Recent reviews by KanadianKerbal

I am recommending this game, because i in good faith cannot not recommend a game me and my friends played over 500 hours in. But i feel it is important to lay out what has happened here.

Starbound is Terraria in space, simple as. And filling that role, it is an immensely fun experience... Until you start noticing the cracks. Some items (the pixel printer) are horribly optimised and cause this 2010 game to chug 2024 rigs. The story feels like it was glued ontop of the game without any real effort to make it fit with the core gameplay loop. And so many features just sorta feel like they dead end halfway through exploring them.

So, what happened?

Starbound is an amazing lesson in the dangers of feature creep. Every update the devs had a new system, new mechanics, and new content, almost never fully finished or implemented. Even as old bugs lingered the feature creep continued. More stuff kept getting added. Often they would even remove old content to make room for new features that were added to their ever growing roadmap, but the replacements never came. But, the rate slowed down, playing this in time with its abandonment, you could tell the devs were getting bored of the game, they started a new game (Wargroove) while starbound was still EA, and then when people judged them for it they made the current version the full release. A couple half finished ideas later, (bounty hunters update) the devs went radio silent. No more update, no news, they just dropped the game.

Now this happened in 2019, meaning it was likely because of "the controversy." In 2019 the dev team, including several high profile game makers i will not name but all this is on the Chucklefish Wikipedia page, were accused of exploiting minors working as volunteers for free labour on Starbound. The whole thing tarred Chucklefish so bad a lot of other devs and companies working with them cut ties, and while nothing ended up being illegal, it was all very immoral.

so yeah, Starbound. This game is fun to play, and i certainly got my moneys worth, but know what you are getting into, a abandoned EA game billed as finished. The massive number of positive reviews are misleading as well, a steam summer sale event caused this game to blow up in 2019 around the time of its abandonment. TLDR, you could farm steam event points super easy. If you pick this one up, expect to have to rummage through the workshop for good up to date mods if you want to play through more then once.

Man, this game was my childhood, its why I became an engineer when I went through Uni, and it still holds up. Hours of fun and exploration await you, and once you have seen it all, install a couple hundred mods and do it all over again! I really hope that we get a sequel, but since that will never happen I guess I just gotta keep playing this one!

Man... I am going to recommend this, but my thoughts tend towards a neutral opinion.

A dinosaur riding survival game with base building? Sign me up! Understand I picked this one up very early on in its life, before the first expansion, and now i regret giving the devs my money, but more on that later. Right now for the price, (20$CAD for me) And with practically all the DLC for free, this game is worth it all, get some friends together and play a co-op dinosaur adventure together, with your own peer to peer server you can remove the worst element of the game, the insane mindless grind, by just multiplying everything by 10. Everyone I know plays this game like that. If you have seen Neebs gaming's old series on this that is what they did as well.

But the big problems... So the devs killed all official servers for this game to force people onto their shoddy "remaster" Ark survival Ascended. That game runs like a toad and is even more grindy then this one. And horrible consumer practice aside, this game, 340 GB IN SIZE! The devs have never once attempted to optimise this disaster of a code base, there is so much mess here that i think it gets up to 500 GB with all the DLC installed. You will need an entire DISK for this game.

So if you like co-op survival, dinosaurs, and have 3-6 friends willing to come along with you on the adventure of sacrificing an entire SSD to one game, then yeah, pick this one up, if you like it, it will give you a good amount of entertainment. But if you are on your own, stay clear, of both this game and the Devs trying to exploit you.

Many people jump on at launch and are no longer here, some people might take this as a sign the game failed, but that could not be further from the truth. The devs have said their internal estimate for peak launch numbers were 10000 people, and they had nearly 700000 at launch. and even now they have 20000 people just on steam alone. I call that a success!

AS for the game itself, it is a pile of fun, and an amazing game to play with friends online. A hilarious sense of satiric humor is the icing on the cake for this third person squad shooter. Balance has been a constant swing since launch, but as long as you are not one of the crazy sweats trying to play a team based game solo, it really doesn't matter. If you have played arrowheads other games, this one is just more of the same, in the best way possible!

Run for your life, because Warframe is here to eat every free moment you have!

For real, if my play time is anything to go by, this game is an absolute masterpiece, but that does not cover it. This game is a love project. It is being built and created by Devs with near total creative freedom and a total freedom from the studio murdering publishers haunting the industry as they try to extract yet another car loan from your wallet for video games.

This game has issues, some things are very grindy, some bugs are present in places, and balance is something everyone has an opinion on. But over all, this game is just so much fun, because you can tell the Devs have poured their heart into every insane bit of content, weather that be fighting elder gods living in the walls, to using time travel to stop Y2K, to fighting in a bloodsport arena with water guns because there is a gas leak and the organiser is high as heck. This game is a passion project, and if you love action-rpgs, hack and slash game play with guns, and a large MMO experience. Give it a try, it's free after all, you might find yourself drawn along for the ride as well!

The Death of a game is a sad thing, especially when it is at the hands of a publisher looking to maximise profit at the cost of a beloved franchise. For anyone who finds this game years later. This is not in early access, the developers were laid off en mass by Take Two entertainment, who to this day refuses to admit they even have done so. There is no development happening, the game is buggy, unfun, and dead.

If you want a good game, get the original, if you want this game to be finished, I hope you have 80 million dollars because Take Two is unwilling to sell it for less after the last attempt to sell the IP fell through. There was so much promise here, but this game will go down in history as a example of what happens when managers 3 companies away from the development of a game are making technical decisions based on profit margins.

I would like to recommend this game, I really would, and to people who enjoy a hardcore pvp environment, I absolutely can! It is one of the best pirate games out there, the sailing is tight and enjoyable, and the social aspect is fun sometimes. Combat is tight and easily mastered but always has room for improvement.

BUT...

If you want to play a solo or co-op game, this is not it, and that's what I was looking for when I joined. I do not enjoy the pvp and would rather just pve with my friends in an open sandbox, but you are forced into pvp by the game design.

But this is not why I decided to write a review, because a "not for me" doesn't deserve a thumbs down. No it is the Devs who earned this. There has always been a desire among the community for solo/private servers, the ability to just hang out without the threat of hardcore pvp griefers around every rock. If the devs were in any way acknowledging this I would not care, but instead they have taken it as an insult, they have berated people for expressing this desire, stating that the game is a pvp game first and anyone who wants otherwise is a loser who cannot keep up, they have fostered a toxic culture among their pvp community that has kill most social systems since everyone mutes everyone and then shoots first and loots later.

So if you like constant pvp, an absolute recommend, you will be among like company, otherwise this is just suffering and griefers as far as the eye can see. And it is all the devs fault.

One of the best games i have played in a long time, XCOM meets LANCER, an absolute must play for those who enjoy tactical strategy games and Mechs!

This is an absolutely stunning game, the atmosphere is the best i have ever seen in a Lovecraft setting, and the gameplay just flows beautifully, at the time i am writing this it is on sale for under 4$US, BUY IT, BUY IT NOW!

A stellar RTS, good on your on but even better with friends, while the hard realist style of space combat is not for everybody, for the space nerds and military geeks this one is a must have.