Recent reviews by D.Stewart

Great game to relax to and just do your own thing.

As sim games go, the vehicles do feel heavy and act in a way you would often expect. Customisation for the vehicles is great and the level of terrain damage is brilliant!

Only slight ♥♥♥♥♥♥ is the controls for excavators. Expectedly, they are very difficult given what the machine is supposed to do, but when swapping between vehicles, with all the different layouts... I found excavators for what they do to not be worth the time until it is either simplified or the controls made more uniform.

Missions are self explanatory and easy to achieve. Would be nice for more variation or even contracts that grow in size when delivering for example 11,000 units of coal.

This is a good game to relax to and play your way. Though there are amazing builds out there that will hit for millions, there is no push to achieve that. What makes this better than most games is the store. Though you can spend money to get the things you want faster, there is no need if you can be relaxed. You can trade easy to get resources for Zen or, just take part in the easy daily missions and get ships, weapons and and more, for free.

Having played on console and PC for years, I have not met one player or group that has been disruptive or judgemental. Every clan i have been a part of are friendly and supportive, if you want to learn the finer details and make more of your favourite ship.

On a final note, please do not be dissuaded by the dated engine or graphics. They make this old gem something memorable and unique. Just like Runescape classic or Stardew Valley. It is different, but so much fun.

Not sure why, but ever-since I swapped from playing through the Epic launcher to Steam, I experience intermittent issues accessing the game. Epic Launcher had no issues getting to the main menu or loading up my larger factories. Through Steam, if it works (sometimes it does and it does it faster than Epic), it takes over 10 minutes minimum to get to the main menu and then does not load up a world which has 12 bio-generators worth of factory. Either something is wrong with Steam, or, the Steam version of Satisfactory.

Oddly enough the game was more stable and playable than it is today. On release, the biggest issue with game play was the server shutting down for maintenance and having to re-send requests to friends.

These days, it is a struggle to get to the main menu without it crashing and should you get lucky enough to get there, the game then crashes trying to load up the overpriced Atom-Shop and server page for you to join the game.

If you got lucky this far though, then you are almost out of the woods as sometimes, when joining a server, you could find yourself in a world where everything is rendered like a cataracts sufferer and no player camps load in.

Odd that the game has gotten worse to play over time than better.

Not sure why as I have a 12th Gen Intel and a 4080, but this game takes the longest to load up for each play, taking between 5 and 10 minutes.

If you don't mind the wait, the game itself is almost a like for like re-skin of Stellaris and all its components. New voices, portraits, models etc. Looks and sounds like Star Trek (minus the Klingon voice which is way too soft and Human) but with only minor changes to gameplay. This allows players of Stellaris to pretty much jump right in and immediately get playing.

1 notable game play difference which has affected my usual play style is warp range introduced in Star Trek: Infinite. This slows down exploration and matches it with diplomacy and / or expansion speed. I thought it was a nice touch.

Simple, fun and when using the ascending mechanic, you know you are in for some extra treats for the game. There seems to be quite a few mini-games and a story built in. Great time killer!

The game was fantastic and fun, with plenty of PvP servers and PvE servers, but ever since Funcom's latest major patch reporting to fix stability issues, I spend on average, 2 hours a day trying to load into my favourite servers and constantly getting fatal errors.

Unfortunately, I find it hard to enjoy this game anymore as every subsequent patch / hotfix breaks the game even more.

Edit:

Almost 3 years later and thought to update my review having just completed another 40GB update. What has happened in the last 3 years? We now have micro transactions in the way of workshop coins to buy more items, magic has been added which was successfully covered by mods, more DLC which of course, costs and still, a game that barely functions.

Here is my experience today. Download 40GB update, update all necessary mods for my server, boot game up to be told I could not login (but was logged in successfully), select personal server to join and met with a list of mods it says does not match (but all mods match perfectly), select join, game restarts, rinse and repeat for 4 hours.

Having double checked my server provider, all mods, all versions, I cannot see anything wrong.

Conclusion, they still charge too much for the base game, they found more ways to make extra money out of you, still cannot get the basics in their game right.

Unless you are really invested in either the player base or using the dev kit to create items as a way to create a portfolio to become a Dev yourself, avoid at all costs. Funcom cares little for quality or player experience.

AOE: DE is as impressive as the video shows. Having had the original which is no longer compatible and seeing this in 4k with added details was amazing.

The AI has its quirks however does not push too hard allowing you to relax for an hour or two long match and not feel rushed nor mocked.

A definite must have for rebuilding an AOE collection

A brilliant game with an in-depth user chosen story line and brilliant atmospheric music tailored to each scene.