Recent reviews by jae

I rarely write reviews and now I'm writing two within the day. Blockbuster Inc. got me down bad, it seems. As I previously mentioned, I really want this game to succeed, many of us have been utterly STARVED after Lionhead went down under and Peter Molyneux decided to be peak Peter Molyneux.

Though, starving animals are also known to shove absolutely everything, regardless of quality, down their throats as if it were the best thing since sliced bread. Blockbuster Inc., however, is far from the best thing.

With this prelude out of the way, I want to emphasize that my critiques come from a place of complete love for the genre, but also the knowledge that you can't make a great dish without adding some spice.

So, let this review be the spice in your dish... what a weird fkcng analogy.

Anyways, bullet points are amazing:
(Points with '(!)' infront of them mean that I haven't fully seen everything, so take 'em with a grain of salt)

• The artstyle, music and SFX currently present really fit the presentation.
  
• The building menu is nicely organized and easy to navigate.
  
• Downloading/Uploading sets from or to the workshop is so seamlessly integrated.
  
• (!)A huge timeline from the 20s to the 20s to discover and research.
  
• An ambitious passion project and I can't help, but respect the amount of work and detail thats been put in. The sets can be gorgeous.
  
• The schedule has been touched up and your staff aren't turtles anymore, so the way you plan has more influence on their mood and your products than before. Nice!

• Missions have been added, but you cannot pin them into an outliner. Why? It makes them uneccessarily tedious to track.
  
• Aligning anything (decoration, set-dessing, furniture etc.) can be extremly clunky. My OCD cannot cope with the fact that, when I tried to rotate two kitchen pieces so their counter tops would align into a kitchen isle, they just... wouldn't. Same with desks, why do they need the Mariana Trench between oneanother?
  Maybe enabling the ALT button to move pieces off-grid could be an idea, as other games do.
  
• As of now, the game is incredibly easy, because you do not get punished for bad decision making or a string of horrible fims.
  
• While the sets can be beautiful, it doesn't take long till the honeymoon phase is over and you realize its always a square that comes in different sizes. Grand, expansive sets like city scapes, or desert, beach or hilly landscapes cannot be re-created.
  
• Sadly, the product making process suffers the same fate and it really doesn't take long till you just randomly generate movies that are, way too often, better than your handcrafted ones.

• The performance is inexcusable. Every time you try to place, rotate, delete or add ANYTHING, the games needs a moment to deal with this change, it doesn't matter if your studio lot is empty or filled with props.
  
• I know, its performance related. But the 100% GPU load bug(?) has not been resolved yet.
  
• Customization is heavily encouraged, but even the pool is just a palm tree with re-arranged polygons. Your peeps will never use any decorative objects, even if a use-case is heavily implied (benches, pools, trash bins etc.)
  
• Sadly most gameplay elements are just a façade supported by two twigs and its really windy right now. Blockbuster Inc. is a game that wants you to make decisions, manage your employees, be deeply involved in the movie making process, but its all inconsequential.

I desperately want to love this game, I'm starved for movie tycoons, all of us are. But in its current state I sadly cannot recommend it. Blockbuster Inc. wants to be everything to everybody, but fails to get the basics down. Why should I care about my employees, if their needs are easy to satisfy: Pay 'em more.

You are never punished for losing an A-list star, because it really doesn't matter - hire a new one. You'll have so much hype from undeservedly winning way too many awards every year, that its a drop in the bucket. Sure, you can direct your own movie, make your own sets, meticulously craft the scenes and who plays which role and in which outift, ponder over IP-names and craft your own overarching Story through the decades.

Sure, you can build the most beautiful lot, detail everything with love and care and spend hours going over your build again and again.

Or... y'know... you could just randomly generate non-sensical movies, place the same tree 1000 times, randomly place pre-built rooms and sets all over the lot and STILL generate the same, if not more success.

Because nothing matters, you are never punished and never rewarded.


Phew... I think this is by far the longest review I've ever written. I know this is a daunting list of things that just aren't up to par with the developers ambition, BUT nothing I've written about is fundamentally broken, this is all fixable with time and effort.

As I mentioned, I desperately want this game to succeed, but I'm not so desperate as to be blind to its obvious flaws.

To the developers: I know you guys read this and I hope feedback like this can help you address the issues and build the game you actually wanted to build. I will not refund the game, because I believe in you and your ideas and ambitions, even if the current product fails to live up to my expectations.


And to you, the reader: Please keep in mind that these are my opinions and you are welcome to agree or disagree, I'll respect your opinion if you respect mine. I don't mind comments, if you think I have it all wrong, go at it :P


Thx.

Also typos or grammatical errors are, of course, kompletly intentional.



Since there was a bit of a consensus that I should play more of the game, here's a couple additional things I've noticed. This is not to dunk on the game, but to provide further feedback to hopefully better help the developer work things out:

• Managing housing for your stars is tedious. If you, for example, rent 1-Star accomodation, but your stars reach Fame 2, 3 or 4 the game will not tell you to upgrade housing. Clicking on a house only tells you its required fame level, but not the fame level the stars living there have - making you go into the Employee management tab to check.
  
• I have about 30-40 employees right now and clicking on the employee management Its actually the "Import Set" window that completely lags out my game to the point where my stable 100 FPS crash down to 5 and it can persist for up to a minute after closing the window.
  
• While in the city, if you click on "Create Product" without leaving the city map, the game puts you back onto your lot, but the city map will still be selected and UI elements are visible in the distance. - I've provided a screenshot:
  https://steamproxy.com/id/bigdumhoss/screenshot/2449475124252119979/
  
• The previous point seems to give reason as to why performance is the way it is. I have the sneaking suspicion that that the game renders both the city map and your lot at all times to minimize loading, but it doesn't seem to cache and update, but rather literally render everything at all times.
  
• I'm about 2-3 years in the game and I'm the number one studio, endless money in the bank and, if I don't delete my save, I've probably won the game if I continue, which I will. The game has its charm underneath it all.

I really want this game to succeed, because I love Lionhead's The Movies and movie tycoon games in general. That being said, I have a couple of gripes with the game, which keep me from enjoying it. Here are the ones I noticed the most:

- The schedule is really unintuitive, you can set plenty of breaks and dinner time and even then, your employees will spend at least 60% of their assigned work time not working. And I get the intention, but why even let me set a schedule if the result of my tinkering is so inconsequential that I might as well not bother.

- Employees take AGES to walk ANYWHERE. Why can I place a toilet next to a set, set the game to Speed 3 and watch two hours just melt away.

- Research is incredibly slow at the start. And I do get why, not enough money, just 1-3 researchers - sure. But making the same movie 10 times with almost nothing to set them apart really sucks every bit of fun out of the game for me personally. Then, finally, I get the privilege of shooting an Action film... on the exact same set... because everything costs way too much. Maybe Tech Point scaling?? (For added context: Yes, I used the set designs and the directing tool, etc.)

That being said, I'm seeing a lot... a whole ton of potential, but right now everything feels just a tad off.

I disagree with (almost) every positive review wholeheartedly. Every piece of "lore" this DLC dumps is just a different flavour of the same meal we got served in the vanilla campaign. Nothing new has been added and nothing interesting discovered. No matter which route you choose, you'll recieve four basic, boring fights with nothing to spice it up at all, pre-made decks and filler characters galore. As mentioned, or guessed, the only difference between these three pseudo-paths are the skins, nothing of substance added and nothing new learned.

I've seen people saying that "it's a flashback, of course you can't change the past". Then why the f!kc do we get to have ideologically differing choices that make ZERO difference at all? I was misled into thinking my choices have an impact on how this short story plays, but no matter what you choose, its always "Oh Magnus, so amazing wow" and "Yogger bad and radical, ew". At best it feels as if an inexperienced writer cooked this "story" up, because at worst it is completely devoid of care for ones own lore, two-three sentenced story bits that end in non-choices can honestly not be a standard.

I have neglected to mention Yogger up to now, because how this DLC was teased and advertised, the foci seemed to be the new areas, exploring the Wolf Wars, etc. The new character seemed more like a side dish to the main course. That is, of course, until the Developer pivoted completely after the mediocore reception in an adress to the community. Instead suddenly focusing in on how difficult character designs are... for a character that existed previously, even with thier own weapon and signature attacks?

Either way, if you want new skins and a new character: Get the DLC.
If you hoped to recieve an area that is fleshed out and explores a war the countryside still reels from in the main story, then this ain't it chief.

ok i guess.

i like this game.

new review
such critism
much game
v e r y
much repair
wow gloves
very heist
much loot
dead meme
wow.