Recent reviews by Stranger

At first glance the game looks like a promising sailing sim with attention to details. That's what I could derive from the stop-motion frames I got during these painful 30 minutes I tried to play it.
Unfortunately, after 3 years of Early Access and who knows how many more in development the game cannot run faster than 20 FPS (15 average) on a mid-high-end PC. And since even basic optimization is not here after several years, I have few hopes it ever will be.
At the moment — unplayable. Which is a real pity, because we are not swimming in sailing sims lately (pun intended).

I'm usually skeptical about the plaque "From the writers & directors of..."
It's often nothing but a play on a famous name.
I was skeptical this time too. I was wrong.

Dispatch is where brilliant talents really meet. I love old Telltale directors and writers. And I love Critical Roll.
In Dispatch two genius creator teams met and formed an outstandingly beautiful synergy.

Dispatch is technically a visual novel. And it feels perfect in this role.

Characters are vibrant and full of life. Each has a personality, each imprints itself into your memory with appearance, voice and behavior unique for him alone.
Plot is twisted and feels pliable. I don't know how much do choices matter. If matter at all. But that is not important. The important thing is how they FEEL. And they do feel impactful. They do make it your own story, even if it is for you alone.

Gameplay? Gameplay is fine. Fun, for the most part. But for me it's just the filler. It doesn't get in the way, stays entertaining enough till the very end and even manages to drop a surprise or two during the run.

This is an interesting concept. But a bad implementation.

1. Building editor
This is the core of this kind of games. You will spend half (maybe more) of your game time creating and fine-tuning your vehicles for a specific task.
And in this game it is a chore.
Do you want to feel like a one-armed child with cerebral palsy, trying to build his first lego set? With this editor - you can!
What you cannot do it:
- Move or flip complex parts.
- Mirror your build for symmetrical creations.
- Fine-tune mechanical parts strength/range.
If you want to see the vehicle editor done (almost) right, try another game that involves constructing and utilizing flying, floating and driving rescue vehicles as concepts are very close.

Yes, there is a copy-paste tool here, but it will get increasingly hard to use as your creating grows more complex.
It requires you to manually select each part you want to copy (instead of extending selection box or add all connected parts opposite to the core).
It does not tell which part of the copied piece are you missing, forcing you to check each one manually.
It does not always allow you to attach the part with the port you actually need it to be attached.
And I won't even start on how painful rotating complex things is.
In general the whole editor - arguably the most important part of constructor-games - feels like a painful and unavoidable labor between the main gameplay.

And what about the main gameplay?

2. Delivery sim
It's not a bad thing on its own. Another courier sim by Japanese devs found its niche and created an engaging and exciting gameplay thanks to developed terrain traversing mechanics.
But here moving from point A to point B is either boring, or hurting.
As some mentioned in discussions, flying can be easily cheesed, so as soon as you get the ability to fly, you can brute-force through the whole game basically ignoring terrain.
But if you are forced to drive, you discover that Mars has turned into a skating ice rink and you can do nothing about it while driving vehicles with unknown weight and non-existent balance.

The only good part of the game is sound and visual design.
To my eyes and ears, at least, it's fresh, comfortable and snappy.
It is actually pleasant to add/remove/engage parts of the build and just sit and look around.

Unfortunatley, for an interactive screensaver Mars First Logistics is a bit too expensive.
And for a game — too incomplete. Good for a late EA. Definitely not 1.0.

P.S.: as an additional fun touch the developer seems to intentionally avoid responding to inconvenient questions.
E.g. question about flipping/symmetry was asked twice on the discussion forums. Twice ignored.

The only problem with this game: it is unique in its kind. There's no other game like this one out there. Not yet.
When you complete a good traditional videogame, you know very well you can go and play another, just as good.
When you finish with Half-Life: Alyx, you have nowhere to go at all.
It's a gem, it's a miracle, it's a triple-A done right. But for now it stands in this row alone.

Don't get me wrong, this is a great game! And I would definitely recommend it to anyone.
The one problem is: it is NOT "It Takes Two". As a co-op game, it is WORSE.

Let me explain.
Split Fiction is amazing. It is beautiful, dynamic, it has nice story and perfect tech-implementation (no bugs or control issues whatsoever). It is a good movie to watch with your best friend / soulmate / etc.
But as a co-op game it fails miserably in comparison.
Yes, it has some interactions that actually count as cooperation, and a couple of really fun together-moments, but they are scarse and mostly primitive. Remove the second player, and nothing will change for the majority of the game.
And otherwise Split Fiction is EMPTY.
Remember how every inch of It Takes Two and even A Way Out was filled to the brim with various activities and challenges that involved actual *interaction* between players? No more. Split Fiction is a movie. You are not supposed to stop and explore, nor linger in one place for more than necessary. Almost every "easter egg" is thrown in your face so you won't be able to miss it (and there are very few of those), world is mostly not interactive, save for one or two places just for the legacy's sake, I guess.
And this makes me very sad.
Despite being a story about two people bonding, the game provides almost no occasions to actually BOND for the players.

So let me to reiterate: Split Fiction is an awesome game. And if it wasn't from Hazelight Studious, or if it wasn't pretending to be "the best co-op game ever", it would be a 100% thumbs up.
But unfortunately it is all these things.
And I have to say that I'm disappointed.

This game is weird. Yes, it is somewhat nice-looking and has its charm, but it's basically a screensaver that you have to control for some reason. Every world is a bit too long and/or lacking new mechanics to stay fun, and controls are not always playing in your favor.
And one of the main drawbacks is the game's "plot". I assume it has one, but listening to scary and distorted voices talking something about Jupiter while you're a glowing ball gliding through completely unnatural landscape... it's weird. Maybe it would unravel somewhere down the line, but in the moment it just feels wrong.
Remove this "plot", slap some nice music (oh, did I mention that it's almost non-existent here?) and it might be a good game.
Otherwise - maybe get it with 75% discount. Or skip: you won't loose much.

I don't think I ever changed my reviews from positive to negative. This will likely be the first.

Stationeers was a great game. It still is great. But I don't think it's still a game.
Judging by how devs approach communication (scarce and reluctant), development (erratic and inconsistent) and planning (is there any?..), Stationeers is now considered a pet-project, an experimental and training ground.
I don't see anything intrinsically wrong with it.
What I think is wrong is still advertising it as a game that will one day be released.

Don't get me wrong, you can still play it and get dozens of hours of fun from it, if you like this kind of games.
But you should be aware what you are paying for.

I'll keep my old review here, because it still has some validity.

---

This game is not for a wide audience.
It is for nerds and autists who, like me, thrive in tinkering for hours with intricate device that does the same thing as a simple AC unit (which they could slap in 5 minutes and be done with it).
The game is not nearly done, but don't let this "EA" label deceive you: it is remarkably stable. During almost 300 hours of gameplay I encountered only a handful of bugs, most of which were only a small disturbance and didn't break the game. Yes, tons of content is either missing, or is legacy and subject for removal later. And yet it already has potential for 300+ hours of gameplay. Be warned though, that at least third of this time you'll spend with either notepad or pen and paper, planning, calculating and evaluating your next project.

Would I recommend buying it? Hell yeah!
If you are among its target audience, you'll hardly regret it.
First of all, you'll get hours upon hours of fun exploring the mechanics of the game (and learning some coding and physics as you go).
Second of all, you'll feel this incredible feeling when something you've been working for hours actually works. It's that pride incomparable to anything.
And last but not least, you get to support independent developers that seem to actually care about their game even all these years since initial launch. We don't see a lot of those lately.

I'm revisiting my review a while later and despite the game still has some issues mentioned below, I think it earned it's thumbs up fair and square.
Optimization feels better, and framerate doesn't drop as fast as before.
Some latest QoL features resolve several long-lasting pains of mine.
But what's the most important of all: devs still care. Response to newly reported bug came almost immediately. We'll see about the fix, but I, cautiously, get my hopes up.

So, even if you do encounter something broken or just clunky and rough, you might be the one to help fix it. And I start to believe that you will be heard.

Honestly, it should be a positive review.
And it will be, as soon as (or "if") the optimization and crashing issues are resolved.

I like what the game has achieved by its 1.0 release.

The free building system is awesome. As far as I know, Foundation is among the first of several projects that allow this to exit EA.
Aesthetics is good: IMO, the balance between cartoonish and realistic is almost perfect (I could live without those scary faces tho XD).
Gameplay loop is satisfying and moderately demanding to keep you engaged, but not sweating.

BUT. For now it really feels like pre-release state.
The optimization is bad, even compared to EA version. Framerate seems good while the town is small and you don't do anything, but as soon as it grows, or you click on a gatherer building (I'm sure there're more conditions than that) it plummets.
Every now and then you get crash to desktop, the bigger your save - the more often it occurs.
A lot of additions new for 1.0 release are rough around the edges and likely poorly tested.

Right now, if you ask me, I would not recommend playing.
Foundation is a solid game that's real fun, but in its current state you'll just spoil your first impression of it and might never get back to it. But you certainly should (as long as it gets fixed, that is).

Ok, so I've been waiting for a chance to write a review since first 15 minutes of the game.
It feels INCREDIBLE.
I had my share of first Shapez, it was pretty fun, and that's what I have to say about its sequel.

It feels like... devs thought of players comfort every minute of their work. It's like... I have nothing to wish for. I am usually pretty picky about game UI/UX, and here I just have no idea what else to ask. It is built for players comfort. Every. F*cking. Detail.

I don't know what else to say.
I don't know yet how the progression will look like, but at this point - does it even matter?
I feel like game devs actually thought about me! That I'm being loved and cherished. Do you need anything else to love this game back?

Maybe I will update this review later when I've actually played the game for more than half an hour.
But I don't think anything can change my mind at this point.
It. Is. Flawless.

Update: 5+ hours in, midgame (end of 5th milestone), didn't change my mind, but want to add more thoughts (praises) about the progression.
It feels natural and well thought through. The complexity of shapes grows by growing one shape into another, so instead of tearing down your old factory and building a new one you mostly build on top of it. It makes everything you do feel more productive and meaningful, mitigating greatly the fear of starting over (it's a thing for me at least, I hate rebuilding from scratch).

The only two things I'm missing by this point are ability to speed up time and some kind of space-sized labels. But it's so minor it does not affect my overall impression at all.

It really hurts me to downvote a game that is otherwise mostly a masterpiece. The game I came to love so much.

The story is perfect.
The sound-design is amazing.
The animations (especially facial expressions) are astonishing.
The graphics is great (probably).
BUT.
One single developers decision destroys it all for me: stupid letterboxing (black bars on top and bottom of the screen).

When half of the game is devoted to search-and-find activities, it becomes a true nightmare. How can I find anything if I literally can't see half of the screen? How should I enjoy the picture and the landscape and all your precious details if I have to constantly swing camera back and forth just to look at them?

Some assume it is a mean to keep stable FPS due to poor optimization.
You know, what else can help with FPS? SIMPLER GRAPHICS.
What all those fancy visuals are for if a player has to stare at them through an embrasure?! I don't know about people with 2-4K widescreens, but on my standard 1920:1080 I can't see a damn thing.

Whatever the reasoning was, there can be no excuse.
Using voices as both a narration instrument and gameplay help is an artistic choice. And it's amazing.
Using letterboxing to rob players of their visual experience is garbage.

I will gladly change my review if it ever gets fixed.
But for now — for me — it's nigh unplayable.