Reviews - CanadianWolverine

Sound, its all around you ... my heart beats faster, the hairs stand up on my skin ...

Look, with the new update v1.1, this just got more awesome, my frustration has gone down, my tension has gone up in that satisfying way. <3

This is a review of version 1.05

This game is silly fun...

- Lots of variety of dinosaurs and well drawn.

- Interesting specials to buy with experience points, like the mamoth riders and elder teachers.

But...

- The game play is straight forward get more guys than the other guy and rush him. Not a whole lot of depth to strategy or tactics, even with the specials you can get.

- It suffers from lock up crashes.

- Once you lose a statue, it can put you so behind economically in terms of area to hunt and gather from, come backs are rare.

- Dinosaurs, especially raptors, can lock you into perma death.

- Little variety in map other than a "skin change", no urgeny to change in tactics, let alone strategy.

- The notion that is this in any way a survival sim of being a tribe of caveman is misleading.

Overall, fun but repetitive and shallow. I don't think this is actually worth $10, sorry to say, I have played free flash games better than this in terms of replay value and I wouldn't recommend it to friends because they are going to get pretty much the full value of this title from the demo. I was disappointed in the end.

I first heard about this mod on a very recent PC Gamer (US) podcast and as a zombie entertainment enthusiast couldn't pass it up looking in to it. I have been through the available maps, on the few servers that pop up in the server list, and this is a fantastic zombie mod because it will make you concerned by zombies again and not just because the ammo is sparse. The zombies are tough to put down with anything less than hit to their dome. Its often better to try to run past the zombies than engage but when there are other players if you are like me you will want to try to keep them alive as well and it will make for some really tense situations even if you are working as a team who communicates and coordinates. The voice work is a work of art, even fellow players microphones as they fade into the distance unless you have a radio between the two of you. At least on one map, the route you have to take to find rescue changes. The shadows are scary places and the use of the flashlights is almost as vital as ammo and good melee that includes shove. Oh my, that shove is the kind of thing one wishes all zombie games had and I wouldn't be surprised if it turns into one of those kinds of ideas that gets stolen by alot of other bright devs/artists and not just for zombie games either. The mod does have a few issues though, the spawning of zombies can happen while you watch, even right on top of you in some places like the gun store in Chinatown. And it loses some of its luster once the mystery of how to make ones way through a map is broken by a speed runner, I know I no longer much care for the cabin map after watching one player leave everyone in the dust to get swarmed while they looted the place dry and were the sole person to find rescue at the boat dock/lake. So, here's hoping for future updates, I know I would like some character development and specialization, but even if it were never touched again, there are diamonds in the rough here, some beautiful gaming moments.

I am reviewing this day Jun 19, SOR VERSION: 19.1 from Jun 17 2012
Let's start with the good points:
- Fun pixel art
- Animations that are mostly well done
- Music and sounds are average and repetitive
- Rain and water presents a fun challenge

And that's it. I can't recommend this to friends ATM, the updates are not showing enough actionable progress IMHO but they are improving. The preview vids are old versions. The artwork from update news is not in game

As a game it is lacking. The UI while it has recently improved with the stockpiles has little clarity of definition of symbols, its unforgiving guess work. The gameplay is sparse and bugs have been fixed recently. The kinds of goals possible have not been found by me to not be even shallow let alone full of possible outcomes (exploration, economic, militaristic, artistic, etc). There is minimal feedback and soon the game ends in one day of survival.

The 3 dwarves have names and stats now but that interface is still a bit unclear as to what the options do that are available to click. What it shows though is potential as a possible spring board to future builds where this makes for specialized dwarves perhaps but at the moment there seems to be little diff between the dwarves with changed and blank options

A few tips of what I have found: WASD to move the camera around the map. Press Tab to see numbers the game is crunching. Right click things to either harvest gather or fight. Left click to place object you have selected from the bottom or dig ground, careful no undo. Dwarves stop working sometimes, could be pathing, could be food/drink levels. When they lift arms probably leveling up stats. No direct control, which dwarf does which command is not up to you and the options have no noticeable impact. I have not found any recipes yet. Creatures appear rather randomly on surface, can be fought/killed for items that can be gathered. You must place water and food or die then the game ends

My play goes on with new v