Hide & Hold Out - H2o Reviews

As of Sept 30th 2018 - Several months ago the dev stated he was working on the game again. Its been months with no further word from him what-so-ever. It seems like he was just trying to con people into buying the game. No salt here, it would have been a good game. To bad. DONT BUY. Old Review: The concept of this game is amazing! Its a fun and unique take on on survival and base building game and I hope that it someday becomes what it was intended to be; however, it has serious work that needs to be done. On a constant basis one or more of the 5 offical servers is down - and lets face it, no one wants to be on multiple servers working for hours on end just to get to the level you were at on the other server. These servers will sometimes stay offline for days and give no warning of going offline. Secondly, hackers are a serious issue in this game (as hacks are easily available for the layman online). Like most games in alpha this game has its fair share of bugs - boats or planes easily get stuck and cannot be removed (time consuming to replace), characters glitch and can become invisible while their physical character sits idle somewhere else on the map. Additionally, this game is only being done by two devs and a team of 3 moderators (who I have yet to see on or recieve a response from) - don't expect a response from a team that is either super busy or has lost interest in the project. The last thing I will say is this: don't expect to be online with more than litterally 3-5 other people at one time. With all the hours that I have put in on two offical servers, I have spent only 6 hours or so online with someone else. Gets kinda lonely and boring. Take home message: wait until this game starts getting a lot of improvements. Look online from time to time and see if guides / hints and tips are out. That may be your first indication. Goodluck!

This game has alot of potential, very fun Pros: Interesting gameplay "Aka, you have to search for your goods, not chop down a tree" crafting system the island chains battling over oil flats the cons Flying shark glitch, items will disapear out of crates and inventories ships will eventually explode for no reason people have already made hacks for this 3 day old game 8/10 alot of bugs, but it has alot of potenial Good luck devs :)

As soon as I down loaded this game, I tried to play. You are not able to play by yourself and there are no servers to play on. don't waist your time. I had to try and play for a total of five minutes just to be able to do this review which was also a waist of my time.

This review is done on (4/14/2016) Alright... where to start... I honestly have never wrote an honest review before but here goes... DAY 1: It was just me, and I get my bearings of how the mechanics work and this is what I found out... 1. Resouces come from only scrap piles, floating logs, sharks, whales, floating garbage piles, and other players. 2. press tab to build or craft 3. boats are your friends, if you don't have one so is land 4. The community is friendly to new players cool right? DAY 2: So I got my bearings and started on a swedish server and made my first hut.. not a bad hut but a shabby one made of sweat tears and a whole lot of resources. At the same time I buy two more of this game for my friends so they can see what I talk about on how cool this game is. DAY 3&4: My friends join me in my hut we build walls, weapons, and finally jet skis, which in turn made gathering alot faster and more profitable. We met some friendly Canadians, and we weren't ready to defend ourselves so we didn't engage alot but we held firm, we got off for awhile and when we get back we realize we have been looted while we were gone and I realized I didn't build any windows to stop people from crouch jumping into our base so I did some remodeling to plug up the gaps. My compadres decide to use their newly built guns to exact revenge but hilariously they started this while there was a 3-faction war happening in the middle of the map between the "elites","UWS", and the "DOGS" and boy they had the guns. shortly after they lost our skis and their guns and whatever they had on them at the time, a raiding party of the "elites" had a massive ship and two skis come and loot us. The next part was hilarious to me when the second raiding party of the "UWS" came with a gun boat and two skis, we had to break the news that we were recently raided and had nothing to give them and pointed out that half of our tower's walls have been blown to smithereens. So in turn they went on their merry way east back to the warfront. DAY 5: From experiencing the previous days I decided I was going to be the leader and vouch that we would have no personal weapons outside of our base other than harpoons and it has been peaceful since then so far. afterwards we focused more on electricity and base defenses rather than personal arsenal. the first defense was a tier 3 anti tank turret that could fit on a warship(we put it on a tower) and its ammo is stupid expensive but at least its devastating power is gruesome, plus if we don't have ammo at least its daunting. we made a windmill and now are currently focused on whale hunting and agriculture because we have realized we are actually not the biggest fish in the sea. So those are my five days of gruesome playing and when I look back on this, this seems to be more of a story than an actual review... hopefully this gives kinda a picture of what it is like such as progression and for now notice these days are not real days but game days. We have actually been playing it about 3 days now and only 2 of them was with my friends so the progression and mining isn't too bad. I hope you enjoyed my drearily long review/story and I HIGHLY recommend this game more than most I play and definitly more than ark and this doesn't require a supercomputer to play. ENJOY! -JangoXIII

After being an avid player in Rust.... TIll Ark Took over my life and I still think ark is an amazing game but once I got into H2o I was Hooked Here are some of the things I like about the H2o compared to my past experience with other survival FPS' that might Apeal to the average gamer. GAMEPLAY IS BUTTER SMOOTH compared to any other Survival Game Ive played. I run an older but still powerful R9270X Iv always played my games for performance over Graphic quality pertaining to settings no matter what game I run Ill turn it up till i see if effect my fps then Ill turn it down a touch further so I dont lose any frames I rock a constant 150 On high graphics compared to arks 60 on the lowest settings. Development LUDICRIS QUICK! Ill tell you what the developers of this game must be robots because it seems like these guys are constantly updatinng the game or talking with players and server owners on their devlopment page. Alot of Updates have included Player Ideas and have been successful in game in my experience. The physics are getting tweeked and perfected but Im telling you the 2 Primary Developers in this game Get more work done in a week than the ark or rust developers might be able to get done on a GOOD MONTH.... That being said there are still bugs... IT is still in development............. You will lose things and possibly have to start over in the future due to updates. The Transportation in this game is Really awesome and something Ark could not or would not do. The Fuel Economy and Base building is really Spot on along with the Harvesting resources. Crafting is Fun and Detailed yet alot more simple than Ive seen in other games. Electrical system is Unique! The Underwater Play is also Great. If you Purchasing the Game as EARLY ACCESS "STILL IN DEVEOPMENT" and expect anything more or are unable to handel this without giving a RAGEVIEW then Wait till you grow up a little bit and can put on your big boy pants. Don't just go and cut this amazing game down because your to Stupid to understand the concept of EARLY ACCESS "Still in development and lost all your shit due to an update. But if you can handel it Be ready to Enjoy a Great game that still fairly early in development but still compleatly functional and playable and Join us on the Quest to Final Release its going to be a Exciting Journey. ~LEAF|Estakin Come Play! SERVER: (US Central) WATER WONDERLAND

First thing first, this game is fun. It is a LOT of fun. That said, it does need a whole lot of work. That is stating the obvious, as the game literally just came out a few days ago. Do not get discouraged by the glitches and bugs, as these are very normal. That said, my experiences have been mostly negative. I started the game, which loads amazingly fast and runs like a dream for me, and found myself a nice quiet server to play on. The people on the server were extremely kind and quick to help me learn how to play and what to do with things. So off I go, mining up debris from the shore and being completely lost and confused in this amazing archipelago when I realized.. I'm about to starve! But that's ok because I have a busicuit! So I eat my tasty little bit of bread and realize.. I also have a raft! Sweeeeeet! A tiny bit of trial and error and a few embarassingly silly questions into map chat later.. and lookout world, I am afloat on the most AWESOME rigged up raft ever! Then things get even better when I find floating trash. WOO HOO! I got myself some string and a car battery, couple other odd things.. and now I can make a fishing stick! I won't go into detail on how long it took me to figure out that cooking the fish makes them much better to eat.. but it took a while. I will go mention that at one point when I got off of the raft, I was attacked by a shark. I know what you are thinking.. "Hey, stupid, you just get out of the water." but no.. I tried that. You see, this shark was ON A MISSION! So there I am, squealing in panic, as this shark HOVERS out of the water and up a hill after me. It was very intense for a little while, but I did manage to pickaxe said smiley shark in the face.. to death.. and got some super tasty "Shark Chops" for my effort. Yummy. Now at this point I have a pretty good stockpile of resources from my adventures, and I will tell you now that it does not take long at all to build in this game. Four hours into the game and I had enough resources to build anything I wanted. So I build a small base and figure out how to make a small shipyard, and I made a jet ski. That's right! SPEEDY BOAT! And boy is it fun. There are whales too.. and you can jump these beefy guys with your jet ski for almost endless fun! And then.. get shot in the head from half way across the map by someone with a sniper rifle who you never even saw. Well that's ok, it is a "survival" game after all. Just.. you don't have to survive the world, you have to survive the people. That's fine. Back to the base finally because I forgot to build a cot, but the devs are kind enough to respan you with another super raft AND A BISCUIT! I found my jet ski again and got it home and then built myself the big ship yard. Now things are getting VERY good. Took me less then two hours to be in the big gunboat. I got to say.. driving that thing is FUN. It actually takes one person to steer while someone else runs the engine for you, making it a loooot of fun. Puttered around for a bit, refueled it at the refinery, went to head back home in the pitch dark. Now I didn't think much of this because I had a friend on the front of the boat with a flashlight.. then I am suddenly looking at the respawn timer again. Another headshot.. IN PITCH DARKNESS INSIDE THE CABIN OF A BOAT! By now I am somewhat annoyed.. but what the heck.. My buddy and I respawn and get the boat home.. only to find two guys waiting for us outside the base. Only.. we didn't know they were waiting for us. Because while we leave our game settings normal, meaning when it is night time it is DARK.. some people can still somehow see well enough to get two head shots almost instantly. They kill us, steal our boat, and leave. This should give you an idea of the player base. There are diamonds in the ruff, but within four hours I have been killed a half dozen times and every sintle one was a headshot. That doesn't seem like a coincodence to me, so be ready for that if/when you do start to play. All the same, we trundle on. By now I have about.. 12 hours in the game and I've built and driven pretty much every single vehicle in the game. Some are more fun than others, but all of them have their uses. I've also had most of them stolen from me. The game desperatly needs some sort of anti-cheat. Not to mention that the moment you log out, someone will come by and somehow demolish your metal walls in a few minutes, take everything you worked for, and be gone before you get back. Pros : The game is FUN. Really fun. Even if you do loose everything, it doesn't take long to get it back. It is fast paced and when you loose something, it really is not a big deal. Aside from the sea plane, the vehicals are realistic to drive and a lot of fun to use. Flying sharks! Yes, I am counting that as a pro because it was so absolutley terrifying and hylarios to see that I think everyone should experience this. Cons : Cheating. Watch out for the players. A lot of them are legit.. but the cheaters are out there. No lights for your base. This means the cheaters can see you in the dark but you will not be able to see them coming for you. Base defenses MUST be manned to work. There is no automation so the moment you log out, everything you have is forfeit and will be taken from you. Not might be.. not could be.. but WILL be. You will have to start from scratch most days.. but at least it doesn't take very long. I would gladly promote this game to anyone who wants a nice fast pased game, but I would never label it as a survival game. It's very much more a FPS game with construction elements in it and a food bar you have to keep full with a very occasional bite to eat. ***UPDATE*** I logged back in after a good long break from the game just to see what was going on and wow has it been updated. They have overhauled the UI, worked over some of the crafting, and sadly.. the sharks no longer fly. I do miss the free shark meat delivery, but I suppose I don't mind dipping a toe in the water now and then to kill another one. Sadly, thef is a HUGE problem still, even on PvE servers. They do seem to have some sort of anti-cheat as well which is nice, though I'm not sure it works. Honestly, nobody plays this game any more. I suppose it was a combined issue of not enough content and rapid progression. You can build everything in a few hours if you put your mind to it and have some help and then you find yourself with nothing else to do. The development team seems to be extremely small, another sad factor which has drasticly slowed progress of the games development. I still hold out a lot of hope for the future of this title and the forums have a little activity on them here and there so at least someone else is enjoying it.

I have had this game since it's release and it has definitely had its fair share of bugs and cheaters. Recently the Dev released an update to get rid of the cheaters within the game and so far the results have been amazing. The game UI has been completely revamped and the whole game was converted to server side. I am super excited for the potential this game has and I really hope that people start becoming active because the Dev is active and there are huge plans for this game.

You should be allowed a refund at any point during the development of a game that seems like it is not progressing. This one is a perfect example of why steam needs to start holding devs accountable for their actions and put an end to this disease.

-Pros *Gives that "rust at launch" feeling. *Waterworld type premesis is more interesting than the other dayz/rust clones offer. *Fair amount of stuff in underwater, giving you a new way to explore. -Cons *Hackers, Hackers as far as the eye can see. This game runs on Unity which has boatloads and boatloads of hackers, both figuritively, and litterally. *Advertised Battle mode is not in game, which was a main buying point for me. *Virtually no game population. I saw a peak of 8 players on the most populated official server. Theres 30+ servers, and maybe 12 players online in the whole game. *Many exploits and bugs that happened in H20 are indentical to ones in Rust at launch. Verdict : I want to play this game, I really do! But the same reason I left Rust, H1Z1, Aftermath, and such games remains. There is no effective anti-cheat, and it looks very much like this game will be plagued by hackers for its lifetime. *Note - As of this writing, Hackers can do the following, Spawn any items, Instant kill whole server, teleport to players, and ESP. Furthermore, according to offsite game forums, you can use cracked versions of the game to play online, grant yourself admin powers, and disable showing your steamID. Bans have no effect, as hackers can just generate themselves a new fake ID to continue playing.

I enjoyed this game a lot so far. The graphics are average, but ok. The balancing (weapons, strength of walls, rescources, Sharks etc.) is very well done and the amount of content is absolutely ok for an early access alpha game that has just been released. On top of that, patches come out very frequently and the devs and admins in the forum seem very friendly and communicative. But I'm not going to recommend to purchase this game atm, because it is absolutely overun by hackers. I played a lot of survival games and I've seen cheaters in a lot of these games, but this is far beyond playable. I played on very different servers (PVE only, Official Servers, private PVE/PVP servers) and there were hackers around at least a couple of times a day. I lost all my stuff by flying/through walls going hackers so often that I'm forced to stop playing this game. It says that with the latest patch the anti cheat system got improved. It took less than an hour to loose all of my stuff to a hacker after I downloaded the patch. You can't release a game that is obviously so vulnerable to cheating. I'm really happy to change my review into a positive one if this is solved, but for now I'm forced to avoid this game. EDIT: As of now the game is pretty much dead. I checked the server list 3 times on 3 different days and there were less than 15 people playing the game across all servers worldwide. Cheating and admin abuse ruined this early access game imo.