurs can be passive, aggressive, tiny, or massive. There are so many of them to discover and tame! After  knocking out these dinosaurs, they can be fed to slowly gain their trust. Once tamed, these dinosaurs join your team and act as your companions, aiding you in your mission to survive.

However, while dinosaurs are what will likely bring people into the game, it is the survival, roleplaying, and player versus player aspects which retain them. With a good group of people on a nice server, the game can be a blast. Form tribes, forge alliances, wage war, build beautiful cities, and more! It’s up to the players to decide how fun the game is.


Looks MUCH better compared to early access

This, then, poses a problem. With the game being as open as it is, not everyone will come to like it. A bad server and bad group can cause players to get turned off by the game. One may say that this is the players’ fault for not playing the game well, however, shouldn’t it be the game’s goal to offer a fun experience, and not just a potentially fun experience?

Conclusion: Great. . . if you’re into these sorts of games

In conclusion, ARK has grown into a great survival game over the years. It has been polished from its early access phases and is now presented as a beautiful and complete survival game, letting the players write their own stories and live their dreams. With its full release, there is a lot of downloadable content available, providing a lot of extra playable content with new maps, dinosaurs (or dragons!), and items. A lot of this content is free while some requires you to pull out your wallet.


He’s beautiful!

The nice $30 price tag has also gone up to $60. It’s not a cheap game anymore. Maybe the extra content and polish can justify this price, maybe it cannot. I personally do not see myself playing this game or recommending it to most people. However, if you are an avid fan of survival games, ARK is not a bad choice. It is one of those games that is well made but will only be enjoyable by a select audience.

While it may seem like the game has faded from the spotlight, there are still a solid number of players online at all times. With the release, we can see an increase of players (according to Steam stats), and this trend repeats with rises and falls every few months. Players will simply jump back in once more content is added and then move on to other games until the next patch. Don’t let the hype around the game fading fool you into thinking it’s dead, it’s still alive and well. Go and check it out!

 

Graphics: 4/5
ARK is gorgeous. While it does require quite a powerful PC to max it out, the game really pushes the boundaries on the graphical side. There are still some improvements that can be implemented such as fixing the foliage.

Control: 5/5
The controls are very well done. Nothing really feels awkward and you can use the game’s controls as a tool to get what you need done, easily.

Features: 4/5
With all the extra downloadable content and updates, there is a lot of content available. However, even then, the base game does not change. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as games like ARK leave it up to you to figure out how they should be played.

Customization: 5/5
Customizability is never lacking in ARK. You can design your character to your desires, level him/her up as you please, and build the base and army of your dreams.

Community: 3/5
There are still a good amount of people playing the game. Like most games, you’ll run into great and not so great people. However, I would recommend finding a nice group of friends to play this game with. Doing so lets you enjoy the game without worrying about the community.

Overall: 3/5

 

 

Blast Out: PVP Arena Brawler Launches on Steam Early Access Tomorrow

Blast Out Launch News

Tomorrow on Steam Early Access, Blast Out by indie team Tarhead Studio will go live!It features a very vibrant, distinct art style and a fun, intricate combat system. No battle will be the same with the game featuring deforming arenas. Customize the chosen character from a variety of armor and other equipment to help prepare them for battle while also defending them from the arena itself in addition to their foes! Each piece of equipment offers a positive and a negative stat to reinforce tactical play and balancing what is necessary for that players playstyle. Build a loadout of four abilities for each character, and the pool of over 28 abilities will offer a nice variety of abilities, from offensive, defensive, positional and control powers. If that weren’t enough, characters can also utilize weapons, and each weapon has its own unique ability. Mixing and matching these effectively promises to be a key to success.

“We’re really pleased to announce that Blast Out is coming to Steam Early Access”, said Martin Eriksson CEO of Tarhead Studio. “With a heavy dose of inspiration from the Warcraft III mod, Warlock and our own visions on what an arcade based arena brawler should look like, we believe Blast Out delivers a fast paced battle arena experience unlike anything else on the market”.

PIck one of the three tribes, Bears, Apes or Red Pandas, and take part in combat that heavily revolves around player ability and mastering the mechanics of close quarters combat through a Knockback system. The player’s reflexes will also count for a lot to outmaneuver their opponents. Especially skilled players may receive Legendary items as they gain vital arena experience, which can be added to their collection of offensive assets.

Final Fantasy XV: Multiplayer Expansion Arrives Next Month

FFXV Comrades

Final Fantasy XV‘s multiplayer expansion, entitled “Comrades” comes on October 31st. As a survivor of Kingsglaive, players will work together as their created characters with the goal of learning more about the disappearance of Noctis after the events of Chapter 13 in the main story. As members of Kingsglaive, players equip royal sigils that grant special powers from the Lucian bloodline. Players can then strategize and create a balanced team to take on a variety of quests. In addition to multiplayer quests, single player quests are also available for players to enhance their characters. People who own Final Fantasy XV and the XV Season Pass, or simply have the Final Fantasy XV Multiplayer Expansion: Comrades standalone expansion will be able to access the content. It also requires a PSN/XBL subscription.

Guardians of Ember Leaves Steam Early Access

Guardians of Ember - Early Access Leaving - Main Image

Heroes from around the world, grab your sword! Guardians of Ember leaves Early Access and offers not only an action-packed playground for fans of MMORPGs who waited it out so far but also new challenges for the existing community such as nightmare mode for dungeons that adds a new layer of replayability with unique rewards. Other new features include a group finder and re-worked XP sharing for groups.
Old heroes and upcoming squires profit from the new guild skill system by upgrading their guild and unlocking fourteen special bonuses to give guild members that extra boost for that impending boss fight or monster brawl. The boosts range from additional critical damage through reduced item repair costs to extra regeneration. Players who haven’t joined a guild by now should take the opportunity to make new friends or become guildmaster themselves so as not to miss out on these special bonuses.
Since the start of Early Access in December 2016 the development team adjusted many features based on the community’s feedback. Besides new content in the form of three new acts and a sixth character class, the game introduced the Horde Mode in which players try to survive against ten massive waves of enemies and receive special honor points that can be exchanged for rare materials for crafting unique high-end gear.
Our time in Early Access has been longer than expected but we listened closely to community feedback especially on sensitive topics like the in-game shop which now only offers vanity items”, comments Patrick Streppel, CEO of Insel Games. “While no game is ever done – and we are already working on great new features for the upcoming months – we believe now is the right time to take a trip to Olyndale!

SPIRA Interview: Joe Chen and Emily McMillan

Materia Collective - Spira Review 2

by Jason Parker (Ragachak)

Recently, I reviewed my first musical compilation, SPIRA: Music Inspired from Final Fantasy X by Materia Collective/Project Final Fantasy X. I was fortunate enough to sit down (via email) with two of the hard workers on this project, Joe Chen and Emily McMillan of Project Final Fantasy X. The following is my interview with them, and I’m grateful to have the opportunity. I highly recommend this album to fans not only of Final Fantasy X but video game tributes just in general. This is truly one of my favorites. There are 100 tracks, something for pretty much everyone.

Jason: One of the major themes of the SPIRA collection appears to be (to me) the start and end of the journey, starting with Spira/Zanarkand. Was there another overarching theme you went for when collecting music/gathering ideas for the albums?
Emily: The overreaching themes were largely decided on by the tracks we received. Joe describes our track selection process in more detail later on, but essentially, once we figured out what tracks we would have on the album, we spent an entire day figuring out how we would divide them up between the two albums, and how we would order them. We made the decision to split SPIRA into two albums simply because the tracklist was incredibly long, and we wanted to make them more manageable (and affordable!) to listeners. So we divided them by genre in part so that anyone who wanted to purchase SPIRA could find something that fit more with their musical tastes. We thought this made sense in a lot of ways. Final Fantasy X is all about Tidus and Yuna, so we tried to arrange the tracks in a way so that Besaid Mix reflects Yuna’s journey in the game, and Zanarkand Mix reflects Tidus’s journey. Additionally, we wanted the theme of journeys to apply to the music itself, as well. We asked arrangers on SPIRA to try something new with their arrangements – which could mean trying a new genre, selecting a track they’re not familiar with, or working with new performers – so they were going through something new as well! Since Final Fantasy X also features some new composers in its original soundtrack (resulting in a different sound from previous Final Fantasy installments), we thought it would be appropriate to really aim for something new and adventurous with our project.

Jason: How did you decide on Final Fantasy X (other than it has some of the best music in an FF game)?

Joe: We both have a personal connection to Final Fantasy X, as it was the first Final Fantasy game we had each played and partially what had hooked us on Square games and music in the first place. Creating an album collection like SPIRA is really a labor of love for both the music and the game. When you serve as an album producer on a large scale project such as SPIRA, the management aspect can become really overwhelming. That’s why we wanted to make sure that this project would recreate music from a game and soundtrack we truly loved. Whenever we had to push through difficult deadlines, we were always able to come back to the idea that we really love this game, this music, and the musicians were working with. I feel like we were really able to make something special by combining all these things.

Jason: What goes into making a collaboration of this size? As someone new to Materia Collective, is there a regular cast of musicians you call upon?

Emily: Whew! The short answer to the first question: a lot! 🙂 We could certainly have done a much smaller album where we focused more on each track. We chose not to do this because, in our view, Materia Collective arrange albums have always been primarily about community, and this route would have involved excluding a whole lot of arrangers who wanted to participate. Materia Collective was actually founded by a bunch of musicians who got together to make an arrange album for Final Fantasy VII – after which, people in the group immediately asked, “Okay, so what are we doing next?” Since then, the group has grown extensively. We have since added hundreds of musicians we didn’t have for that first album. Some of our projects are still fairly small – one or a few musicians get together to create a more manageable arrange album – but when it came time to do another main series Final Fantasy arrange album, we decided to prioritize inclusivity. Anyone in the Materia Collective group who wanted to participate got the opportunity to do so, including some brand-new members. I’m very proud we pulled it off, since I know how difficult it can be to dive into an already-established community.

Jason: Did they pick the songs they wanted to do? Were many tracks cut/not chosen for the sake of not running too long?

Joe: As much as people love tracks like “Suteki Da Ne?” and “Zanarkand,” we know that having too many tracks with the exact same theme can be draining on a listener, especially if there isn’t enough stylistic variation. Members of Materia Collective were able to submit track proposals where they told us which tracks they would like to arrange and what their artistic vision was for each proposed track. We, as the album producers, approved only a subset of those proposals to try and make a balanced listening experience. Although not every proposed track made it into the final albums, we aimed to make the project as inclusive as possible and tried to get every Materia Collective member who was interested in the project involved in one way or another.

Jason: As the producers, do any of you have particularly favorite tracks among the regular games OST?

Joe: I’m particularly fond of “Beyond the Darkness,” which plays in the Omega Ruins. The encounter rate is so high in that dungeon that it’s one of those songs that I rarely get to hear fully play out. When I heard the full version, I thought it sounded absolutely gorgeous. I’m a big fan of well-used piano and strings, so this track really hits the sweet spot for me.

Emily: Joe took my answer! 😀 Beyond the Darkness is one of my absolute favorites, which is unusual for me since I’m not a massive fan of many of Hamauzu’s tracks on that score. I also love the Guadosalam theme and A Fleeting Dream. I think the latter is one of my favorites just because of the area it plays in – it’s one of the few places in the game where the area music isn’t cut off by the battle music, so it’s just a gorgeous part of the game and soundtrack.

Jason: Do tribute albums like this require any sort of permission from Square Enix, or does it fall under “Fair Use”?

Emily: While many of Materia Collective’s projects aren’t officially affiliated with Square Enix, because we do sell our projects, we ensure that all our music is licensed, and rights holders are paid with every use. Sebastian Wolff, Materia Collective’s founder, is an avid advocate of musicians’ rights has made that a central theme of Materia Collective as it has developed.

Jason: Who are your favorite Hero/Villain characters from FFX?

Joe: My favorite hero is probably Yuna. In addition to being a great party member as a summoner-healer combination, I liked seeing her grow as the game progresses. She starts off as someone being swept away by her own fate without question, but as the game progresses, she learns to stand up for herself and not just let others dictate her actions. My favorite villain has to be Seymour. He’s really a driving antagonizing force against the party throughout the entire game, but the sidequests really do a great job of fleshing out why he’s so antagonistic.

Emily: Yuna is one of my favorite protagonists in the FF series. Her character development in the game is great. I’m also a big Auron fan (who isn’t?) – I love the whole “dad” storyline that you uncover as you play through the game. (I also think it’s a fun little throwback to the Final Fantasy VIII dad storyline) Regarding villains, I actually have this ongoing opinion that Seymour is the only real villain in the game. His story kind of plays out like the stereotypical Final Fantasy villain – a million final forms and all – but he’s not the main antagonist and ignoring him, most of the other antagonists aren’t really bad guys. They’re misguided, or trapped, but not really evil. It’s one of the elements of the game that I think is really cool, and sets it apart from the other FF games – I can’t think of any other games in the main Final Fantasy series where the final battle itself is that emotional!

Jason: Can we expect to see more obscure RPG tribute albums (Lufia 2, I will not rest until someone covers it), or maybe something more thematic, like Secret of Mana, as it’s receiving a remake?

Joe: Possibly! The great thing about the Materia Collective is that there are so many people with unique interests, and the leadership changes from project-to-project. Final Fantasy X is really special to the both of us, but I’m sure every member has their own equivalent game and soundtrack. All I can say right now is that the Materia Collective is always working on something new.

Jason: If you could pick any game to cover without any arguments from anyone, what would it be?

Joe: I would absolutely choose Xenoblade Chronicles. The setting of the game lends itself to a really diverse soundtrack from orchestral to electronic to metal, and there’s so much talent behind the original soundtrack. I’d love to see how our musicians re-imagine those tracks.

Emily: Oh boy. I guess the first thing that comes to mind is Final Fantasy XIV because there’s such a cool array of themes on that soundtrack and its expansions. Stormblood and Heavensward, in particular, have featured some of my favorite game music over the past couple of years. I’m a big fan of Masayoshi Soken! (I interviewed him! The link is right here! – Jason)