7 Days to Die turned out to be a fantastic game. I have been playing it for years, hosting servers to play with my close friends. Even when it was "rough around the edges" it was fun. Heck, it's still rough around the edges, and it can be a lot of fun.

The base difficulty can quickly become too easy, and if you are a decent player, you'll find yourself wanting to turn up the difficult a good bit to make the game challenging. There are many mods out there to make the game a bit more interesting if you find the gameplay getting stale or repetitive. The good thing about this game is that you can always generate a new world or find ways to make it more challenging for yourself or the people you play with.

If you've been holding out on this game, I don't know what you are waiting for. The devs are going to keep making changes and updates, so I'd expect it to be continuously evolving, balancing, and stabilizing.

Great game... go buy it, or play it if you already own it!

After more than two years, I decided to give this game a review. Firstly, I am a huge fan of the ARK series, with several thousands of hours in ARK: Survival Evolved, and now running up at over 440 hours in Ascended. Here are my thoughts for pros and cons, and then I'll wrap up with a value summary:

Cons: At launch, it was a bit of a wreck when it came to crashes and optimization. Unfortunately, to run the game on high details, you need a beefy system and to get a decent frame rate at those high details, you'll need to run Frame Generation or FSR. I have a 4090, and another system with a 4080 Super. Both run the game decently well, but require DLSS and Frame Gen to keep the game consistently above 100 FPS. The crashes upon release were so frustrating that I wanted to put it on the shelf. Simple stuff like accessing the inventory of a storage chest while in first person - CRASH! That has all been resolved and today's ARK: Survival Ascended experience is one that is stable, and seems to be much better optimized.

Pros: It feels just like ARK, but it looks incredible and no longer outdated like ARK: Survival Ascended. They implemented a lot of QOL things into the game to make building easier, character models look MUCH better, and the updated sounds are just as impressive as the graphics. My first experience in a cave was genuinely terrifying just because of the creepy ambient sounds echoing off of the walls of the cave. Servers are easy to setup, and since they ditched that Nitrado stuff at the launch of the game, I'm very happy with how easy it is to setup and install mods on my own sever, and how easy it is for players to auto-download the mods when they join. Quite simply, it's a far better experience than Survivor Evolved and the overhaul on mods was long overdue.

Overall summary: While I understand that some may feel that this is a "re-skin" of an older game. The reality is that it's not. There was a ton of work that went into this game, and quite simply, it shows. It wasn't perfect out of the gate, but I remind myself that sometimes we shouldn't let "perfect" be the enemy of "good". It was good out of the gate, but had some issues, almost all of which are resolved.

If you are a member of the discord, you see the amount of regular updates the devs are releasing to both clients and servers. This is not some fly-by-night cash grab push with devs not putting in the work. They are! If you don't believe it, go to the discord, run your own server, track all of the updates. I'm actually very impressed with their dedication. It shows that they want this to be a good product, and because of their dedication, it IS a good product.

Yes, it seemed at first that you were paying money to just get The Island, and what seemed to be an unfinished release ahead of the "ARK 2" pipe dream that we may never see, nor will we know if it's the game that many of us were looking to get as an official sequel. In my mind, THIS game is the sequel. It's everything we loved about the original ARK (for the most part - I'm sure some will have some things they loved about the first game that they are not getting here), but it's modernized in QOL, gameplay, graphics, and sound. Now that most of my favorite maps have been released, I know I'm going to enjoy exploring them all over again in Ascended. Similar to the orignal ARK, if you enjoy these games, you will easily recognize that the thousands of hours of enjoyment from the game, it easily exceeds the value you get when compared to AAA titles that offer you far less.

I recommend this game to new players looking for a fun (brutal to new players) sandbox game, old ARK players that have taken a break but want to dive back in, and to the haters that remained stubborn thinking the devs owed them a free game... come join us!

While some of the unlocks and in game currencies that you use for getting certain items is a bit of a distraction, the game itself is well executed, well optimized, and very fun. It's the best Battlefield experience that has taken the genre to the next level since Bad Company 2. The majority of things in this game just work - And by this I mean VOIP and being able to join games with your squad (and staying with them). The shooting feels good, and I rarely feel like I'm getting "robbed" from poor hit box detection.

Great job on this one, and I highly recommend to anyone on the fence. Just don't get frustrated if you are getting obliterated out of the gate, and stick with it. You'll get better and it will get more fun when you aren't losing every fire fight.

Flying Wild Hog does it again. Lo Wang is back, and it is abount damn time. In this new installment of Shadow Warrior, there is more of an open world feel. While the first Shadow Warrior (2013) wasn't your typical corridor shooter, exploration was limited due to the somewhat small maps and I'm not sure if the open world actually makes this game better, but it definately gives you more to do. Shadow Warrior (2013) had a lot actual game to play for a relatively repetative shooter (I believe it took me 15 hours to beat), and I was perfectly fine with the game length. Lo Wang's commentary could always keep the action flowing. In this game, the story and action are broken up with more exploration, side quests, weapon unlocks, and even crafting.

The core of the game is still fantastic, and Shadow Warrior fans will be delighted to know that the combat, which was key to the first game being so great, is still top notch. If you are not a fan of open world games, don't be turned away too fast. It isn't a massive sandbox like GTAV. Think of the maps more like Tomb Raider where you travel between the zones, select quests, and can play through the story at your own pace instead of being forced to go down a linear path.

Overall, I like the game, and it with the 10% off on release day, I can't help but to recommend this game having a great value in regards to dollars spent to content provided.