Warborne Above Ashes

It's no secret I'm always on the lookout for any new MMO that isn't just a singleplayer RPG with added netcode. So much so that I'm willing to give almost anything a try. It is a bit of a sad state of affairs that Warborne Above Ashes is possibly the best such MMO to release in recent years, even though I can't in good conscience say it's even a good game.

Warborne prides itself as a 24/7 PvP MMO. Open world, dynamic battles, no story. From the way it describes itself it sounds more like Planetside, except with top-down MOBA-esque combat, but the reality isn't quite there.
There is definitely a large PvP presence in the game, and indeed you may be attacked anywhere on the map, but that's rarely actually the case. Most of the game is PvE, clearing various camps, loose enemies, bosses, or dungeons. That's not all the possibilities, and there's a ton of different content. It's actually quite amazing they have so much at launch. The reason this is most of the content is because this is the way you earn exp, levels, and most importantly, resources. While PvP can theoretically give much more of all of those, then in reality there has to be a losing and a winning side. The losers don't get much exp, and actually get some of their hard-earned equipment looted by the winners, forcing them to go back to PvE to re-earn that equipment. Not to mention you respawn at your base which is usually not next to where you died.

While slightly misleading, that's not the problem. PvE is fine. There are some questionable choices. Like your weapon deciding 3 of your skills and 1 passive, while your drifter (hero, character, whatever you call it) only deciding 1 skill and passive, which really kills the fantasy of "playing a character". Some of the mechanics are also awkward. Like the basic attack (which for some reason is your main source of damage, even on casters) stops attacking every time you move, forcing you to click it again. But these are not core gameplay issues. I think the core gameplay is fine, and would make for a great game, but there are just so many quality of life of problems. Were it just that, I could be apologetic, and say "oh, it just launched, they'll fix it", but I played the playtest half a year ago, and virtually nothing has changed. I'm not sure where they got the resources to make so much content in the first place but then not fix anything in half a year, and that makes me worried if they ever will. There is definitely potential here, and I believe every problem they have is relatively easily fixable, but if they won't do it, then it will remain a bad game.

But let's go through some of these problems and explore things you can do in the game while we're at it.

• I'm in Europe, and they enthusiastically launched 3 servers for it. This is a problem because 1 server got really full, and the remaining 2 had only a fraction of the players. Had they dynamically opened up a new server as the first filled, they would have ended up with one really full, and one reasonably full server, but now two are ghost towns while the first is...
• The first is so full that some factions don't have room anymore (more on that later), and all the content in the beginner areas worth doing is completed. Loot is shared, which is good, but that means you have 50 people swarming a small camp, 3 minutes of travel and waiting time, 15 seconds of combat, and everyone gets pennies. The day-by-day increasing level cap does help with players, who have more time, not leaving everyone else in the dust, but it locks half the map out for the first ~20% of the season.
• There is passive mining. Your income depends on where you place your base (which can be attacked). This would be a great idea of encouraging risk vs reward, but for some reason the areas don't always get more rewarding as they become more dangerous. Not just that, there just isn't enough room for everyone who wants to get a spot in those areas. This gets so bad people will grief their own team by blocking the good spots with other buildings before a base can be placed there, and it's literally a fraction of a second before you lose a spot because someone got ahead of you, and now you're stuck with worse passive income (of a very important resource) for the whole season. This is both bad map design and unnecessary inter-faction friction.
• Player numbers decide who wins and who loses. Both in small battles and the overall season. At the small scale, while groups of 10+ will show up on the minimap, allowing anyone to avoid zergs, the common friend group of 4-6 people will still get unexpectedly run over by 8-9 people cheesing the radar system. It's just generally difficult to practice PvP anyways, since losing takes such a big toll on you. So it's really unfriendly towards casual players unless you are only running around in zergs. And that's the other problem - that most people are basically not allowed agency. With such a focus on numbers, a smaller warband (guild) just can't compete with the 300-person ones claiming the whole map. You'll either be a disposable pawn to a zerg, or you'll lose out on rewards from being in a successful group. Individual performance just isn't rewarded that much. Add to that faction hopping to move to the winning side, and the end of a season is ruined too.

Honestly, I've prattled on enough. There are more problems to highlight, more stuff to talk about, but you get the picture. The combat is fine, not great. The core ideas in the game are good. But there are so many little problems that mount up to form this huge pile of garbage that it stinks up the whole game. And worst of all, they show no signs of resolving those problems. I will probably check back in a month or so to see how many people stick around for the next season, as well as if they're doing anything to clean up the game now that it's launched. I might return to play the game if they do, but as it stands now, I'm not hopeful and as such can't recommend the game, even if you like this genre.

Astroneer

I think Astroneer was the oldest game still on my wishlist, at almost 9 years old. I even had an early blog post talking about it, back when I was still making weekly posts about whatever. Well, I finally got around to it. Sort of.

I'm going to keep this "review" short. I didn't effectively play the game. I've had a very poor run, quite disliking every "open world survival craft" game I've tried with the exception of Terraria, and I can assume that's because that was more combat and less crafting oriented. So I already went in, not expecting anything.
The problem is that when you're already thinking that you might not be in it for the long haul, the worst thing they can do is make getting into it be a chore. And that's exactly what they did. The main manu was already difficult to figure out, opting for half-cryptic icons instead of text, but starting a new, default game, was easy enough. Now, I would think that I don't care much for tutorials, but Astroneer is sorely lacking one. They had some basic introductory missions telling you what to do, but not how to do it. I need a resource or an item. Where do I get it? No idea. The inventory system was trying to be immersive with things slotting into your backpack, but gosh was it difficult to understand what was where, and the amount of actions needed to pick up a single thing was far too many. Worst of all was the camera, which did not follow your mouse, but had to be explicitly positioned. For a game in this genre, where I need to build and connect things, this too was too many actions just to be able to see the areas I wanted to interact with.

After about an hour, I was thoroughly angry with how difficult it was to get anything done, so I just quit. I don't really know what most of the crafting, gathering, and exploration was going to be like, but I can't imagine it would've outweighed the terrible experience I was going to have getting through it. Many negative reviews apparently touch on this, but I'm amazed that it's not a problem for more people. So, yeah, a rough starting experience is why I don't want to play it. It's still one of the highest rated survival crafting games though, so if you like the genre, give it a try. If the UI and controls haven't put you off after an hour, it'll probably suit you just fine.

SNKRX

I don't remember why I decided to put SNKRX on my "anticipated" games list. It's a nice action roguelike... shooter. Almost like a survivors-like, now that I think about it, but since it's from before the genre got popular, it doesn't really feel like it.
It's a very simple and minimalistic game - you buy from a selection of 3 characters, they get added to your character snake, and then automatically cast their ability whenever they can. Getting duplicates makes a single character stronger, while getting different characters of the same class makes every character in the class stronger (much like in auto-battlers). You then proceed to control your snake of units on a small arena, killing spawning waves of enemies. Every several levels you also get to choose a passive upgrade.

I think the general description of it doesn't sound too exciting. On paper, it is pretty generic, and even not on paper, it's not a deep game or one with a lot of content. In fact, you will probably complete your first run in an hour or so, and by then you will have seen all the game mechanics. For some, that might be a place to stop, and I couldn't fault them for not thinking this game to be good enough in that case. From there, each next completed run makes the enemies stronger, but also increases your maximum snake size by 1. For me, I found the core game mechanics to be so good, so well polished, I spent around 18 hours on it, getting all the achievements.

Personally, I would definitely recommend it, as I even put it on my favorite games of all time list, although at not a high position. The lack of content and ambition in wanting to make a larger game is definitely the biggest factor holding this back from really being great. Still, if the idea of Snake + TFT sounds good and you like action roguelikes, give it a try. You can probably complete it and still have plenty of time for a refund if you don't feel like completing it 10 more times like I did.

Niche - a genetics survival game

I remember winning Niche as a "special" prize in a short game development contest because we made a game that involved breeding rabbits with some amount of genetics attached. It's one of the oldest games still on my backlog. I was already looking through Steam games back in 2016 when this released and had initially skipped over it, as it didn't seem like the type of game I'd enjoy. But after getting it for free, I figured I might as well try it, as the review score wasn't so bad.

Well, nearly a decade later, I did try it, and I should have stuck to my original assessment that the game wasn't for me. Niche is about controlling a pack of animals, traveling from island to island, each with its own ways of getting by, and encountering new animals along the way that you can breed with. Animals die of old age quite quickly, so not only do you have to spend time gathering food, you also have to spend time producing offspring. These offsprings inherit (about a dozen out of several dozen possible) genes from their parents, and this shapes both their apperance and capabilities. Some genes may be better for some tasks and getting by on some islands, but as you have to keep moving forward, you have to keep evolving. Also inbreeding generally kills you rather fast, but there often isn't a large selection of suitable mates.

While the genetic system is well-developed and could be used to make something interesting, the rest of the game is really boring. There are basically no animations and the whole game is just clicking on tiles to do stuff. A lot of clicking, especially as your pack gets bigger. You're never really making exciting decisions, nor making meaningful progress towards some genetic perfection. You're just getting by.
I could understand that maybe fans of this genetics-based gameplay find something here, but if you're not here for that feature alone, then I really can't recommend it.