Spiral Games Studio's recent indie release on Steam was plagued with a lot of negative user feedback the week it released, very similar to Street Fighter X Tekken's recent release on PC. The difference, however, is that one game is from a major publisher while the other is from an indie studio. Spiral, however, wasted no time in getting to work to fix the game as quickly as possible.
The good news is that Spiral released a second patch for Orion: Dino Beatdown that fixes most of the game's major problems, finally making it playable and quite fun as well. While the patch doesn't make the game perfect it fixes up most of all the issues gamers complained about on the forums.
I had high hopes for Orion when it first launched but the game was just next-to-nigh impossible to play. There were just way too many errors, bugs and glitches preventing the game from being an enjoyable experience, and this was reflected across many forum boards and aggregators on the web.
The latest patch fixes some of the dinosaur behavior (although, admittedly they still need some work), the vehicles now have sounds when firing their weapons such as turrets. Weapon balance has been tweaked a bit and it's now possible to get into and out of both single-player and multiplayer games much easier. That's not to mention that multiplayer games now show up and ping much faster, too.
Customizing controls and gameplay options now works properly, and while controller support is still a bit shoddy, the mouse and keyboard combination is finally pitch-perfect and just where it needs to be.
Again, the patch didn't make the game perfect but it did improve the overall gameplay so it's much more accessible. That's not to mention that Orion: Dino Beatdown is easily one of the most fun first-person shooters I've played in recent times and the intensity and team-combat mechanics are extremely satisfying. Once you start gathering points, combo-kills and upgrading your character and weapons the game turns into a completely new beast.
I hope Spiral continues to patch the game and work on fixes because it's an amazing title with so much potential. At least, as it stands, the game is now playable and enjoyable for what it's worth. You can learn more by paying a visit to the game's Official Website and when the latter patches arrive where the experience is near pitch-perfect we'll be giving away free Steam keys to readers.
