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.

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. ****************************************************************** 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.