Recent reviews by 🙟Terror Panda🙝

Not even worth 5 dollars, breaks other programs running on your PC.

Despite every attempt I gave at it to fix it, the opting-out of the voice chat, seems to have angered the Battlefield gods, as every time I launched the game, my microphone would stop working in all other programs, such as Discord, this problem would persist even after closing the game, forcing me to having to unplug and plug back in my headset so my friends could hear me again.
I tried 3 solutions the great Google gave me: Disable error logging in Discord Voice settings, make sure Discord had permissions to use my mic, and running Discord as admin.
None of them worked.

Fix your ♥♥♥♥ Dice/EA.

Navigating the new UI takes more time the than the 30 minute matches lmao.
This is genuinely terrible.

All they had to do was change the old UI to fix the issues the community had with it, instead you made it it a Netflix/Hulu minigame puzzle of "How the hell do I change my loadout and then get in a match quickly????"

The gameplay is at least the same/still good but...

I would love to actually play it. :)

Much more enjoyable Dark and Darker style game, and I'd actually give this game money, but the PVP is a turn off of for me.

Feels decent to play with friends and even solo. You can actually enjoy fights with NPC enemies, not get screwed by the extractions, because they actually exist in this game!!!

The PvE is good, but man do those random encounters with other players feel terrible right now, there's just no good feed back on hits and getting hit.

But also the terrible:
There's no Sprint????????? How is this acceptable in an FPS game at all in 2024?
Autosort inventory button please?
Lvl / equipment quality lobby limits/match making would also be cool.

This is going to be the least constructive review I've left for a game in a while.
It's bad.
It feels bad to play.
It's not clear on how to play, which can be fine, but how tf do you extract?
Why does melee feel so awful?
What does any of this nonsense do?
I shouldn't need to join your Discord to find any of the answers to these questions, I should be able to look around in the game and figure it out, WITHOUT HOPING TO GET LUCKY AND SEEING THE RIGHT LOADING SCREEN TIP, like in the case of how to revive dead teammates.

This game takes the already bad idea of "Let's make Elder Scrolls III Morrowind, but a Tarkov styled extraction shooter, without improving the pre-existing gameplay elements!"
And made it worse.
I don't know why but I can return to the TES3 Multiplayer mod and enjoy that, but I can not enjoy this in the slightest.
No fun to be had.
I only encountered another group of players once the entire time I played, through multiple matches.

Idk, I can't enjoy it maybe other people can, but this doesn't feel like a good, polished game. It feels like a 90s Dungeon crawler, shoehorned into a 3d game engine then mutilated into a modern extraction shooter.

Very pretty wall paper engine, that's it though.
Also really good music.

I came here wanting to love this game after enjoying the previous entries, but its missing its soul here, it feels unplaytested, rushed, and hollow.

The AI needs to be fixed for the ships.
I should NOT need to micromanage every last fighter, frigate, etc, ship I have to manually navigate each of them out of the way of a MASSIVE asteroid SLOWLY approaching them. They SHOULD NOT get stuck on each other and set pieces. This is what makes it so hard to come back to playing this game. << Edit after putting more time into the game to try to finish the campaign. Yeah the ship pathfinding is the BIGGEST issue with this game, especially combined with the interface on giving them move commands. Please someone explain to me why when I hit the GUARD button on my mothership while my armada of ships is selected, they don't just START MOVING THERE?? Or worse when you tell them to retreat, and they STOP and DON'T MOVE. :)

You can't have them hide behind an obstacle in a medium sized formation without the lot just smashing into and dragging themselves across the surface (Honestly this was a learning curve issue at the start until I got the handle on the pathfinding and navigated my fleet away from the set pieces.) I don't think the previous games were much better than this, but it's been nearly a decade, and I've seen better pathfinding and AI survival instincts in games from the late 2000s. Surely it's not much to just make the ships more reactive to the things that will kill them?

You can't order your ships to ram the enemy ships which with how pretty this game is, would be cinematic as hell, not needed but it would be really cool.

There needs to be more variety in ships and abilities, and research and tech, and why did you remove all of this from the previous games? IT was all already there all you had to do was copy it over to a new, modern era. I want more options to customize my fleet and upgrade it.

Also please let me just play the game, what happened with interactive scenes and gameplay? I don't need to have my full controls taken away every 5 minutes in the campaign to show me that the giant red square is an important enemy I need to deal with in some cut scene that didn't need to exist. I came here to play a story driven game, not watch a Netflix show in a game, that had a story?
My issue is not the story itself, but rather that the story INTERRUPTS the gameplay instead of being a part of the gameplay, it is very jarring to be yanked out of the controls randomly throughout missions.

I have been sitting on this review since launch, after playing it before, and twice more after launch, but I have to force myself to play it now.

It's too late to fix the story and the campaign and lack of unit variety for me, the damage is done.
But there's still time, maybe, for them to fix it for any one who drops in, in the future.

Maybe one day in the future, this review will have aged like milk. I sure hope that's the case.

Honestly if they just fix the AI pathfinding issues and add some more research trees or units, either or really, I think it would be really good to play for multiplayer.

I think the campaign would have to be redone cause I'm not sure how they'd replace the so heavily ingrained cutscenes without messing something up with the flow, which already suffers from them. Not that the story or campaign is terrible, but being yanked out of control of your navy every 3 seconds for an in-engine cutscene is too jarring.

After beating the game on hard (I switched to hard 3 levels in, so I guess I didn't earn the achievement, that's fine though), the AI pathfinding, and other issues, for those who only play for the campaigns and skirmishes against friends, will kill this game.

Just when I thought I had re-escaped survival games you come out and release this.
How dare you release something this is amazing.

I want to see every last inch of this map and look forward to exploring it.
Is very good.

Tutorial is pretty clear about everything needed to get started, everything else is easy enough to figure out rapidly.
Great perk tree, makes sense easy to use.
Magic system is intuitive, albeit a bit over powered, but intuitive, easy to set up and use.
Crafting and farming systems can be tedious and time consuming to set up, but that's the nature of these kinds of games. HOWEVER, once set up, they're basically automated until they run out of supplies, which in all likely hood, one crafted for the other, so just needs you to move them to other stations and then go back to dungeon crawling.

Not losing all of your important items on death and worrying about having to rush over to your corpse to get all of them before they despawn is a huge bonus.

Negatives:
Melee builds suffer, Some units you will struggle to hit with melee weapons, some towers can not be cleared without a ranged weapon. I know you're meant to play with friends, and I personally play with my wife, but for those who want to try to do this by themselves, and focus only on melee, it's gonna be rough for you. That being said, melee builds will have some of the highest damage outputs in this game if you do manage to hit, which may just make it worth it.

Can't challenge your allies or other players at all to fights at moment.

You are able to accidentally click and throw a bomb in your house and destroy everything....
Not that we would make such a rookie mistake.

Silica needs more time in the oven, even for an early access game. Originally only planned to be in a year of early access, it's been a year and ten days, yet it still has core issues that shouldn't exist anymore. As much as I want to recommend this game, even at the $20 price tag, it feels more like a playtest of a tech demo right now. It's so frustratingly close to being recommendable.
I am happy Martin pushed the release date from May 2024 to sometime in Q4 2024 to address performance, AI, and balancing issues, and continues to provide consistent updates. However, it’s the foundational gameplay mechanics that need to be solidified before layering the additional content such as new units, maps, and customization options from the roadmap.
The game lacks the core fundamentals required for a FPS and RTS game. The unit control from RTS games like Homeworld, StarCraft, and Company of Heroes, and the FPS and third person controls for infantry and ground and air vehicles from PlanetSide 2 would complete this game in such a meaningful way, that if also properly translated to the aliens, would put Silica into a league above all other games. But I fear the game maybe developing in the wrong order of steps, focusing on everything else rather than fixing fundamental issues.

My Reasoning and Feedback for the Developer:
The game was released in early access too soon, lacking the basic core functions of an RTS and being barebones as an FPS. While it's very impressive as a tech demonstration, there's barely any game. I do not want to discredit what the developer has achieved here—his work is hugely impressive. However, before adding, balancing, and changing more units, he might want to consider addressing the following three critical areas first:
1. Unit Controls for RTS: We need more unit controls on the RTS side. Look at other RTS games like Homeworld, StarCraft, and Company of Heroes. Develop a robust unit cover and formation system, drawing inspiration from Homeworld and Company of Heroes. Provide basic commands like patrol, move, attack, hold position, hold fire, etc., as seen in StarCraft and other RTS games. Currently, we only have basic right-click move commands. While the ability to hold shift to make units run or hold ctrl to make them sneak is nice, there needs to be more. We should be able to attack-move to locations so units either stop and attack (for artillery) or attack while moving (for other units). Implementing these fixes, even just the basic ones seen in the RTS games of the 90s, would easily change my review to recommended, especially at the $20 price point.
2. Netcode: The game needs better netcode. How is it that a game with such barebones gameplay requires a better network than Homeworld, StarCraft II, CoD, or even Armored Core 6? Those games run fine in multiplayer at my house, the local university, etc., but Silica always finds a way to introduce ghost damage issues, even when connected to someone in the “same region” as me. Rarely, players lag out so badly they become invisible to everyone on the enemy team because, according to the server, they haven’t left spawn, yet they can still deal damage across the map.
3. AI Improvements: The AI, especially for resource collectors, needs significant improvement. Harvesters should not get confused, lost, stuck, or cluster together instead of harvesting. Aliens should not get stuck on rocks they can climb over. How does this even happen? I saw 36 shrimp stuck on one rock on the Monuments map. Flying units with ranged attacks should never touch the ground, especially since they take damage for doing so. Given the scale of the maps and the world, things should be more automated, especially since this is a selling point for the game, facilitating easy swapping between FPS and RTS modes. Fixing these issues and those mentioned above would make me willing to pay triple the current $20 price tag and buy it for friends.

Further Suggestions:
The following are areas that are also hurting the game, but not to as great a degree as the previous 3:
• Core Units, Structures, and Research: Flesh out the core units, structures, and research components. Add more researchables, make researching feel more rewarding, and include upgrades for harvesters and foragers. Add weapon and armor upgrades for all units, starting with the basic units for both races. Build out those RTS features. Expand on the FPS features, adding grenades (perhaps as a tech research) and melee combat for the humans.
• Infantry Improvements: Human infantry needs a buff, as the basic alien units are very strong while the human infantry are quite weak. Consider giving them sidearms, melee options, and grenades. Add a cover system similar to Company of Heroes, as you already seem to have the basics for one. Instead of training only one single unit at a time, consider treating them like Zerglings in StarCraft, producing multiple units at a time for the cost and build time of one. Add the Transport truck from the arena to the strategy game and include a toggle for auto-deploying the infantry troops at a destination. They are far too slow for the scale of the game to not be able to tag along on any vehicle without player control. This would make heavy units and commandos more useful, as you can craft a whole squad, load them into the truck, and send it in much faster than they could travel alone. Alternatively, allow infantry not controlled by a player to use teleporters. This could be another useful feature for the transport truck: deploy it like a PlanetSide Sunderer, and teleport barracks units to it automatically, similar to how shrimp and harvesters pathfind to the nearest resource location.
• Building Nodes for Aliens: Building nodes for aliens is currently very tedious and time-consuming. Most players don't see the benefit and miss out on having shrimp, resource nodes, and bio caches nearby. To fix this, allow building queuing. The system already indicates buildable locations that are out of range. Let the player place a beacon or similar marker, and as soon as it becomes buildable, construction starts. This would incentivize scouting resources and building nodes and silos.

My Conclusion:
Silica has the potential to become a defining RTS and a captivating FPS. However, it must first perfect the core mechanics that form the heart of each genre. A task I do not envy. That being said, I eagerly await the game’s evolution and the day I can wholeheartedly recommend it to friends. Martin’s solo development journey is impressive, and with the right adjustments, Silica would be my game of 2024. I really want this game to do well, I want that to be apparent and do not want to discourage Martin from continuing to work on it. I also hope this review doesn’t scare off future players, but rather serves as a message to wait until it gets there. Most of the issues here Martin is already working on, I just feel that it may perhaps be in the wrong order.

The gameplay is amazing.
Game is great.

But:
"Gameguard failed to connect to update server"
And it does something to my G Hub Logitech G733 microphone that makes it sound roboty and super choppy, but as soon as the game closes, the mic goes back to working fine.

Another great title ruined by a poor choice in anti-cheat.
Willing to try it again if anyone has any fixes besides the already tried and test "set mic as default communication device" "restart computer" "delete gameguard and verify files" "allow gameguard through firewall"

These two issues make it a hassle to get into the game at all, and impossible to coordinate with friends.

Movement is too slow.
Weapons feel poorly balanced, with the light class really only have two viable weapons from the little time I put into it, the sword and the sniper.
I never got to try the heavy, the game not feeling great, plus locking me into light for an enteral hell because that was the last class I tested in the tutorial I guess, caused me to uninstall and remove it from my Steam library.

That being said there are good positives to the game:
The destructible environments
Music was a pleasant surprise.
The idea of the game, in theory is amazing

It has so much potential, but until at the very least the weapons get rebalanced so light has more viable choices, or at the bare minimum the default weapons for the classes aren't trash (the SMG the light starts with, barely kills an enemy solo in CQB needing more than half the mag in most cases.) Make classes faster, it takes too long to get across the maps and I constantly feel like my character is barely jogging when they're supposed to be sprinting.

I can't stop playing this.
I have to see how far I can get on stolen wings.

I was looking for a good mech fighting game for a very long time, and mechwarrior was starting to be too slow for what I was craving.

This was exactly what I wanted.
And I hope with the announcement of other mech fighting games that it's just the beginning to a good new revival to the genre.