Recent reviews by dgw

8 updates in, still a lot more tedious than something like Factorio. There's no construction automation and blueprint support is super limited. YOU the player(s) must hand-place every last item, whether individually or as part of strictly size-limited building blocks (what Satisfactory calls "blueprints", but there's no way you'll plan out a whole building at once).

I do still enjoy the first-person 3D aspect, vs. most factory games being third-person and/or 2D. Satisfactory likely has to artificially limit how much (and how fast) players can expand because of game engine limitations & performance concerns.

This is a game with potential. I still believe that, even though I can't recommend buying Train Life in its current state. Issues that were around through much of Early Access still exist in the supposed 1.0 release, and Simteract have stopped work on this game to focus on a new title about taxis.

With some more work, it still could become the Euro Truck of train games, but it doesn't look like that work is going to happen despite the developer response I received on an earlier revision of this review promising to "continue to work on in [sic]".

Unlike many, I did not find the story particularly engaging. It leans on a lot of obvious tropes. The presentation of many events through lo-fi holographic recordings was my least favorite aspect of "experiencing" this one.

Aside from that, gameplay-wise, the controls are very frustrating, especially for the sections with platformer mechanics. Movement speed is non-linear, which quickly causes problems in time-critical sections. Which are another thing that didn't mesh with the game, incidentally: Several sections require being completed within a specific amount of time, usually just a couple of minutes, and often without any reason being given by the story events.

On the positive side, the game's environments are overall quite detailed, and pretty. Some cheap-looking animations and particle effects betray the graphical quality, though. I laughed out loud in a few places at particularly wonky VFX that didn't at all match what was going on around them. Physics in some moments also elicited a few chuckles.

Even at a 70% discount—the all-time lowest price as of this review's date—I still got a minor feeling of buyer's remorse. Hindsight always being 20/20, this one deserved waiting for its inclusion in a game bundle at some point. I will be scrutinizing reviews of the Mars sequel much more closely.

Factorio is the game that got me back into all-day gaming sessions.

Factorio is the game that got me back into modding.

Factorio is the game that will consume your life. "Just need to fix one more little thing, then I'll go to bed I swear."

Given: This "Demo" is actually a slightly tweaked early build of the full game (version 0.18.3).
Given: I have spent 27 hours building and testing rockets in this stripped-down version.
Given: The game continues to impress me with just a limited subset of the available parts.
Given: Mod support is available in the full game, and there are a LOT of mods to download.

Conclusion: This game is very much worth it.

Addendum: The only reason I have not yet bought the full version is that I don't have a system that meets its minimum requirements yet.

I don't know exactly why, but I got SO INTO this game. I played it almost like a full-time job for two weeks when I didn't have any classes.

Addicting? Oh yes. But awesome.

Portal 1 was fun, but Portal 2 squared that fun and added a much richer world. Still have trouble waiting for times when I can go back and play parts of it.

Also: Co-op.

Puzzles! Talking turrets! A psychotic computer!