Recent reviews by Scrubly

Game is fun, let this Sony drama be a learning point to all AAA studios and corporations, YOUR CONSUMERS ARE NOT STUPID.

Silica is very unique. This game is early access so it is expected that there is more CONS than PROS, and it has a TON of potential. In it's current state, it is still fun and a good time and likely will only improve given time.

This review is for the Strategy game mode. I have not tried Arena yet.

Pro's:
- Graphics, the game looks stunning. Explosions happening in the distance especially at night look like something out of a movie. The vastness of the desert maps makes it extremely immersive as well is the day/night cycle in the game. You will feel like your in the movie Dune or on the sands of Tatooine from Star Wars.
- Co-op. It is a blast to play with friends and vs each other. Every now and then you will have people join in on your game and it becomes very interesting the more players get involved.
- Sound is good, not on the BF level but it's acceptable
- Variety of units are good, decent selection to build and classes to play.

Con's:

As of now this game has massive potential, although I cannot ignore some of the things I've noticed.

-Performance
The games pretty hard to run, I currently have a 3070 and I still get quite hard frame drops and stuttering every now and then. It doesn't break the game but it does get laggy as the game goes on. So unless you have a good PC, I'd wait for the performance to improve.

- Harvesters
For the human factions harvesters are the only means of acquiring money or baltarium. But the AI often get's stuck on the refineries or steep sand hills that can sometimes lead to the downfall of your team if not manually fixed. In addition, they are very easy targets for alien players to hop up on and destroy before you can react or defend them. I've found myself unable to respond or kill said player because they can crawl in between parts of the harvester and due to friendly fire being active, most of the time, your units AI will simply destroy the harvester in the process of trying to kill the enemy player. This brings me to my second point.

- Friendly fire:
It's frustrating on the human side to have a convoy of heavies (basically rocket launcher infantry) blow their own teammates out of existence if they're too close to each other. At the point in time, AI does not recognize firing heavy explosives when there is another unit right next to them kills them and your units. The only way to mitigate this is to have your units spaced out. The same can happen with rocket launcher vehicles if you have units near enemy units and the AI targets them. I don't mind having friendly fire, although at the current moment there is no way to stop an AI unit from firing on enemy units. For example if I have a human unit attacking my harvester, I don't want my rocket launcher to send a volley to destroy that unit because in that process, It will destroy the harvester too.

- Building Structures.
As a commander, it is difficult to tell where you are actually allowed to build a structure. Your building will light up blue when a suitable spot is found to build and red when you can not build there, as it is in most RTS games. However there is a invisible build-able area around your base that you cannot see. I would like to see a highlighted floor area that shows that build-able area when I go to place a structure instead of wasting time trying to find the right spot that the game will accept. It is different for humans and aliens. Humans can only extend their build-able area by placing outposts or other buildings and chaining them across the map. Aliens on the other hand extend their reach using nodes which are accessible early on in the game and have less of a handicap on build-able areas. What does this mean? For the human side, you need to reach tech lvl 3 before you can even build outposts. So taking ground on these large scale maps becomes a dis-advantage where as Aliens, are almost limitless even being able to build in mountain terrain such as rocks. This means without air units, they becomes hard to kill on the humans side often requiring manually firing rocket launchers or trying to ascend the cliffs with a infantry class. (This problem should be fixed when air units are added to Strategy mode)

- Unit Management
In the commander mode at the current state, it is difficult to micro manage units due to some quality of life things missing.
For example there is no options to put units into formations. This is something I would like to see as you currently need to select each individual unit in order to spread them out to prevent friendly fire. In it's current state I don't believe you can group units as you can do in most RTS games either. The only commands you can give your units is to Sneak, Sprint or move normally. Sneaking puts units into a crouching position for humans and Alien crabs burrow into the ground which is cool.
Commands I want to see added would be a move-attack order, hold attack, patrol orders, formation orders, protect / defend area orders, defend unit orders all of which are not currently in the game.
There is currently no key binding.

Unit pathing
- The unit pathing seems odd, I'm not sure how else to put it. The AI bunches up on move orders unless you manually move individual units, as well as they follow strict move paths. It is not a game-breaker but it doesn't feel fluid like you would have in command in conquer or other RTS titles.

With the unit pathing comes line of sight. This games terrain will block your units from being able to shoot! I love the idea that terrain plays a roll in the strategy of this game, although with the unit pathing the way it is, it is hard to tell sometimes when a units line of sight is being blocked by a dune hill in the commander roll. I've noticed the AI shooting sand when I thought they were actually engaging enemy units, and before you know it, the enemy is now on top of you. There needs to be a terrain view mode or something that shows line of sight when you move and select your units. Steel Division, Warno, and other titles use terrain and line of sight in their games. So, something similar to the ring around your units showing range, and line of sight would be nice.

for FPS:

I would like to see something similar to battlefield where you can see the map before spawning. Being able to spawn into a unit and take control, or choose where you spawn instead of it being random would be nice. Being able to select your class before spawning would be useful too. The maps are massive and the only way to get around is in a vehicle or using the teleportation inside buildings on the human side of things unless you like running simulator.

I will say it is quite difficult to make out units in the game as well, having a spotting function that highlights units would be nice, (there is a pinging option although it is kind of quirky and you can ping incorrectly often). I would like to have a zooming function with vehicles as well like a aiming option. It can be difficult to tell if you are actually hitting enemy units when you are in control or not. Maybe adding health bars above units could fix this, currently it's only in the bottom corner of your screen.

Conclusion:

6/10 (Above Average)
The game is fun and for $20 is worth the price I'd say. Playing with friends helps make it more enjoyable, and the game can have immersive moments playing in FPS with the awesome graphics. With the addition of aerial units soon I believe it will help some of the things I talked about, and add more to the game. The developers does need to address some of the game/breaking bugs such as the harvesters and I would like to see more quality of life things added to the commander roll as it is quite lacking. Although the game is early access. It's a one of a kind idea that has a lot of potential.
Give it a shot if you're interested, but I recommend having people to play with as it will improve your experience.