Underworld Ascendant launching on November 15

[Bucky Seifert]

I do appreciate how they are trying to fix the game and make it better, considering how many companies just abandon games. We'll see if this is a No Man's Sky situation where it launches to a very bad reception but over time (Hopefully much short than No Man's Sky did), the game's potential really starts to be realized.

[Shadowcat]

I genuinely look forward to playing this at some point, as I'm confident there'll be a lot to like; but I'm absolutely bewildered by the lack-of-save, and would be interested to know what conversations went on behind the scenes about that. I find it impossible to believe that they decided "let's just not have one of those -- surely nobody will mind". I could easily believe they discovered horrible problems with their game-saving, didn't have time to fix it before their hard deadline, and just ripped it out. If so, it pains me to think how much that's going to hurt them in reviews. This "release buggy, and then try to fix it later" business always seems like it can only harm the bottom line; but I guess they're between a rock and a hard place...

[henke]

Buccura, NMS also sold very well, so the devs could afford to just keep working on it for a while. I doubt Otherside has that same luxury. :/

I too would love to try this game at some point, but I'll wait for a discount.

[Starker]

You didn't have to wait for long, henke -- it's 15% off right now: https://store.steampowered.com/app/6...rld_Ascendant/.

[Twist]

Ugh. This isn't going to go well.

PC Gamer Review

There’s no way to sugarcoat this. Underworld Ascendant is phenomenally bad, a catastrophic mess of poor design ideas, woeful execution, and bugs the size of buildings.

I'm not sure I can recall them giving a score as low as 25 to game with such a profile.

[Starker]

It's only to be expected. It was clear the moment they released the game unfinished that the only path forward would be word of mouth down the line.

[Bucky Seifert]

Buccura, NMS also sold very well, so the devs could afford to just keep working on it for a while. I doubt Otherside has that same luxury. :/

I too would love to try this game at some point, but I'll wait for a discount.

You're right, yeah. This game was very under the radar, didn't even show up in the popular new releases listing on Steam. Chances are in a month hardly anyone will even remember this game existing other than immersive sim fans.

[Starker]

Here's one of the more positive reviews I've seen, but there's simply no getting around the bugs and jankiness:

[Judith]

That remark about playing it like Thief series actually sparked up my interest, but I'll definitely wait until they patch it up. At this point, movement model is inferior to fan projects like Dark Mod.

[Pyrian]

...Doesn't Dark Mod basically use Doom 3's movement model?

[icemann]

I'm not playing this until the save system gets fixed and it better have manual saving. The release of this game has been a real clusterfuck.

I'm really worried about SS3 now. Can't believe I'm saying this but Night Dive's doing a bettet job on SSR. AND they actually listen to feedback.

Manual saving can definitely be implemented. When Shadowrun Returns launched there was a HUGE backlash from fans about the lack of manual saves. Harebrained Schemes initial response was that the checkpoint save system was there by design. But due to the backlash they put in the time and got it working. So it can be done.

Its just lazy programming when its not in from the get go.

[Pyrian]

Its just lazy programming when its not in from the get go.

Deciding which features to implement with a finite budget of time and money has little or nothing to do with laziness.

[ZylonBane]

I thought I'd give this one more go before uninstalling, at least get a look at the hub area.

Turns out that after the initial "prove yourself worthy" twaddle... there's another trial before you're granted access to the hub. It's a sloppy, jumbled mess of an area, the exact opposite of what a tutorial map should be. Or any well-designed map, for that matter. The most interesting thing was some levitating brain monster that shoots energy balls. At first it killed me, but when I came back it was completely focused on blasting the shit out of a nearby torch, making it easy to take out.

I slogged through the rest of that and finally got into the hub, a silly, overcomplicated place populated by levitating lizard action figures. Wandered around, stumbled across the big gold final boss door, sealed by a sequence of keys identified with... sigh... playing card suits. Seriously. Couldn't get through there, of course, but I saw a ledge off to the side so I hopped off in search of maybe an interesting secret or something. Followed it around for a bit... and ended up falling through the floor into the trigger for the final boss battle.

Well what the hell, as long as I'm here, may as well see how far my scrub adventurer can get, right? Turns out, surprisingly far. I flipped a bunch of switches, opened some gate, and only got stuck at this pillar of bones that I was supposed to "crack open" somehow, but none of my attacks had any effect on it.

I couldn't exit the level because the entrance was sealed shut, so that was the end for that character.

[New Horizon]

...Doesn't Dark Mod basically use Doom 3's movement model?

Nope. It was rewritten to add the movement characteristics from thief.

[Brethren]

Another awful review, courtesy of Gamespot:

https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/und.../1900-6417042/

[Tomi]

Damn, I had prepared myself for a disappointment, but I never would have expected Underworld Ascendant to be a total disaster like this. I was still expecting Otherside to deliver a somewhat decent game that isn't completely, you know, broken. They'll hopefully keep on fixing the bugs, and I truly do hope that they can still turn this mess into something good, but it's hard to be optimistic anymore.

So much for the so-called "game industry veterans"... What on earth happened?!

[twisty]

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) I doubt they will earn enough from this to fund another System Shock. For potential customers sitting on the fence, it would be difficult not to be dissuaded by the bulk of negative reviews (Metacritic average is 40) -- reviewers who are unlikely to revisit UA based on incremental improvements alone.

[icemann]

Otherside really needs to respond to this. And in a big way.

Many people are going to play this once, encounter the mess that it is currently and never come back. What a disaster.

[ZylonBane]

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) I doubt they will earn enough from this to fund another System Shock.

System Shock 3 is being done by a different team, and has a different funding source (and a much larger budget).

[New Horizon]

System Shock 3 is being done by a different team, and has a different funding source (and a much larger budget).

Well, we know that but I suspect the majority doesn't. They're going to see Otherside attached to System Shock 3 and expect another failure.

[ZylonBane]

That has nothing to do with what I was responding to.

[Pyrian]

Are there known team members for System Shock 3 aside from Brosius, Neurath, and Spector? Is Paul producing this one, too? The sort of problems we see in UA seem like project management problems. How much overlap is at the top?

[ZylonBane]

The problems with UA seem to be everything problems. Project management, game design, level design, programming, writing, art, QA...

[ShardofTruth]

I'm really disappointed, I thought this game would be some sort of action RPG with an interconnected underground world, quests, different factions and some decisions to make not a dungeon crawler with a boring main hub and a broken save system.

[Starker]

The problems with UA seem to be everything problems. Project management, game design, level design, programming, writing, art, QA...

Level design is one thing about the game that is great. The later levels are pretty huge with tons of verticality and nooks and crannies to explore. If you quit just after getting to Marcaul, you haven't really seen the level design at its best.