Recent reviews by w3nthesungoesdwn

Cat Factorio. Or Factorio for cats if you prefer.

Not as good as Subnautica.

Yes, this game is an extremely simplified TBS but hear me out first. If you, like me, have other real life obligations and can't stomach starting a game that you know will take 40-60 hours to complete, then maybe this is for you. Lately, I've been enjoying more and more games that are easy to pick up and put down. This is one of those. I'm a fan of the XCOM series, but as I said earlier, it's too difficult for me to start playing a game I know will take a huge time investment. If that's the case for you as well, then this is a solid choice. Especially if now, time is more valuable to you than money.

I mean it's almost exactly like Bomber Crew but set in space and slightly easier in difficulty. There are a few minor differences such as your ship just stops if you move your pilot (rather than crashing), enemies can board your ship, and cabins can be decompressed to extinguish fires. If that sounds appealing to you, I recommend it. If you were hoping for major improvements or revamping of the game mechanics, then you'll be disappointed and I don't recommend.

Normally, I'm not the type to write off a game just because it has bugs. Things happen, they get caught, and then fixed within a reasonable amount of time. I'm less tolerant when a game has how many DLC? 3? Yeah... There is a bug from 2 years ago (known bug of course) that stops outposts from working. Essentially making resource gathering much more difficult. It's nothing game breaking, just an annoyance. It's something I would probably let go if not for the DLC...
Yes, it is an excellent game in a unique world with a great atmosphere. Fix your game and stop trying to sell more content (which from what I've heard is also half-finished). This trend seems to be quite common with developers and I'm a little tired of it.

This game needs to decide if it wants to be a FPS with roguelike elements or an RPG-building-management game. It fails at trying to combine both. I'm sure other reviewers will cover the negative aspects of this game better than me (they're all true, btw) so I'll just add this: most roguelike run-throughs take about 1-2 hours max right? You could easily spend 5-10 hours on a 'run' here. So either make it a one playthrough kind of game with high replay value or shorten the grindy resource collection and hyperspace travel elements. Oh, and fix the AI. For real.

Terraria doesn't need another positive review but it's going to get one.
It's a staple that every gamer should own and a majority will love.
It may not look like much, but there is more content here than some AAA games. Especially on sale and played with friends, there is no reason not to buy this one.

UPDATE
After 90+ hours and a 100% completion I can say that not enough of the problems with this game have changed from a coop perspective. If you're reading and you're only interested in solo, then for you, this review is a thumbs up. Especially with the latest update, this game is phenomenal.

Unfortunately the reason I bought this was for coop and I'm more than disappointed. Some of the bugs have been fixed (no more getting shot into space), and because of that the game HAS improved. To me, it's too little too late. After this latest summer update, which added quite a bit of excellent content, I would rather have the connection issues fixed. Getting disconnected every 30 minutes give me multiple opportunities to pause and think what I would rather be playing.


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Full:
Let's start with how much I enjoyed this game. I don't think there are a lot of games with quite the same experience. The idea of being stranded on an alien world, collecting resources, and building enough items to space travel was and still is highly appealing to me. In a co-op setting especially, it has a good balance of gathering resources, base building, exploring, and actual survival mixed in. It can get repetitive doing this on multiple planets. But by then I felt it was fairly easy to build your base beforehand and just take it with you on a large shuttle to later unpack.

Overall, Astroneer is riddled with (mostly the same) bugs and should not have left EA. A few bugs are expected but not 10+ an hour, especially when bugs kill you causing you to drop all your items. And I'm not even talking about the plants that fling you. That's just a good game mechanic to make planets more hostile. The multiplayer bugs are worse. My friend and I couldn't be on separate planets because frequently the game would not let him pick up an item or use a station. My personal favorite is a friend getting disconnected from the host and losing all items. Oh, I don't mean they drop on a body that you can find again. I mean they vanish into the abyss. The game thought his character disappeared and made him start over. This issue was so prevalent that after awhile I forbid my friend from carrying anything we couldn't easily replace. I was so frustrated at this point that I decided to write my review before finishing the game.

I played the crap out of this game the first week it was released. I will finish it and I may even 100% it. While I enjoyed my time with it, I'm not sure I would recommend to others or even my past self. For $30 full price, there may be other, better survival games to try first. That being said, this review will change to a thumbs up when the above bugs are addressed.

I really enjoyed this game until I realized one thing:

Do you enjoy RPGs/TBS where you build up your character/team to be powerful enough to defeat your enemies? If you're like me, then you probably won't enjoy this. It's basically a game of attrition because you will constantly be losing units. And as far as I could tell, new recruits are finite. Or at least the good ones are.

Do you remember that arcade game from the 80s where you could get 2 ships connected together and you were shooting alien ships? That was my favorite arcade game.

This is as close to that game as I can find on Steam. Worth $1.