Nylige anmeldelser av Smurfosaurus-Rekt

A textbook example of how new devs aren't always a good thing. Black Matter games made a great game that they were incrementally adding things to improve it. Team17* step in and almost immediately introduce an alarming amount of bugs in with only a handful of updates.

Game was a nice slower-paced tactical shooter, but will be an arcade shooter like the 101 other ones out there... guess I'll finally have to buy SQUAD as it seems to be the only one left...

Love the base game, love green planet, love Mars (so much so I study it in real life)... This DLC introduces nothing worthwhile to the gameplay... only part I was interested in by the end was the underground wonders, but even they turned out basic and lack-luster.

AVOID

Got this as part of the annual summer wallet-vacuum (summer sale), played 2 games and had hackers in both.
But other issues with the game itself:
- The game just is too much run-and-gun, everyone using the same gun because its got the highest fire rate (sten), if you see the enemy first, you'll win the firefight.
- Tanks are ridiculous, they can take on anything and everything, managed to sneak up behind a Tiger tank and got ready to set charges to blow it up, tank did a 6346 mph 180 turret turn and blasted me as soon as I walked out the bush.
- Leavers, both games I played (and the start of a 3rd that had the same problem) will start with full players, then people leave about half-way through and then the team with most players just destroys the other team
- The 2 maps I played on were really boring (Wake island and a desert one), just big open spaces that mean you have to spawn in a tank/plane or if your infantry then use one of the several cars available, infantry gameplay is just out the window and only really happens if you're solo capping a point and someone else shows up

Thanks for the refund Gabe, if you want more realism and a slower gameplay WW2 game, play 'Hell let loose'. If you want a better BF experience then play BF4/BF1/ Battlefront 2 (great game now) or wait for BF42 (lets see how that turns out), but whatever you do avoid this game.

Love the board game, bought it on PC when I found out that I could get a computer to automate a lot of the mundane actions (counting cubes, organising decks, etc). It's a great port which is fairly intuitive (doesn't work well on phones due to their small screen, but this is a steam review). Would recommend to friends, only drawback is that the expansions (which are great) aren't available yet digitally and no word from the dev about when they will be (prelude, which is a tiny expansion, took them ages so I'm not holding my breath).

I've experienced about 3 bugs so far, but none that break the game (just make it slower) mainly from multiplayer. Multiplayer is fun, but if you get someone who takes 6+ minutes to 'Pass' you'll find yourself leaving the game quickly.

Wow, got this game because I wanted to scratch the itch from Kerbal Space Program 2 not being released, ended up enjoying it more than I did KSP 1 when I first played that.

TL;DR
Fun quirky game that doesn't have too much mechanisms to learn but instead substitutes that for key decision making. Really fun and gives a great insight into the space race in the 50's and beyond. Doesn't focus on the physics like KSP, but instead focuses on the space agency aspect, something that is really interesting!

Pros:
- Great ui, everything is intuitive to learn and master
- Auto-resolve minigames, great addition, its fun every now and then but if I had to do it each mission I'd get super bored and frustrated
- Very open game that you can't achieve everything in even if you try your hardest, if you want to send off 4 missions to Pluto, Jupiter and Saturn, cool, you do that... But you won't be generating as much science from short missions to the moon and such. This forces you to really prioritise your mission selections, 'should I go for the Jupiter orbit milestone? but the Soviet Union and USA have already launched rockets for that... Or wait a bit, focus my research on new missions and probes, then go for a Saturn Orbit mission which nobody else is doing instead?'
- Really wide mix of stages to build your ideal rockets, each one has their own benefits, so having a variety of options is great, but means you can't research crucial missions that will get your agency ahead in the space race. Shuttles work great too

Cons:
- Not much current-era missions, doing the Rosalind Franklin rover is great, but there is so much data from Curiosity and Opportunity, as well as a ridiculous amount of understanding which has come from multiple orbiters that were launched WITH those missions. Instead it goes fairly quickly from missions which happened in the 90's & 00's straight to missions which will likely be in the 2020's & 30's.
- Launches need to be sped up, they're great when you have the first one, and I even watched the first 10ish fully, but after 100+ I just want to skip the whole 'ooooooh, how did the launch go... **drumroll** ..... it went OK!'. I now end up mashing the mouse where I've remembered the "auto-resolve" button will appear
- Theres a loophole for the mission cap, which should really be a feature in the main game. You can only have 5 missions once you've upgraded everything, but if you have those 5 missions, you can get a 6th by requesting a joint mission with another agency, bringing it up to 6. If you finish another mission before the joint one, its 'sorry, you've got 5 missions already'. Could be solved just by having a 'Joint mission' slot that comes with the building that allows for proposing joint missions.
- Different agencies don't seem to have much individuality, each agency only really gets a boost in certain things, so a playthrough with ESA doesn't really change much from USA or Japan. Soviet Union really suck in this, despite doing loads in the space race (and failing more than loads)

EDIT 17/06/23:
I said I'd change my review if it got better, and it looks like a lot of the gripes have been addressed. Double thumbs up for working on the game to make it better!


Old review:
Currently unplayable due to bugs, when critical equipment breaks down the crew don't prioritise work on essentials, and since you can't manually assign tasks you can correct it.
TL:DR Great concept, will probably be fun as hell after it becomes a bit more playable. But wait to buy unless you are happy buying a very unfinished (but regularly updated) product to support the devs

EDIT: Will recommend some changes on the discord and update this review as the game changes

Haven't completed it but I'm 1/3 of the way through

Great game, great story lines

Great fun, the different scenarios ensure its a unique experience each time.

Have had this game for a long time and its a very good game, why the negative review?

The base game is ok, but is pretty simple and monotunous. It lacks depth and customisation options are terrible, with nearly all assets looking the same. Mods fix this, user content has provided so many fixes and improvements that I wasn't really sure what the base game was anymore or why I thought it was flawed (I reminded myself by playing a couple of games without any mods... I remember now).
All this isn't a bad thing, I've enjoyed plenty of hours staring at the galaxy and moving my autonomous drones to and from systems

So why the negative review?

Time and time again Paradox have taken popular mod ideas that bring additional content, made a sh*ty version of it, then sold it as DLC. Apocolypse has added titan ships (already existed) and planet destroyers (new concept). Utopia added mega structures (already existed, you just couldn't build them)

Paradox has a habit of stripping their game of small bits across the whole game, then adding all those said bits with some minor additions to a brand new DLC pack that costs £15