Project Genom

DO NOT BUY THIS GAME UNTIL MAJOR UPDATES ARE RELEASED! I don't think anyone should be encouraged to buy this game UNTIL they proove it's not a cash grab or a failure. IF they do come out with new content in the future then people could encourge others to buy it but not before. First off, I do NOT believe in reviewing a game based off "potential" it has or what it "could" become as there is no guarantee that it will ever reach that point so with that said I rate games based off what they offer as is. Others are welcome to review the game however they feel even if that means basing it off content that is not even in the game and may never be as far as they know. To me that's just as bad as false advertising from developers who show videos and screenshots that does not include actual ingame content. This is why I think you should not buy this game: * It's only about 5% of what they advertise with only about a week worth of gameplay * Tons of game breaking bugs that require you to send in support tickets to reset your players * No game information or details on where to go or what to do in quests, must rely on steam guides/players if any online * Horrible game mechanics like requiring you to die over and over to earn armor points * Not one content update in over a year long before released on steam (only recently in April/March 2017 have they started releasing newsletters to fight negative feedback but still no updates) * NO developer communication and helpers who are as clueless as the players (Now, when newsletters started they also started banning people and deleting threads that had negative outlook on PG) * DLCs sold for as much as $100 on top of game price and the content is NOT even in the game yet (and won't be until full release IF that ever happens) * Game was pulled from steam for a week due to developement team drama and copyright claims that resulted in a rewrite of most the game that has yet to be released along with any new content because they didn't own the code used. * PG is NOT the only game that has failed by these developers - Check out their other failed project called Vigor Roads https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=686197122 The developers lied when PG was on Steam Greenlight saying the Early Access would be the Beta stage when it's still in Alpha and now being completely rewritten... http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u162/warmach20/PG-EA-Beta.jpg kagerott [developer] Jul 7, 2015 @ 6:29pm [quote=kagerott;523890681428117537]Thank you! Closed Alpha testing is still going on. New testers are sometimes added. You will receive e-mails about the new testing, if you fill out an application on our website. The exact date of the new testing is still unknown. Early access is Beta test phase. [/quote] The player drop has already topped -50% in December (of the remaining players) after loosing -70% of players in November... http://steamcharts.com/app/389040 that leaves you with less than 50 players in at any given time in ALL regions combined. That's not enough players to even test the servers much less have an MMO environment... Not to mention the recent reviews just hit (mixed) rating and total English reviews also in the (mixed) rating... There are few players left that continue to blindly support it and encourges others to possibly get scammed along with them. DO NOT FALL FOR IT!! Wait a few months to see if anything happens with this game! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voSDRJn7b8k ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- May 16th 2017: [quote] You have been banned from Project Genom Discussions by a Project Genom developer for your post in "Suggestions for content!": [quote] Well I guess for some (especially new comers), they don't have a choice but to come to steam discussions for help or to voice their ideas and opinions now... You would think their own website would be the best place for that but they turned off new registrations... So how are people supose to get help with the current version that has major game breaking bugs? [quote] Project Genom Community - Error New registrations are currently not being accepted. [/quote] Wonder why they are no longer allowing new signups on their website.. Too many bad posts possibly? Too much work for them like they said for videos lol.... [/quote] Ban Reason: For the flame and flood. For providing untrue information discrediting the company's business reputation. This is the second ban for similar violations and we ask you to think about what you write. This ban will expire on Jun 15 @ 1:03pm. Until then, you will not be able to post in Project Genom Discussions. ☢» MACHIN3 «☢ 10 minutes ago I took a screenshot as proof they in fact are not accepting new registrations on their own website. Major abuse by moderators banning everyone! http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u162/warmach20/PGsignup.jpg [/quote]

What is it? Kind of like Defiance meets Mass Effect. So far it shows some good potential - take the Early Access / Alpha notices seriously though. Here are some things to expect... - No character customization yet. You get a stock male or female. - Many quests do not have helpful hints/map indicators (bug reports to help out!) - Some non-intuitive mechanics or missing tutorials. (NOTE: to sell items, in the trade screen use the fist icon - the same icon normally used to equip items) - Some text is still in russian only. (not much though, and it didn't really slow me down playing) - Skill leveling is independant of character levels. To level weapons, shoot things. To level armor, get hit. Also - there is a large number of players currently and so the servers may be experiencing higher lag. It can get bad enough to halt gameplay. You can try going to different game areas to continue playing, or you can take a break and write a review! UPDATE: They just patched and added some servers - USA servers are ordered and will be added upon arrival! Overall I recommend this game as one to help develop (devs / GM's have been very interested in feedback in game and out), or if that's not something you're willing to devote time to, then I'd still recommend keeping an eye on it and check it out maybe after it hits beta.

First off, let me say I have been waiting for this game to become playable for almost a year now. The concept art, premise, all of it had me hooked from the beginning. It caught me as a sort of Mass Effect MMO. And really, there aren't really any "good" (IMO) sci-fi MMOs out there. They exist, but none of them really stood out as being something that I really wanted to play. So I am VERY excited for this game. So far, this game is in pretty rough shape. It is VERY basic at the moment. For characters, at this point in time you have a choice between a male and female. That's it. It says customization is coming so I'm waiting to see what they do with that. The models look pretty good, not AAA (it's not coming out of an AAA studio), but still very good. The gameplay so far is OK. I've spent half of my time running around smashing the "E" key trying to find things. The early quests are basically fetch quests with very little in the way of combat, which is a shame as I could see it turning people off from the game. Half or more of the quests do not mark anything on the map leaving the player to wander around the starting area over and over and over again, ad nauseum. This can be very frustrating and I can see players simply leaving these quests unfinished. There is no tutorial on equipment or leveling up (in fact the tutorial is VERY bare bones). Or for that matter, there is no indication that you have leveled up or are able to upgrade your abilities at all... you basically just have to periodically check once you figure it out. Essentially this game needs some direction on what to do and where to go. It needs a path of progression that is clear to the player. Also, the "pop-up" style of tutorials need to go. You are in a small area and these things take up a HUGE chunk of screen blocking your view of the area. A more classic style of tutorial menus here would be awesome. It pops up, tells you what you need to know, and if you ever want to look at them you can get to them in a menu. The current system just HAS TO GO. The combat is pretty good so far, it is a 3rd person shooter with RPG elements. The cool thing I like is the Skyrim system of doing things to level up your skills. It's a bit confusing at first, but it basically works like this: You gain XP from completing quests to up the overall level of your character. Then, for example weapons, you level your weapons skills by using a weapon. You get general purpose weapon "points" that you can spend on upgrading your weapon mastery for different types of weapons that allows you to use higher levels of weapons. You also accrue specific points for the type of weapon you use as well that grant you upgrades for that type of weapon (e.g. increased damage, crit chance, etc.). This applies to all other aspects of character progression. Weapons, armor, crafting, vehicles, etc. The problem with this system is armor. You literally have to take damage to upgrade your armor. I have basically relegated my self to aggroing enemies and just letting them damage me without fighting back. This armor upgrade path does NOT work well with this game system as you can quickly upgrade things you use like weapons, but are left with armor that lags behind your other skills. The really "fun" (read: confusing) part comes when you try to equip gear as they tend to require both a specific character level as well as mastery level of that type of wepon. The only downside I can see to this is if you decide that you want to try a new weapon or piece of armor halfway through the game. You CAN spend your weapon mastery points in other weapon types. So, if you are aware of this, you can upgrade the level of shotgun you can carry by using another weapon, for example. It does not seem like there is a real cap on this, so you can technically spread your points around to all types of weapons, however why would you do that? The character progression has barely been implemented. You basically have weapon and armor upgrades right now. That's it. No skills, crafting, vehicles, etc. At this point it is basically a very basic 3rd person shooter. In combat, you basically run around and left click to shoot things. I have not even seen melee weapons as of yet. The layout of the map is confusing as hell. I do not see a progression in the outside world like there is with most MMORPG games. You don't start in a zone level 1-5 with quests that walk you through and then take you to the next area. You simply walk around and if you happen to run into something 2x or more your level, you either run away or die. Also, to get to some of the lower level quests you have to move through a swarm of higher level enemies. One lvl6 quest takes you though either an area with level 13-15 enemies, or an area with 15-17 enemies. This makes no sense. Another thing to note is that this is coming out of a Russian company. If you're playing the game in english, not everything has been translated... several things are in russian, including labels for things, dialogue, etc. Also, the translation can at times be hilarious as Russian phrases sound very wierd in english. The voice acting is also hilarious... it's like a low budget made-for-TV movie level of bad. I would say that if you can't afford proper voice acting, stick to text. The art for this game is pretty damn good overall. There are obvious things that aren't final including menu art, models, and areas of the map. There are some areas of the map that look tossed together with placeholder elements. My biggest gripe is the LAAAAAAAAAAG. They recently put out a patch to address this. This has not at all addressed the issue. When the population is high, the game slogs. BAD. There are still issues with what seems like the server timing out. All of a sudden, everything in the map stops and you will need to either force a reload or log out and back in. This is seemingly random with no real connection to anything I am doing. Also, the menu system is kind of poorly thought out. You have VERY large and confusing trees to upgrade your skills. You have slots for different types of inventory items (e.g. 8 slots for weapons, 8 slots for armor, 10 slots for crafting items, etc) which makes both using vendors and managing your inventory confusing. There are really no settings to speak of yet. So... the big question is would I recommend it? I've been mulling that over since I've starting writing this. Overall, at this time, I cannot. It looks *promising* which is a dangerous word. Yes, it is still alpha and yes, there is the expectation of bugs and incomplete gameplay. On the plus, there is a pretty good portion of content in a Early Access Game, which measured by Steam precident, is great (although honestly, this isn't saying much). It honestly looks like this isn't some trashy cash grab by a developer who doesn't care about their game. These developers care. They are trying to put together a good product. If they keep progressing, yes I can see this being something awesome. However, at this point in time, the negatives make this a VERY hard sell. Most of the systems aren't in place, there are still server issues, and you are basically playing a point and shoot game. This game is VERY bare bones. At the end of the day, I can't say that you should pick it up if you want to even be a hardcore tester. It looks like it can be an amazing game, BUT the drawbacks at this time are preventing me from recommending this title.

Amazing, i have to edit my review for this : Bought a game, bought a gold pack. Gold pac promices exclusivity - acces to chat with developpers as such and priority for support. asking for quest support, ones that realy doing your head in and are badly marked on map --ignored In game talking to InternalSkyline : do you guys have a timeline for development just want to know what stuf comes in what order and aproximatly when ? -- ignored I hate to be the guy but i just hate the idea of 'indefinite support' for this game without knowing how long is it going to take ... - ignored Chat Ban. Now i cant even get support on quests or interact with players. Epic support, and epic ignorance on key concerns. Conclusion ? Another early acces ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that will lead to likes of Dayz , riddled with Russian developer arogance. You are expected to populate this game and bother with quests only. Disregard the fact that this is pre alfa and there will be multiple wipes until stable beta and even then not clear. So all your 'play time' and progress aquired = 0. But you can read the disclaimer, purchace 'packages' that are not even in game or got contents that are actualy implemented. Not clear if all future content like spaceships wont be 'buy spaceship package to support development' kinda type. Early acces explained : old days - developers find manpower and money, investors, have timeline to get the product on a market. Develop, test and optimise and releace. Builda fan base. These days : smal group of devs - develop 20% and releace under 'early acces'. Why develop projet in silence when you can already earn money on it? No need for timeline of development everything is based on promices and development support. Give cash - cash speeds development like coal in furnace. And you have a project that is already generating revenue. When you scrutinise this you get a wall of neglect and ignorance from developers, player base. This is how it works and majority of player base are tenagers without a consent of a rational thinking. Complete and utter disrespectful. If there was a transparancy on projects such as this i would have no problem. I want assurance that im not going to waste 2 or 3 years of my life and time 'supporting' a development i take no part in. They are a small team of developers. You as a player pay money to finance them. You as a player, without a pay, test game and report on issues FOR THEM where it should be done by a dedicated team and then they sell intimidating non existant digital goods to further cone you for more finance. In all fairness - you are being used to do work and instead getting payd you are paying for it to. I do like idea of a game - i dont like shady development plans, like it is a mainstream these days. There for i do not recomend this game at this stage. Not even in Beta. Dont be deluded about suportign development.

Just gonna be honest and say my piece here! I purchased(Helped fund) this game on there web site roughly 8-9 months ago. The trailer you see on the steam page is the same footage as back then. I recently as of October 28 2016 loaded the game up to see how far they have come in 8-9 months. I can honestly tell you that in that time i have seen zero changes! The character design is the same placeholder design,zero customization available. The sound is the same. Graphics still look blury. The player starting area is still bland as all hell. Even pulling up the options menu crashes the game in one way or another. I am not bashing the games potential but,think long and hard about what i am saying before you throw your hard earned money at this title. IMO this game should be taken off steams page until they have an actual,playable and some what enjoyable experience available for EA. You have been Warned.

I bought this over a year ago and I'm still kicking myself for it. I was a victim of the amazing previews; it looked like a fantastic game so I payed the rediculous price for the "handout" built game by a undermanned staff. Bugs everywhere. and not the kind you can shoot at. No, the kind that make you want to shoot yourself. Unbearably laggy, generic, and minimalistic. You're advertised a beautiful wet dream and sold a broken pile of "maybe one day it will be ready". In good concious, I cannot give this game more than a 4/10. if not for the games issues and simplicity alone, I was complainaing about the lag in public chat when I had TWO different admins start ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and trying to defend their game even though I doubt they had a hand in making it. they just got upset because everyone knows this game sucks. when you voice the common opinion, giving factual reasons, to other players, as to why the game lacks what makes a truly great sci-fi shooter(such as the LAG, poor hit boxes, bad models & textures, and near-rip off ideas from other sci-fi universes), you will be ambushed and harassed by people claiming to be admins and know the devs, who then proceed to say if you dont like the game to not play it. Absolutely unprofessional.

STEAM should have seperate video sections for content that is in the game and content that is not. When the game actually matches the videos I'll update review ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, they finally removed the videos after 3 + yrs(maybe since STEAM changed some policy.................................. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2/19/19 Not really an update more a notification: Around Dec of last year these morons decided todo ANOTHER complete re-write. Reasons vary and I have no interest in researching a DOA vaporware title. expect no further updates to this review UPDATE 5/19/18 regarding re-release of steam from PTS PROS: larger world, quicker on average loading screens. They havn't added anymore voice acting..believe me this is a plus. CONS:Removal of ATV paired with tripling of gameworld size got old quick, Significant decrease of total mob count + massive increase of world size = avg mob density of near zero, in an FPS, where you shoot stuff, odd. Fewer quests; and all that are still here are copy/pasted from prev build. The only changes were to accomidate changes in world/dungean design. They still remain poorly written fed-ex quests. Ambivilant: fast travel options apear to be a bandaid to mask lack of previous travel option hampered somewhat by an infinate load screen glitch. /shrugs use at own risk it is possible that depending on where in the sequance the glitch starts all cash on the character will be removed. A start at a quest marker system....These are likely to get fixed and moved to the Pro column. From a gameplay standpoint nothing has really changed other than engine modifications graphic changes and obviously world size. The folowing portion of the reveiw from YEARS ago still remain true ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Original review: Not a single system, mechanic, or function exposed in those never to be damned enough videos exist in-game...at all. Read stuff' promtly forget it as it's poorly written Shoot stuff, unless it's at your feet then bend/run/morph like a pretzel trying to hit the &*^*(&^* thing. The choice to not go with Tab targeting is a decision I actually like. However that comes with the caviot that the UI view range and hit boxes kinda need to let you ACTUALLY AIM at (&(^*&^*& at your feet or clipping through you. Basic FPS 101 there. You can't get that right the rest of the game kinda fails don't it? Stand around for hours letting Stuff hit you so you can get an armor upgrade while you watch TV, read a book, talk on the phone, fight internet wars, anything but actually playing the game. Same for weapons only with the added bonus of the participation of moving the aim curser requiring a minimal level of interaction and attention that prevents distraction from how bored you are. It's a game of bots/macro heaven currently. Fortunately there is no economy as yet so Chineese bot farmers have not flooded the game, this is subject to change. Pretend you work for Fed Ex delivering packages with no delivery address or directions while questing. One will spend hours running back/foth looking for the fetch quest drop off as the description is often singuarely un-helpfull. Usually you only see descriptions this bad in games who use quest trackers where they know no one will read them anyway. For a game without said markers poor descriptions is an odd design choice. Almost every single fetch quest(The lowest hanging fruit, with the lowest common denominator requirement for intelligence in the quest parthenon) require internet guides just to answer the question, DAFUQ?!?. The fact said guides are rquired not because of complexity, difficulty, or need for thought; but only due to lack of clarity, is telling. Being EA and early-mid alpha at that, I wont review the AI as of yet. At this stage in development it works nuff said. The above holds true for graphics The above would normally hold true for audio as well, however they felt compelled to implement some type of text to speech progy for dialogue. The resulting voice work makes Egosoft look good. It would likely be adviasable to go without said "feature" in the near term. This is definately a case of something who's absence would actually increase immersion. Chat is functional Party/guild utitlty is limited to chat at this time Thats the game at this point. For an early-mid alpha nothing wrong with it, however if your looking for something resembling the videos...look elsewhere. Addendum Grind for grinds sake; merely keeping your toons char level,weap level, and armor level in line reqs a fair ammount of grinding as opposed to actually playing the game. In and of itself thats fine, but looking at the (proposed) skill trees weaps/armor represent merely the two availabe trees from a total of 12 with 6 sub skills in each(from crafting, mech driving, vehicle driving, research, contruction, to pet herding). Assumming(since unlike the videos none of this exists yet so your guess is as good as mine) a similar level of grind for tiering up in those; I honestly see very little playtime being devoted towards something as outre as.......game play. Grind is not game play grind is a time sink to alleveiate lack of and/or extend lifespan of content. It is not content or game play in and of itself. It's a throttle control, not the fuel. In moderation it enhances/moderates the experience while ACTUALLY PLAYING. Used excessively it's a detriment to playing the game, and gets in it's own way. IMHO if you need to spend 9 hours grinding to enjoy 1 hour of game play your content obviously isn't enough to keep people playing on it's own. Gind is not an end it is a means to an end. And once an individuals unique burnout threshold is reached say good bye to that player(and payer). They wont stick around if the only reward for completing a given level of grind is to begin another level of grind. People play games, people tolerate grind(to a point); learn the difference. On a related note usually if I have sunk 100+ hrs in a game it's knida hard to say it was anything but worth it. The exception to this rule is when 90% of that time /played was result of it running minimized in a background window to grind out armor.

When this first came out I jumped on the positive bandwagon. I read everything I could and watched gameplay videos and believed this game would be one to crawl out of the early access mud to shine. I purched this in October, and was initially frustrated. The lag, the clunky interface, and the crashes. It was basic, with a few quests (not the dozens or hundreds of quests that I read), and only two of the weapons available. The utility skills were also available to upgrade, but were broken and had no effect. This being an early access game, I knew it would have a ton of problems and was looking at the long run, that this game would improve and take off. After two months the only improvement I've seen was the lag fixed, which seemed to be acheived when new servers were established. Beyond that nothing. Two months later, I'm still hitting invisible walls on the road where I have to jump to keep moving forward, I've fallen through the floor on more than one occasion on the road (especially around the tunnels with the raiders). I've also noticed people complaining about lack of communication and updates only to read "Big Updates are coming". So...two months later and I guess I'm still waiting for this big update or really any update. When the game was first released the areas were packed with people, now I run across maybe 3 inside and outside the ark. I'm worried that if nothing changes or updates than people or the devs would abandon this which would be a shame because it seems like a great and ambitious undertaking. I originally gave this game a positive review based on all it's potential but potential doesn't equal an actual game itself. So for now I would suggest people avoid this until it has more time to be worked on. If the devs do manage to realize it's potential then it will be a wonderful game. For now though, considering I've been burnt by several early access titles being abandoned and I've become extremely skeptical lately, I would say wait on this one. At the moment I can't reccommend this until I feel the devs actually updating or doing some bug fixes. Still two months and I'm still falling through the floor...

I fully understand what "Early Access" is intended for and the reasons to have it. I have supported many titles while in this phase of development. That being said, "games" like this are why people hate the Early Access platform on Steam so much. I have 20m of playtime and ran into several core issues with this project that reveal not only general lack of experience in game development, but complete waste of resources within the company on this project. Issue 1. The game settings have no English translations. You can set the language to English, all the game HUD, menus, and dialogues correctly show in English, all the game settings however do not... Issue 2. Long load time on Unreal Engines splash screen. I don't mind seeing Unity/Unreal splash screens what so ever. What I do mind is a 3m load time watching the splash screen just repeat itself over and over during this 3m leaving NO indication that the solution is loading properly. Issue 3. You cannot access game settings until you have made a character and are in-game. Settings should ALWAYS be available to the player regardless of what point in the game they are. Video options need to be made available before ANY gameplay. Not only to ensure the player starts off the game the best chance of immersion but because most enjoys chunk when changing core video settings (if you even can at the point of gameplay). Issue 4. The UI is pretty god awful. I feel like I have to spam E all over the place to "investigate" stuff and the result is usually something like "uh, this is a thing. eww". Popup help menus cannot be closed or minimized in ANY way and often block the items they are instructing you to use. Not all menus use the same key to close said menu. Other actions that should not be allowed to happen when menus are up still occur. If I am reading a book in game and have a menu with buttons, clicking should not shoot my firearm.... Issue 5. Voice Acting. I believe the studio is Russian (which is no issue) but the "English" voice acting is spoken by a Russian with pretty heavy accent. I don't mind if the character is intended to be Russian but there was nothing defining the setting I was playing in so it broke immersion pretty hard. That all is ignoring the fact that the sound quality wasn't great, and the fact they are wasting money on voice acting when they havent even taken time to fully localize the project and this early in the games development MANY dialogue options WILL CHANGE, voice acting this early in the project is a waste of resources. Issue 6. The first quest of the game is looking for small screws on the ground. Small little items a few pixels big that are black against a dark grey background... I get this is a MMO and there will be mundane quests but come the ^$%^ on.... Issue 7. Development group didn't/doesn't have any of the legal work required to release a game complete. They lost the programmer AND the code which is why they haven't update in so damn long. They have to rebuild what they had as far as codebase from scratch. No game on Steam should be released in a state where the development team and Steam may have to riup down the game from the storefront because the devs can't fill out the basic legalities required to release a product.... To call this a "game" at this point is pretty generous. This may be a solid proof of concept but definately not worth buying into at this point.