Right. Free space game. NICE!
Install
Open
Greeted with ugly color pallete.
Red, yellow, blue, green. The color pallete is rainbow. Complete eyesore. Whatever. Moving on...
Wait. Why is the bink video in the background of the main menu stuttering. That's weird. Whatever. Moving on...
I go in. Freeroam. Lets just see what its like
Game loads. Ugly UI. Same as the opening. No coherent color pallete. Thats fine. I accept this as an art style choice. Personal tastes.
Game start
How do I move...do I move with WASD? that just turns and pitches my ship. What do i do? I dont get it. What?
Clearly, I am an idiot and I need a tutorial.
Quit. New game but this time, Campaign. Surely the campaign will have a tutorial.
Start campaign. Cinematic starts to play. the bink video once again stutters. It's a video. Why would it stutter.
Alt-Tab to search on google if this is a common problem.
Immediately, the game exists out of fullscreen mode and reverts to window mode. Not borderless window. Full bordered with a bar at the top. Cant fix it. Have to exit game and restart
Restart
Same thing. Bink video cinematic starts to stutter. Stuttering intensifies. Bink video freezes. Audio plays a while then cuts off...Whatever. Just load the game
Game starts. Reminder of awful UI. Ignore it.
Ingame cutscene. No comment on voiceacting. I am no expert.
First objective. Go to this planet. Easy enough. Perfect for movement tutorial.
Tutorial starts. ...and ... its a popup box that explains how the movement works. Instead of showing what to do, it tells me what to do in this tiny popup that barely fills 1/9th of the screen real estate on my 1920x1080 screen, explaining me with screenshots of UI on what to do...Why screenshot. Why not just explain on the in-game UI...Whatever
Actually have patience to read the movement.
Propulsion is done with a mouse wheel. RIGHT. Maybe its a common thing in space games. No expert in Space games.
Mouse Wheel up raises speed. Mouse wheel down. Right. But why is there 0 weight to this ship? Why does ship stop dead still. There is 0 momentum. You could be going at full speed and then stop dead in a matter of...well. how fast can you mouse scroll down? I mean. shouldnt spaceships move with some sort of momentum? I mean, like I said, I am not an expert in space games....but vehicles...or things with mass tend to have momentum. And I would think the effect would be more pronounced in Zero-G vacuum environment. And contrast to this, when you want to turn, you turn slower than the Titanic trying to dodge the iceberg. Whatever. Moving on.
Combat time. Right. I just turn on the auto attack on. Ship moves close, the enemy is destroyed. The enemy that I cant even see against the background. Cant see. Zero player input needed. Dont care. Moving ON
Picking up loot. 3 out of whatever cargo spaces filled. Right. I picked up 3 of something. Of WHAT. TELL ME WHAT I PICKED UP. WHERE IS THE CARGO HOLD IN THIS CARWRECK OF AN UI. Is it the "I" buttonf for Inventory? No. Is it TAB? No. Is it "C" for cargo? No. WHAT. WHERE. WHO. CANT FIND IT. MOVING ON.
Just gotta get to that planet. Gotta get to that planet that is 5000m away. When my top speed is 25m/s. I timed it. The top speed is 100m per 4 seconds. (yes. I find out later that you can assign more power to the engine. But its still too slow) Thats like at least 3 minutes and then some. DO I REALLY NEED 3 MINUTES TO KNOW HOW TO GO STRAIGHT? And from the exciting battle to the planet, there is nothing to do. Nothing. MOVING ON
This surely cant be the top speed. Surely there are better way to travel the galaxy than this. Lemme look it up while my ship gets there Ignore window mode. I look on my browser. And what do I notice? The game has paused... Thats marvelous. I cant have the game run in the background while it makes its tedious movement. Amazing. Just Amazing
I wait out the 3 minutes of travel. I land on the planet. Ok. What is the planet going to look like. Huh? Lets see it...And its just a static concept art of a street level view. Amazing. Spared no expense.
Right. I am here to pick up a cargo. Some message about a cargo flashes. Where do go do it? Do I do anything? Or is it done? Am I meant to buy something? huh? What? Maybe I am done. Lets undock from the planet and see if it continues with the next part.
Oh and so it does. So...I needed to do...nothing. Great.
Another ingame cutscene. Right. Some emergeancy. By this point, i dont care what the story is. I just want to freeroam and i can only do that once i finish this tutorial. I press escape. Nothing. Umm..."S" for Skip? Nothing. Space? No. Backspace. No. Mouseclick? No. I run my hand across the keyboard? Nothing. I cant skip this cutscene. Cant pause it, cant look at the menu. Great.
Cutscene basically tells me to hurry back. Nice. I, AGAIN, make my 25m/s tedious journey back.
When I get there. Cutscene. Again. Unskippable. Something about the hero's resolve for vegeance. Cant skip
Cutscene ends.
At this point, the game asks you if you want to continute as normal campaign or freeroam. I choose freeroam.
Thats it. That was apparently all the tutorials one could ever want. Just movement and auto attacking. No trade system. No upgrade system. No mining, no indepth combat mechanics. Just go from A to B. Shot something.
Furiously smash that Alt + F4 button
Cool off. Reopen the game. Freeroam
Right. Gonna recheck.
Check again. Movement Mousescroll. Right. Confirm that there is ZERO momentum to these ships. Things have mass. Things in this game do not.
Ok. Read more of the tutorial and things on steam. There is apparently like a Boost mode. Right. Is it SHIFT? No. Is it Space? No. Of course. It's B for BOOST. HOW STUPID OF ME. If I want to sprint next time I am in a FPS, I should press B for BOOST. No. Not shift. Shift should do nothing. Thats the only logical thing to do. Shift does nothing. B BOOSTS.
Oh. and of course, coming out of boost, you stop on a dime again.
Pressing Tab. What would that do? Stats? Inventory? Menu? Navigation? OF COURSE NOT. It changes the camera mode.
Pressing Spacebar. What would that do? Jump? BOOST(we already established the answer is NO)? Act like a handbreak(we've already established that these ships can stop on a dime)? NO YOU DIMWIT. It changes the way you point your ship. You toggle whether or not you want orientate your ship to the mouse movement. Right. That is so crucial that it needed the spacebar. I would think that once you choose a camera mode to play with, you stick with it and not change so often that you reserve the spacebar for it.
Right. Lets land and see what this space station offers....And what it offers is again shown to me in this tiny popup box that is only 1/9th of the whole available space. Why. There is all these empty space around it, doing nothing. The worst offender of this is in the ship color customisation. your ship displays within that 1/9 space as a tiny 3d model, not much bigger than a standard RTS vehicle unit such as a Battlecruiser from Starcraft 2. Except, in this, the model is not properly lit and thus you can barely see what you are changing. Great. Other games have a full model view and sometimes in a fully modeled drydock. Again, this game spared no expense.
The real cherry on top is that when you pick a color for customisation, it doesnt show. You have to confirm the color, the popup menu for colorpicking closes and then the changes are displayed. So if you arent happy with the colors, you reopen the color menu again and change and reconfirm so the model updates. Marvelous. Ive seen better color picking on a Warcraft 3 model viewer.
You know what? Enough of this. Alt+F4
Write review in rage
Spend extra 1 hour editing to fit under word limit cos there is just too much to say. Spent more time on this review than the game.
Post
PS: I know its not actually Bink videos. But the idea of what I mean hopefully isnt lost upon the reader.
