Recent reviews by ^2[^6sic^2]^0 Ґøøиλвιиθ

A quick time-waster puzzle game that will take maybe 30 mins or so, presumably inspired by Jenga.

This will not be a typical full review, but I thought it was worth making.

Pros:

• Cool fluid physics
  
• Attractive animation style
  
• Just fun to discover what comes next
  
• Semi-moddable*

Cons:

• Some achievements seem arbitrary or not working as they should (looking at you, Internal Rejection)
  
• I had to look up how to solve a few puzzles that seemed overchallenging (this may not really be a con)
  
• Fairly limited replayability, particularly once achievements are done
  
• Two achievements can be missed in the starting area which one can't return to without starting a new game
  
• Short to medium-length playtime (con because it isn't longer and limited replayability)

Overall though, very enjoyable. If on sale, definitely snatch it up.

*I mean most of the game files are just basically xml, so it is possible to fiddle around a bit for those who are so inclined.

This is definitely one of the shortest puzzle games I've ever played. Recommended for passing 10 minutes of your day.

I wanted to write a quick review of this game because I feel like it has potential, but it's not there yet. As anyone who has played FTL will tell you, it's very obvious right from the beginning that Shortest Trip to Earth (STtE) is trying to provide the same experience and evoke the same feelings (and someone cynical might say cash in on the same success) that FTL does, but with slightly more complicated mechanics. The two games are so similar in fact that a friend of mine, seeing me play the other day, even asked me if this was FTL 2, and was very surprised to learn that it was made by a totally different developer.

Full disclosure: I haven't yet made it past sector 2 so I admittedly don't know what the end-game is like. Still I think most of my comments are applicable to the entire game.

Likes:

• You can start at later sectors (though why wouldn't you always start at sector 10 after unlocking it?)

Gripes:

• No oxygen management. This is at the top of my list because I think it's currently the game's biggest shortcoming. As it is now, fires can spread out of control. There has been more than one occasion when I have been destroyed because a fire became too big to contain and completely enveloped my ship, slowly burning it to death and leaving me unable to do anything but watch. While a similar situation is possible in FTL, it's actually much harder to achieve unless done intentionally. This is because in FTL, after a fire has filled a room, it will eventually use up all the oxygen and extinguish itself. Once all the oxygen onboard has burned away, your fire problem disappears, I realize that perhaps omitting oxygen management was an intentional decision for the devs of STtE since that was one of the more frustrating mechanics of FTL, but because fire and oxygen management are so closely linked, I think you either include both or neither. Having just one doesn't work.
  
• Few doors and they seem mostly pointless. This also relates to the above ^
  
• Shields protect against maybe 30% of weakest weapons in STtE so there is almost no incentive to improve them. In FTL, shields are vital protection because 90+% of the time, enemy ships had laser weapons, making shields an effective buffer.
  
• Insides of ships not visible at ship selection (maybe okay for FTL since almost all ships shared the same basic modules, but here you go into the perk selection screen blind as to what would actually be useful)
  
• Modules all the same size (yet not all interchangeable). This might seem like an odd complaint but it feels a bit odd that e.g. the micro reactors take the same amount of space as the largest ones, or that the big guns obscure modules adjacent to them (rat ship).

Unsure:

• Fate points and perks seem like a nice mechanic in principle but perhaps not in practice.
  
• The various resources in STtE add a nice variety but... there's just something about how they are managed and used that seems a little off that I can't quite put my finger on.
  
• Modules take resources to repair and can be permanently destroyed. While I appreciate that this makes protecting the interior more of priority (no more turning off defenses to power weapons as a legitimate strategy "I can always fix anything that's broken once this fight is over"), it sometimes feels a bit too punishing.

tl;dr If you haven't played FTL, then this might be a cool space game. If you have played FTL, then most of the time you are playing STtE you will be wondering why this game exists and why you aren't just playing FTL. STtE is a nice game, but it still isn't good enough on its own to make it worth your time over FTL

I think the game itself seems interesting if a bit odd at first. It's too bad the multiplayer aspect of this game no longer works - this would probably have been a positive review if it did.

This is more like the game Assassin's Creed IV should have been. Combining the graphics and RPG elements of AC IV with the strategic and management elements of Caribbean Hunt would have resulted in something truly spectacular.

That said, as a PC game this does leave a bit to be desired. For a mobile game, however, it's excellent. Granted, I am far from being a mobile game guru and, I haven't actually played the mobile version, but if it's similar to the PC version, then this is easily the most technically advanced mobile game I have ever seen.

But I'm not reviewing the mobile version. I'm reviewing the Steam version for the PC.
Whatever it is, it been very engaging for me. I have played quite a lot of it - almost nothing else - since I discovered it a couple weeks ago. In the time I've spent so far (66 hours apparently), I have captured all the pirate bases up to the one in Panama that I recently bought the map for. I currently own two fully equipped 2nd-rates, three flutes, two well-equipped man o' wars and several other ships. I've probably bought/caught and sold/scrapped at least that many lesser ships. I have put a fair bit of time in and done several things, but by my estimation I'm still a ways away from completion. Only two days ago, I discovered my first hidden port while sailing around in the open world. Until then, I had no idea such things existed. While it may seem small, I had not expected to find anything new after many hours of play (and I think I'm usually pretty thorough about exploring new places). It is one of the many indicators that the developers spent some time and effort into getting the design up to snuff.

Bottom line: It's more interesting as a PC game than what you might expect from a game that was originally created for mobile devices. It's nowhere close to being mistaken as a AAA title, but I'm addicted anyway.

Like a mix of Planetside 2 and Fractured Space, but predating both. I spent so much time on this game back in the day. There is fairly little variation in levels and game modes (my absolute favorite was the TDM with the central space station), but it is addicting all the same. I spent so many hours on this game - it's truly a classic. I certainly hope whoever developed this mod landed a well-paying job in the games industry, because they definitely deserved it.

[Edit] It only shows that I have about 25hrs playtime, but I feel like that must be a mistake. At least double that is more like what I'd estimate.

Bottom line: While a cool take on an RTS, this game is extremely frustrating. I don't think I will play it again for quite some time.

Edit: after having returned to this review a little more level-headed, I have decided to err in favor of a positive review. I have added some positive points below.

Edit 2: I apologize for how long this review ended up being. I also just saw how many hours Steam has logged for me playing PA. This is partly due to what I mention in bullet 2.

Yes, I am writing this after just being completely hosed in my one and only multiplayer, ranked 1v1 match. Yes, I am writing this after coming from having been recently annihilated on my very last battle in the Galactic War I was in (the furthest I had ever gotten up to that point). Yes, I'm not by any stretch the greatest RTS player out there (but I really thought I was getting the hang of PA after several hours of play). And yes, I'm probably not in the best frame of mind to write an unbiased review. Still, for now, I'm sticking to my opinion above. Let me tell you why:

• This is not a casual game. There is no Easy Mode.
  For some games, that is okay. Some time ago, I reviewed FTL: Faster Than Light. In FTL, the fact that there is no easy mode is okay because, while it is difficult, all you really need to do better is know how to plan upgrades and know when to pause during a fight (hint: very often). With those two skills, and a measure of patience, your only really challenging enemy is bad luck. In a game with no significant curves thrown at you, you can work through it without a ton of effort most of the time.
  This is only kind of true with PA. In PA, you either do the right thing, maximizing productivity all the time, or lose (and in the case of a Galactic War - permanently). There's very little room for error. Really, the only way to win any fight is to pause often and issue several orders at once. Otherwise you are just going too slowly to keep up. While this is not always a bad thing, I feel it is a little inappropriate for a Real-Time Strategy game.
  With the tech options at your disposal, there are often only a couple of paths you can take to success. If you can build a vehicle factory, do it right away and pump out tanks and AA. If you have air factory tech, focus even more on that and pump out bombers. Always play offensively; there is no such thing as a defensive win unless you already have a serious advantage. Don't interrupt the natural progression of building - make cheap units and buildings first until you have a lot of excess metal and energy. Trying to shoot immediately to an advanced factory, as I have often tried, always fails. Expand as fast as possible, across your start planet and to other planets. In the endgame, metal is always your most restrictive resource, so grab as much as you can as early as you can.
  When you are able to do it right and win, it is a satisfying win. But in the final battles of a Galactic War, you already start significantly overwhelmed, meaning you have to take out as many commanders as fast and early as humanly possible or you lose - badly.
  
• There is no way to save and return to a fight - so they always have to be finished in one sitting, or paused and left running.
  Now, I have read somewhere on the forums that is mostly because the developers have to do more optimizations on their end to have the ability to save games using the Chrono Cam, which is basically a replay feature very similar to what you find in the Dirt racing series (or at least Dirt 2). The idea is that, when fully implemented, you can open a saved game (or the one you are in) and rewind/fastforward to any point you choose, and pick up right where you left off. While this will indeed be a very cool feature when implemented (it's one of the things that really sold me about Dirt 2), it doesn't make up for the fact that currently there is no saving at all, not even a stop-gap feature until the Chrono Cam saves are done. This seems like a pretty basic omission to a game not still in beta.
  
• There are still some aspects of actual play that feel unfinished. One of the larger examples is planet-smashing. While I have not yet smashed a smaller planet into a larger one (to supposedly achieve the crater effect shown in the promo video), I have successfully smashed some fairly equally-sized planets together - and the resulting animation is completely underwhelming. The attacking planet approaches along a path that often has several unrealistic jerks, it lines up with the target, and runs into it. That's pretty much it. There's no planet-crumbling explosions that shatter it into a thousand pieces or widespread surface deformation as they collide. The model for the two planets simply overlap breifly until they each reach the other's core, and then both instantly disappear. The only evidence that planets once existed there are the mushroom cloud(s) of whatever commander(s) you destroyed still billowing up from the invisible surface of a now non-existent planet.
  Other smaller issues:
  - The relatively small number of structures and units. This would be different if there were some faction-specific units with differing strengths/weaknesses. Right now, the only difference between two armies' units is their color.
  - The pause screen banner has an invisible no-click zone above and below it, requiring repositioning the camera until the desired selection is in the bottom or top quarter of the screen before you can click it.
  - Sometimes after selecting a group of units, the arrow keys stop working; so that you must first deselect the units, move the camera so that you can see the units and the target, then selecting the units and issuing the order.

Also, in case you are wondering, I always play with the maxed out ("Uber") graphics preset and can still get a good framerate, so that is not the issue.

Okay, with those negative points out of the way, here are some positive ones:

• The general idea behind Planetary Annihilation is certainly ambitious and, if successfully fleshed out, will be totally awesome.
  
• PA is still a pretty solid RTS. Play on a single planet feels like it should for any standard RTS (my opinion from my perhaps limited experience).
  
• Interplanetary gameplay adds a whole new dimension to an otherwise well-explored genre.
  
• Kill your opponents by blowing up their planets. Make it a destruction by collision with another massive body, or with a frickin' laser beam, Death Star style.
  
• If planet destruction isn't your cup of tea, then you could try a much more subtle death-by-bajillion-nukes. The mushroom clouds are quite pretty.
  
• If that's still a bit strong for your taste, then there's always the classic invasion-with-hundreds-and-hundreds-of-units method.
  
• The community seems to be a good one, and the developers do interact and take feedback on the forums.

Ultimately I decided to mark this a positive review, but only just. As I said above, PA can be very frustrating for several reasons, but that is at least partly balanced by how unique it is, and how awesome it has the potential to be.

Short review: Play it - play it, if nothing else, just to see what's possible for a free to play first-person shooter.


(really) Long review:

It's always hard to review an MMO or other games like Planetside 2, because new content/features can be added that significantly impact the enjoyment of the game.

Cons:

As it stands, PS2 falls far short of a typical FPS (or almost any game for that matter) in part because there's little in the way of metagame outside of what you make of it. There's no story, nothing that really explains why you are shooting as many bad guys as possible other than a vague understanding of a war between factions of competing ideologies (if you do a little digging on the wiki, however, you can find a kind of fan-fictionesque background plot which is a fairly entertaining read). PS2 relies primarily on player-driven campains to provide any real sense of purpose. Now, this is of course only a criticism in comparison with the main single-player campaigns of other AAA titles like Call of Duty or Battlefield. In terms of the multiplayer modes for those games, I'd say PS2 was actually better - in that you at least have a bit of a reason for distinguishing between your team and the bad guys rather than just shooting any warm bodies in your path.

PS2's progression system is also rather slow. Essentially there are two ways to get unlocks (guns, gear, abilities). You can play, earn experience, and "certs" which unlock most non-aesthetic things; or you can spend money to get Sony Online Entertainment's (the developer's) Station Cash, which you can use to buy everything. Station Cash is, as you might expect, terribly overpriced when not on sale - one good weapon puts you back about $7 in regularly-priced SC, and that's not even counting all the attachments which would probably be another $3. Unfortunately, the other currency, certs, are painfully slow to get unless you are an ace player, or buy yourself a subscription ($12-$15/mo). I did, and even then it feels like sometimes I am earning more certs passively than from anything I'm doing in-game (48 certs/24hrs for subscribers). This is one of the reasons I would stop playing if I ever did. After 450 hours invested, I still don't feel like I have been able to get everything I want.
(But here's a PRO-TIP: create all the characters you would ever want to play early. Logging into each one every day will let you build up certs - perhaps enough so that, when you finally decide to play that character, you'll be able to unlock something right away. My recommendation: an SMG.)

One other complaint I've heard is that there's none of that end-of-match finality or feeling of accomplishment in PS2 like you would get in CoD or similar. I agree with that in part. In my experience PS2's in-game scoreboard isn't always very useful - it only tracks statistics for battle participants within a certain area, so for any fights that migrate away from a particular base into a new area it starts tracking the stats for that new area instead. This happens often enough, and with people sometimes spawning outside an area, you can't be really certain how accurate it is. This is not really a problem for me since the enjoyment of capturing a base is typically enough to satisfy me in that respect, but I could see how it could be an issue for others, particularly e-sports enthusiasts (sometime in the not-too-distance future, an update is supposed to introduce new e-sportsy areas to rectify this problem).

Pros:

Planetside 2 is epic.

There is really no other word for it. For most FPSs, 48 players is about as big as any match will get. In PS2, a big battle is more like 200 - for just one team (out of potentially three). You may not experience a battle like that very often, dependng on the server and the day. But when you do you can't help but say to yourself - to quote another reviewer - "Oh. My. God." This is what a sc-fi battle should be.

The continents in PS2 are huge. I know of no other FPS with anything close to the three 64 square kilometer continents that PS2 boasts (with a fourth soon to be added and maybe even a fifth on the way next year). PS2 takes the M in MMO quite literally. It really does feel like you could never conquer everything - even with a giant armada of players at your back.

As I said above, it difficult to write a review for a game that could readily change. From statements they have made, the developer at SOE have big plans for PS2 - adding new weapons and upgrades (some even made by players themselves), a few new continents, e-sports areas, and easier cross-continent campaigns. It is my personal feeling that the development team is dedicated and will try to carry out these plans as best they can.

In summary, I would say that Planetside 2 is at its best a fantastically epic sci-fi shooter, and at its worst a grinder with little metagame. And to anyone who has read through all that, I applaud you.

-Loony

Okay, the first thing you need to know about FTL is that it is hard. Don't be fooled by the ability to pause the action and the "Easy" game mode - it isn't. Easy for FTL = Hard for most other games, and Normal? = Nighmare mode; and when you die, guess what? It's game over. No save points, no second chances when you screw up badly - you're finished.
... Okay, granted, I'm no strategy guru, but I'm no slouch either. Simply put, FTL is hard.

Which leads me to the second thing you need to know: FTL is awesome. Ask yourself, how would someone have attempted EVE or Star Trek Online in the early 90s? FTL is the answer. You get to command a starship with all the intricacies that entails in a bonafide arcade sim. Just because it is hard doesn't make it less enjoyable or addictive; it just means when you get that achievement or unlock a ship, it really means something.

Bottom line: FTL is hard, but I think that makes it more enjoyable, not less.

[EDIT]

It's been almost three years now since I wrote this review. At some point during that time, the AE version was released.

Just last week, I decided to pick it up again, since there are still several achievements I haven't completed and ships that I haven't unlocked. I usually played in bursts of an hour or two, once or twice a day.

Just a few minutes ago, I had gotten my stealth cruiser to the flagship, and was, after an extended fight, eventually destroyed (and yes, it was probably due to a strategic error on my part, but not a big one). That was the furthest I had gotten after about 12 hours of play over this past week.

I am writing this addendum to my review simply to explain why I'm not feeling as enthusiastic about this game as I was three years ago. Don't get me wrong, it is still a great game and I stand by most of what I said in my review. It's just that, to get enjoyment from FTL, you have to approach it with the right expectations before you play. Just because it's a 2D indie game doesn't mean it's casual (at least what I would classify as casual). Play it without an expectation of winning in the first five, or even fifteen, runs you start. You just have to work through it, and eventually you will win a run.

I want to say that the game has gotten even more difficult with the AE content, but I haven't verified that difference myself.

Bottom line: FTL is a great game, but hard. I almost can't stress that enough. Adjust your expectations with that in mind.

[EDIT 2]

It's been a couple months, I think, since the previous edit. I, just an hour ago, made my first victory over the flagship in quite some time, probably a year or so since the last time I played prior to the first edit. I wanted to quickly revisit what I said above:

I want to say that the game has gotten even more difficult with the AE content, but I haven't verified that difference myself.

While I still don't have a definite proof of this, I just looked at my game stats, and have at least some evidence of confirmation.

Total games: 102
Total victories: 8
Total victories with AE enabled: 2

Keep in mind that, first, "total games" includes every game I've started - even ones I just restarted in sector one because I felt like playing as a different ship or whatever. Second, every victory was with a different ship/layout and was usually made atfer three or more failed attempts. Third, the last number isn't shown as part of the stats. I had to look through my top ship scores for that. Fourth, obviously several of these victories were made prior to the release of the AE (though I'm pretty certain at least four of them were not).

This leads me to believe that I'm not just imagining the difference in difficulty with the addition of the AE content. My advice then, for what it's worth, is to only play with AE enabled for unlocking AE-specific ships/achievements. For all the original stuff, leave it off. I think that will make progress towards unlocks a little easier.