Game News INSOMNIA: The Ark Released

[Kev Inkline]

Looking forward to 'October Insanity'

No RPGs out in October except Cthulhu.

Also Vigilantes and AC:Odyssey.

Perhaps it could be then October Brief Psychotic Disorder (F23)

 

[Infinitron]

There are TWO Cthulhu games in October - the Cyanide one and Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics. And also Space Hulk: Tactics though that's not calling itself an RPG.

Oh and there's that Witcher card game too.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics.

It'll be a shit Cthulhu game, but a decent tactics game.

 

[Roguey]

There are TWO Cthulhu games in October - the Cyanide one and Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics. And also Space Hulk: Tactics though that's not calling itself an RPG.

Oh and there's that Witcher card game too.

Achtung isn't calling itself an RPG either. I'll concede that Thronebreaker is which is uhhhhhhhhhhhhh

 

[Infinitron]

Achtung isn't calling itself an RPG either.

Its Kickstarter page did! (I hate when they do that)

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Puteo]

If anyone is curious, I did some testing on the performance problems.

It seems to be 100% a CPU bottleneck.

The game is almost always maxing out 1 or 2 threads on my overclocked i5-8600k, which is faster than any stock CPU on the market. My 1080GTX runs at around 30-40% utilization on the highest settings, which is below the maximum performance of a 970GTX.

In other words, if you have a good cpu from the last 3 years you should be able to get decent performance out of the game; assuming your GPU isn't an absolute turd or ancient.

That said, the good news is that developers are usually much better at fixing poor CPU optimization than GPU optimization, so we could potentially see big gains in future patches.

 

[Bocian]

whats up with devs refusing to call their titles rpg. was there some issue with that?

It's better than devs pretending they make RPG's when they actually don't.

 

[Barghest]

It seems every game I've bought in September needs patching and won't be playable until October. I'm looking at Pathfinder, Bard Tale and INSOMNIA as the main culprits.

Devs seem to be getting worse with half-baked releases.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Kev Inkline]

It seems every game I've bought in September needs patching and won't be playable until October. I'm looking at Pathfinder, Bard Tale and INSOMNIA as the main culprits.

Devs seem to be getting worse with half-baked releases.

It's madness, I tell ya!

 

[Jenkem]

This is Elex 1.5

ima buy it

on sale

 

[cvv]

This is Elex 1.5

Dude, these are very, VERY strong words.

Feedback doesn't seem good, seems like a potentially great game released a year too early.

 

[Jinn]

Dude, these are very, VERY strong words.

Feedback doesn't seem good, seems like a potentially great game released a year too early.

I really get where he's coming from with these words, though. There is something very special about this game.

But yeah, it needs a fair amount of work before I would recommend anyone playing it. At least a patch or three. A goddamn shame because after playing it for 6 hours straight the day I got it, I JUST WANT TO PLAY MORE.

 

[cvv]

Dude, these are very, VERY strong words.

Feedback doesn't seem good, seems like a potentially great game released a year too early.

I really get where he's coming from with these words, though. There is something very special about this game.

But yeah, it needs a fair amount of work before I would recommend anyone playing it. At least a patch or three. A goddamn shame because after playing it for 6 hours straight the day I got it, I JUST WANT TO PLAY MORE.

Well open-world RPGs are never polished at launch, let alone from indie studios. Everyone knows how buggy Skyrim was (still is) and people forget that Witcher 3 was pretty broken as well, took them a few weeks to fix the gamebreaking XP gain bug. Or Kingdom Come - a huge incline amongst open-world RPGs but utterly bug ridden at launch.

Apparently the devs are hurrying up with the patches tho so I'm keeping an eye on this one.

 

[Jinn]

Apparently the devs are hurrying up with the patches tho so I'm keeping an eye on this one.

Yep. The devs show no sign of slowing down and are remarkably communicative with their players despite how short-handed they seem to be. I would urge anyone interested in this to keep a close eye on it, or even buy it on sale now to support them in their ongoing work. Supporting them definitely seems worth it and I don't regret it in the least.

 

[Safav Hamon]

I like it more than Elex. Here's my reasoning why so far.

- Custom protagonist with five backgrounds.
- Worldbuilding is deep and mature. Magalan was too cheesy for me personally.
- Branching main quest involving conspiracy, politics, and supernatural elements.
- The locations are meticulously detailed and immersive. My biggest complaint with Elex was that the settlements didn't feel grounded enough.
- Art and music direction are on point. Beautiful handcrafted levels with a Fallout inspired soundtrack
- Massive battles. There is a ton of AI vs AI fighting in this game, including a battle with literally hundreds of NPCs (I'm not exaggerating). The final battle in Elex is a backyard brawl in comparison.
- No retarded HP sponges that you need to hit 100 times to kill.
- Companions are upgradeable and have their own skill trees.
- You know how in New Vegas that feeling of surprise when your cannibalism perk unlocks a unique dialog option? It's the same with this game.
- Random encounters are awesome. There's so much variety and some are very amusing, such as a raider playing classical music.
- Finally, I like the developers better. They express a willingness to improve and take ownership for their failures. Piranha Bytes is such a frustrating developer to support.

What I don't like is the terrible performance and bugs. Elex was much better optimized at release than this, and that's saying something.

 

[BEvers]

I like it more than Elex.

High praise indeed.

 

[Puteo]

I like it more than Elex.

High praise indeed.

I like it a lot more than Elex. The writing, art, and shooting in Elex were all total garbage. Challenging combat and interesting quests were what made it a good game.

Insomnia blows it out of the water in all three of those aspects along with challenging combat and interesting quests that require thinking to finish and not just following a quest marker.

Plus, people don't talk about the combat enough but I would argue it has the best gunplay of any RPG, including the Deus Exes and Mass Effects (not saying much I know)

Believe it or not, I used to be a big Elex fan, but the fact that a brand new Indie dev can just walk in and eat their lunch like this makes me respect Piranha Bytes a lot less.

Now if they could just patch the damn thing...

 

[Safav Hamon]

I'm doing the mission "Behind the Enemy Walls" in Insomnia and it's harder than anything in Elex. Not because of clunky controls or armor sponges, but great encounter design and resource management.

 

[toro]

Friday cannot come soon enough.

 

[Fenix]

Interesting feedback guys...