Recent reviews by jkk

My interest in this game was more on the developer side, getting into building avatars and worlds, and now this happens.
Even if I never used any mods, I'm very much against these "anti-cheats", which tend to be quite intrusive, so much so that I don't even want to launch the game any more... which makes testing avatars a bit more difficult.

What were they even thinking?

Well, on the positive side they are now giving more room for alternatives to vrchat. It's not the only vr platform where people can upload their content.

After playing 24 hours, it feels like I've got nowhere. And I'm hooked. So much to do.
Perfect.

And even better, this runs on 10 years old laptop, no problem!

Terror from the deep is still the best of the x-com games. Even when compared to new ones.

Ok, this game totally took me by surprise. Don't let the rough graphics fool you, this is a full-fledged game with a lot of content. Good content, too.
And the music, oh boy the music, I just love it. It's still playin in my head as I type this.

This is actually pretty good game, if it was better, it would be Master of Orion 2 with new graphics.
Still, better than Stellaris. (I made a mistake and got that at release, had to play it over 80 hours to figure out it's crap. Technically and gameplaywise.)

Pros:
-Turn based main game.
-Can micromanage almost everything (except the battles).
-Original Master of Orion 1 races.
-Many remixes of Master of Orion 1 soundtrack.
-Ok voice acting.


cons:
-Not a turn based battle system. Can't play "chess" with spaceships. Can't really use any strategy in battles at all.
-The voice acting especially in psilon reserch screen gets on my nerves.
-Why those "space lanes"?
-Ship blueprints. No reason to edit them, they automatically are as good as possible


Some minor annoyances could be fixed just by taking example from Master of Orion 2... Like, when you go to assign a new project after a previous one finished, it would be great if you could see which project just finished.. on that screen where you choose the next one.

Elite. What can I say? It's the best thing you can play while grabbing your joystick.

This is a game that won't hold your hand or tell you what to do, it's all about what you want to do. Of course, not everything you can imagine is possible in game... at least not yet... Like standing up and walking around... But that's silly, who in their right minds would even want to do that anyway? (Nevertheless, that feature is coming in the future.)

You can do all sorts of stuff, like transport cargo and passengers or shoot pirates for money, or be a pirate yourself. Or you can go exploring the galaxy. Exploration is perfect if you want to to watch TV or something at the same time. I personally recommend Star Trek TNG, I've watched seasons 1-6 (of 7) now while exploring. :)

(btw you can add +1400 hours to the played time, since I played a bit before the steam version came out)

I may have 0 hours played on Steam, but I've been playing Horizons since the beta, non-steam version, and have total of almost 2000 hours played in the base game+Horizons.

About Horizons:
The planets look awesome. they feel awesome. I could just fly around near the surface for hours (I recommend the Cobra), just looking at the craters or mountains. And when I see a really nice one, I totally want to drive down that crater wall or up the mountainside with the SRV... It's no longer just a space game, but also an offroad sandbox racing with thrusters. And it looks awesome, I often just go searching for great screenshot locations.


About the game in general:
I just love this game. I've never had this kind of an experiences from any other game before, and I've played a lot since I first time took a joystick in my hands some 30~ years ago.
The thrill I get from seeing another player in same system, (is he moving to interdict me?) makes my heart rate shoot up like I was on my exercise bike. No other game has ever managed to do that.
And how about the feeling of loneliness when you go exploring where no one has gone before, trying to resist the urge to turn and run back to civilization with full speed... Been there.

Elite won't tell you what to do next. Some people see that as lack of content. I disagree.
Neither it won't hold your hand when you undock first time with your Sidewinder. You have nothing but your dignity to lose.
Elite lets you choose how you play. If you want to play without ever seeing another player, sure, you can do that, just play solo then. Or you could play in open, nobody forces you to stay around the starting system or in the community goal systems where I heard some griefers might be shooting easy targets.

About some stuff I'd like to see fixed though:
-There should be way more harsher consequences for killing without a good reason. Laws and working law enforcement you know.
-There should be some sort of declare piracy -option, which would force a set of rules for the pirate and for the target. Do it right, both walk out, try to run from the pirate, you're on your own. Kill your piracy victim without reason, you're dead man. Or worse.
-The signal sources and other stuff are now being spawned for a player, very randomly, everywhere, all the time... and even where there should be none. They should be spawned for the system when needed (same goes for missions), and there should be a way to locate them from distance.
-The planets are filled with human trash, even far outside of the civilized space... Literally, human trash, occupied escape pods. EVERYWHERE. Are they even fresh? Some are even neatly arranged on the surface. I would expect to see very rarely human trash outside of the bubble, and once in a blue moon a fresh wreckage...
-And a lot of other stuff I can't remember.



Still, I'm very very happy that this game even happened, it almost didn't.

Fly safe, commanders, see you in space.

Ok, so it seems that this game attempts to be first person shooter with some tactical elements, and I don't think it can do either very well.

Also, the predefined hiding places behind objects and other stuff just makes me rage, it gives off a feeling that the game designers were lazy as ♥♥♥♥. If it's an FPS game, why I can't move freely?
And I hate the UI that's clearly been made for ... a gamepad! Ffs, are the predefined hiding places in there cause it's easier to get in them with a gamepad?

And what's with the keybindings, I can't bind "use" to enter, like I do with every other fps game. I'm left-handed, I have my mouse in my left hand and control the movement from arrowkeys and bunch of other keys around them.

I would really really like to play this type of games, but crap like this just kills it totally. I don't want to play this. :(

Great story, awesome graphics and audio, excellent gameplay mechanics...


...But... the game felt like I was watching an interactive movie, it is too strictly controlled at places, like what you can and cannot do... because of the storyline. I like more open type games to be honest. Wolfenstein combined with Fallout and Skyrim.... oh wow, would totally play.

But anyway it is a nice game.

---
Runs smoothly on my AMD fx-8150 + 16gb ddr3 + Radeon HD 7870, with max settings, at 2560x1440! Seems to be multithreaded too so it can use all my 8 cpu cores quite well. ... And some say that AMD is crap? It's good enough to play latest games at maximun settings... Though it runs hot, and cooler makes one hell of a noise.

Okay.........
What the hell, ANNOYING long intro's and cutscenes and I CANNOT skip them, wtf?
I just wanted to play, and I am forced to watch that crap for 5 to 10 minutes or so
Just for THAT reason I do not want to play this game.

When I finally got to the driving part, first track was over in 4 minutes.
So now I have watched more intros and cutscenes than actually played the game. Seriously wtf?