KickStarter Underworld Ascendant is a disaster

[Mikeal]

Ascendant is no Dishonored when it comes to combat. Or even Dark Messiah.

Well fuck you too.

 

[MasterLobar]

Meanwhile on the Steam forum:

"Download is an empty folder on Mac. tried some things (clearing cache, changing download server, etc.), couldn't get it to work"

"This is a very minor level of frustration compared to what you'll face if you get the game working."

https://steamcommunity.com/app/692840/discussions/0/1741138420012452958/

 

[Nano]

Please include a trigger warning next time Infinitron.

 

[MasterLobar]

According to Steam, "Dr. Cherry Valentine" has played UA for 1,550.4 hours: https://steamcommunity.com/id/dr-cherry-valentine/recommended/692840/

 

[Roguey]

https://steamcommunity.com/id/dr-cherry-valentine/recommended/698780/

 

[taxalot]

Probably got two more sales out of that article. They'll be able to finish System Shock 3.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

I love how that article ends all optimistic. So who wants to shit in their sundae?

Hah, trick question. Just wait until they found out that OSE already dropped that turd long before this puff piece hit print.

 

[Katana1000S]

Dr. Cherry Valentine, LOL, is that your Steam user name Efe? Just kidding

This is a wind up for sure, has to be.

Who the hell would play that amount of hours on this train wreck of a game? There are some serious shill's out there who would go to great lengths to pretend the game is good, seen it first hand on their forums, is it possible someone fired up UA and left the PC going for that long in a non action area, possibly made saves and then did it again to build up hours? My theory may seem ridiculous, but how in the name of hell can you find 1,550.4 hours worth of gameplay in a game this shallow.

I smell a rat.

 

[kaisergeddon]

People leave their computers to idle in Steam games to meme on the review pages with their bloated playtime. Others do it for that reason and to trickle trading cards into their accounts because they're playing Steam's economy metagame rather than the actual games they buy. And guess what: Underworld Ascendant has Steam trading cards. It's a side effect of Steam's social media bullshit that you have people with thousands of hours of "playtime".

Anyways, this game is a DISGRACE. Warren Spector had something to do with this, right? He really shot the Dookie Howitzer at this one and hit the target dead center.

Wait for Monomyth.

 

[Katana1000S]

What else does Dr. Cherry Valentine play on Steam I wonder? cant be much if he/she has sacrificed that many hours genuinely playing the worst game of all time?

Kaisergeddon has hit the nail on the head though, its a company fan boy or rep, or a trading card troll with game on idle for that many amount of hours ... surprised it never crashed actually, but if you start it and do nothing, perhaps it wont?

Some desperate shills out there for sure.

 

[Katana1000S]

I mean, if they had stopped at 1.5 hours, it might be more credible, 150 hours would be borderline lunacy and need to be sectioned, but 1500 hours is just taking the piss and pulling chains and making a mockery of Steams review system for hours of genuine play to be considered anything of merit.

Our Dr Cherry Valentine should be reported for scamming stats.

1500 hours would equal 8.928571 weeks of non stop solid game play, well over 2 month solid of your life playing this hunk of crap, no damn way, uh uh.

Your average busy Career pilot does not log that many hours in a lifetime career of Flying.

 

[kaisergeddon]

It's absolute decline, but a lot of developers on Steam already make """"games"""" with the sole intention of making their income from cards, profile badges, and achievement hunting, and I'm certain they launched this game with trading cards precisely because they knew a lot sales are contingent on that rather than the quality of the game. And when you're scraping the bottom of the barrel with a Unity asset flip like UW:A, you have to take your sales wherever you can get them.

 

[MasterLobar]

The funny thing is, I don't believe there are any more paid shills out there. I am 100% convinced Otherside solicited paid or otherwise manipulated reviews after launch and after their big update in February. Thinking of our friend Joe who still hasn't played one more minute one year later:

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198836210988/recommended/692840/

But why would they (or 505) still use fake reviews now? OS abandoned the game, 4-5 people are still playing it according to SteamSpy, it doesn't even have a score anymore for "recent reviews". It's dead. Why would Dr. Valentine still shill for it?

 

[Efe]

Otherside is copying hello games right now.
they will make a comeback and win your hearts again like no mans sky did.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

Otherside is copying hello games right now.
they will make a comeback and win your hearts again like no mans sky did.

Hello Games closed the studio making No Man's Sky, then all ran over to their second studio to blow smoke about a completely different game with the claim that publishers are very interested in it?

 

[baud]

Regarding cards, I don't understand why leaving the game running would get the player more cards, since all the available cards for a game drop in a few hours.

Regarding how it did happen, I remember once with TR4, the game crashed/didn't start correctly, but there was still a small exe running, so Steam was still counting the hours and continued to do so while I locked my PC/put it to sleep (up to ~40 hours). I only spotted it because I saw it was still running in my library. So it could have happened by mistake/not intentionally. Not likely but possible.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

People leave their computers to idle in Steam games to meme on the review pages with their bloated playtime.

Even Celery could meme Dankest Dungeon's review time better.

 

[Katana1000S]

Accidental time happens, exe stuck, perhaps and maybe ... I accept, but this person is actually claiming 1500 + hours of UA STEAM gameplay, its outright fraud and needs to be reported for the sheer ludicrous and nonsensity of it.

Its a big difference

 

[HoboForEternity]

https://steamcommunity.com/id/dr-cherry-valentine/recommended/698780/

DDLC is a good VN. at least

 

[Eli_Havelock]

According to Steam, "Dr. Cherry Valentine" has played UA for 1,550.4 hours: https://steamcommunity.com/id/dr-cherry-valentine/recommended/692840/

Accidental time happens, exe stuck, perhaps and maybe ... I accept, but this person is actually claiming 1500 + hours of UA STEAM gameplay, its outright fraud and needs to be reported for the sheer ludicrous and nonsensity of it.

Its a big difference

Not the fraud you're thinking of, but fraud by failing to disclose association.

Almost forgot about this; that review is from Amanda, one of our QA who was laid off last June.

She recently posted on Facebook showing that made this review, in reference to whenever you see someone with an ungodly amount of hours posting a minimal review on Steam.

 

[Efe]

is he talking about this review or the one archived one in thread?

 

[Terenty]

She suffered 1500 hours of this shit and still got laid off. The nerve of them

 

[MasterLobar]

Maybe she can also tell us who "Joe" is.

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198836210988/recommended/692840/

 

[Max Heap]

Watching Ultima Underworld footage every now and then this video keeps popping up in my recommendations :





And I still can't get over it.
How much was just faked in this? Obviously the AI behaviour was, but why didn't they reuse these 3D assets?
I heard they actually made the invisible monster work in the last patch, but even then, that is just one thing in that whole video. There are doors, torches, architecture, shaders, all kinds of stuff you could easily reuse. Hell, you could even reuse the whole encounter without any explanation whatsoever, spawn a bunch of monsters when you pick up the orb and call it a day. Or put one of those awful keys there.
It's still better than throwing it all away!

What on earth went through their minds!?


I also wonder how this game made it to 450 reviews. Even with the faked ones.
By rule of thumb it sold like 10.000 copies max. Steamspy still estimates it between 0 and 20k, so that would probably work out.

It's just so mind-boggling. Everything about this project is mind-boggling.
Going back and taking a look at it, is like staying up till 3 am, reading a wikipedia article about some unresolved murder case from the 1970s.
You don't wanna waste any more time with it, but you just wanna see what happened.
It's almost cathartic.

 

[Katana1000S]

Interesting.

2015, they had so much time to at least give us something passable and we got what was delivered and even after final patching is still a great big pile of dog shit.

Hadn't seen that video before or if I did, cant remember it.

Still hate the cartoon look, but for alpha footage ... that could have been forgiven, so long as it was improved on (sadly it wasn't) they sure fucked up this game in every way possible.

Its mind boggling how much they failed in, was on their forums at the time from start to finish, desperately tried to put over my angst about wrong direction things were going in, as were others, OS chose to listen to forum fan boy shills and trolls though and what we have is a result of that ... probably a lot more than that of course, but the forum fan boy shills never helped.

Franchise ruined forever, easy contender for worst game of all time.

Its just beyond belief how badly they fucked up and the worst part was the continual lies and cover ups ... borderline crime right there