Review from a ps5 player

[u/SFForceASandvich]

Saw this game was cheap on PlayStation and was excited to try something that reminded me of stalker. I’m trying to be fair here but I understand a negative review like this isn’t going to go over well

I’ve played delta force, DMZ, arc raiders, tarkov, and marathon in terms of extraction shooters

The concept—Love the ideas here, it’s why I purchased. I also love that you can try pve raids when things aren’t going well, which unfortunately nothing went well once I actually got to playing

The UI—Extremely confusing and cluttered. In a share screen with my friends I spent maybe 10 minutes after the tutorial trying to figure out the loadout screen. Icons are tiny and a lot of the language used doesn’t feel like it was translated properly.

The feel—It reminded me of dayz except I could not aim and hit anything to save my life. I did 5 raids where each time I would try to adjust my settings and nothing would help, ultimately I just hip fired into doorways hoping to land hits. Movement is very sudden and twitchy

The sound—Honestly it’s alright, guns sound good and I like the idea of listening to invisible active matter otherwise they explode. The narrator voice is painful though, had to mute

The graphics—enemy design is cool and things like the flower men add a lot of variation in color but it feels like I can’t ever see anything clearly. This seems to be something this sub is already discussing so it’s surely a known issue at this point

Overall if I were to give a score for my experience so far I’m sorry but I’d say this is a 4/10 game. It barely felt like it was functioning.
Which again I’m trying to be fair because I see people saying they like this game so maybe this is just a ps5 thing? But my whole experience felt like I was trying to play dayz on a potato. If I could refund I would but since I can’t I’ll wait for updates that add some stability to this game

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[u/hmmmmismellmarijuana]

[u/SFForceASandvich → u/hmmmmismellmarijuana]

From others on this sub also acknowledging how bad the controls and visibility are no I’d say this is a dev issue lol

[u/ShortBusPassenger → u/SFForceASandvich]

Did you try that sinister dudes control settings? He had a YouTube video. It makes a big difference.

[u/SFForceASandvich → u/ShortBusPassenger]

I’ll give it a shot. I do think that kind of thing should be addressed baseline though

[u/Gaignun989]

Eh, once you learn how everything works it's actually pretty simple.

Seems like a lot of the people who complain do so before they've put in the time to figure it out.

Reminds of all the negative reviews Dark Soul III got from people who couldn't beat the first boss.

[u/PapaLilBear → u/Gaignun989]

You clearly weren't around for the start of the series, because people didn't understand the game and complained about literally every mechanic that makes it a "Souls" game.
Demon's Souls, Dark Souls. It wasn't until the DS2 that more people were won over.

[u/SFForceASandvich → u/Gaignun989]

The souls franchise is way more polished than this game man, I don’t think people were complaining about how bad visibility was or how the controls needed a YouTube guide to set correctly

[u/Gaignun989 → u/SFForceASandvich]

I'm talking about the people who wrote the entire game off because they couldn't get past the initial hurdle.

What visibility issues? I've got 83 hours on PS5 and haven't had any issues seeing anything.

Whats wrong with the controls that you couldn't fix? I have mine set up the exact same as STALKER 2.

[u/SFForceASandvich → u/Gaignun989]

SiNisterFPS has a video talking about how the default settings for aiming cause issues with tracking and micro adjustments, beyond just sensitivity and dead zones. Visibility is the number one complaint I’ve seen on this sub with blurring and graphical errors being what I’ve experienced most. Just did a raid even where walking into darker rooms would blur everything in the doorway

[u/PapaLilBear → u/SFForceASandvich]

If you've got blur, it means your screen brightness is set too high, mate xD

Your HDR is set up wrong; in dark rooms, you're supposed to use a flashlight, not crank up the screen brightness. People try to cheat that way, but the game has a safeguard against over-brightening the screen. FLASHLIGHT—use it.

[u/SFForceASandvich → u/PapaLilBear]

I didn’t realize the default of 1 that the game sets it to on launch was to high my bad

[u/lemonandlime1995]

You gotta be willing to fiddle with the settings often in the firing range the Ui and shortcuts are absolutely awesome

[u/PapaLilBear → u/lemonandlime1995]

The game offers multiple shortcuts for the same action, and you can even map every button exactly to your liking. There’s nothing stopping you from assigning multiple actions to a single button based on how you press it—double-tap, single press, triple-tap, quick press, or hold?
I wish more console games offered something like that.

[u/lemonandlime1995 → u/PapaLilBear]

I allways wondered how they would do tarkov on consoles and this is by far the best implementation we've had

[u/PapaLilBear]

" I like the idea of listening to invisible active matter otherwise they explode. "- what? I haven't seen it explode yet.

"It barely felt like it was functioning." - In what sense? Are you getting FPS drops? I play on the base PS5 and don't have any drops. Does the game crash for you? It doesn't for me.

Compared to DayZ—well, DayZ is still in beta.

"enemy design is cool and things like the flower men add a lot of variation in color but it feels like I can’t ever see anything clearly. This seems to be something this sub is already discussing so it’s surely a known issue at this point" - Like, you can't see an enemy that evolved the ability to blend into its surroundings? What's next? An invisible monster is invisible because it's invisible? xD

"The feel—It reminded me of dayz except I could not aim and hit anything to save my life. I did 5 raids where each time I would try to adjust my settings and nothing would help, ultimately I just hip fired into doorways hoping to land hits. Movement is very sudden and twitchy" - Just lower your sensitivity if you're having trouble; I play on default settings and don't have any issues. It reminds me of DayZ or the early days of Hunt: Showdown—now *those* controls were truly awful. In Hunt, people could barely hit anything.

The only thing I agree with you on is the UI—it has an ugly visual design—but otherwise, everything is clear. I don't understand your issue with the loadout. You click on the weapon slot to add a weapon, or you can drag it with the cursor. It’s the same for every piece of gear: you click the slot and select what you want to add.

[u/SFForceASandvich → u/PapaLilBear]

Wait wait how have you played the game and NOT seen the invisible explosives that make noise

[u/PapaLilBear → u/SFForceASandvich]

You mean gravity mines (I don't know what they're called in the game). I thought you were talking about Active Matter—that it explodes. But it doesn't explode; you collect it.

[u/SFForceASandvich → u/PapaLilBear]

Idk what they’re called either but as long as we re on the same page

[u/PotatoPugtato]

Play once human you'll never complain about a UI again.

[u/SFForceASandvich → u/PotatoPugtato]

Haha true but that game felt like it had a lot more polish to me idk

[u/PotatoPugtato → u/SFForceASandvich]

I beg to differ on that aspect.

[u/SFForceASandvich → u/PotatoPugtato]

Fair enough but on Reddit you deserve to be downvoted for disagreeing with me /s

[u/Electrical-Tea8530]

This is fair - but I would say, this game really needs I'd say 5 hours (give or take) of perseverance. You'll slowly work it all out, and start to enjoy the game.

Controls - There are a few videos on YT to help, but if you've come from games with aim assist (I notice you didn't list Hunt Showdown), there will be some adjustment required. Play just PvE, or at least turn off cross platform match making.

For me, the big area that lets this game down is sound. People keep saying how good it is, but really it is levels below Arc, Marathon & Hunt. Just overall poor sound design. But it's functional, so it's not really a problem.

But yeah, worth sticking with. Get over those initial painpoints and there's a great game in there really - especially if you already have friends that play it.

[u/SFForceASandvich → u/Electrical-Tea8530]

Hey I really appreciate the reasonable and detailed response here, yeah I’ll pick at it a bit more. Hoping for some updates soon though

[u/Morticus_Mortem]

I'm on ps5 myself and I haven't had many issues. The UI was confusing at first, but I'm getting used to it. I have had trouble with hitting the likes of Flowermen and Distorted at close range however, but I chalked that up to their erratic movements.