Recent reviews by Bob Vanus

Pretty basic number go up game, but 10/10 for the rickroll,.

*update at end*
As my friend put it, it's Mass Effect x NMS x Skyrim. Tries to do everything, and fails at it.

But well, lets bring up a couple notable things.

Planetary Exploration - Severely hampered by the lack of any faster movement options - IE, vehicles. The Boost Pack is certainly nice, but it's hampered by being linked to a planets gravity. Low grav planets, it's pretty good to help scale hills and cliffs, and can get you some extra speed if you take a running jump off somewhere high. High grav planets, well... At least the boost pack some defensive and environmental stats?

Maps - Um... What the ♥♥♥♥? Bethesda finally makes large cities, but then gets rid of maps making them a pain in the ass to navigate.

Companions - It's the 2300's, robots are commonplace. So why, exactly, is their a grand total of one robotic companion? In fact, lets go back to exploration here. A robotic dog analog is a potential hostile robot... So why not, you know... Have a robotic dog you can ride into battle on? Or at the least, a robotic mule to carry loot so you won't cap your inventory and disable fast travel.

Ships - Ship building good, ship builder that throws ship part to the other side of the screen and can't link to a connection point when I've got my mouse right over the damn thing bad. Not a big issue, given that you can pull up the parts list and get shown any compatible parts by keypress on any mount but still... It's a lot slower way to shift the mounting for, say, a gun than drag and drop would be. Additionally, the inability to start a brand new build from scratch is particularly egregious. Want to build a 'new' ship? Hope you got another ship you're willing to throw away.

Weapons - Oh boy. Weapons. Weapon mods are permanently affixed. Can't pull them and transfer them over to other weapons. I get it, the research system, skills... But, uh, why not at the very least let the mods be transferable with the appropriate research and skills?

Everyones ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ eyes - This is legitimately the first issue I noticed, but what the hell is wrong with everyones eyes? Eyes dead ahead, rarely if ever rotating... Between that and the improved facial animations, most npc's you encounter look like they're just one bad day off from going psychotic.

Would I recommend buying this now? Not really. I only got the game as a bonus with a new video card. I'd wait until next year, when Bethesda releases the modding tools for this game. By then they'll hopefully have fixed some of these things, otherwise wait for a sale and give modders time to refurbish this game like they've had to do for Fallout and Skyrim.

*Update bits*

So, all the hours later - Not 150, I kept the game minimized in the background for about half a that - my opinion on the game is... eh, slightly worse.

Exploration certainly stands out as a bad point now that I've gone through the game more. Everything is straight up copy and pasted. Same loot placement, same enemy types, for all of the dungeons. Same corpse placement for those that have em. Same notes down to the very names mentioned. Really makes the exploration worse that it otherwise would be. Randomization in loot placement and enemy types would be a immense improvement, as would more generic computer and starpad notes.

The biggest improvement would be by expanding the dungeons. Make them big enough to have a few potential paths, with those paths being blocked off at certain points. The larger the dungeon, the more potential paths and potential block points that would force you to take another path.

Another really nice change would be better identification on your scanner for what type of dungeon you're heading towards. If the dungeons are all going to be, effectively, the same then a more descriptive scanner name would be a nice change. Start the detection off with a generic name, but add terminals somewhere in the dungeon that'd let you download sites schematics or something so your scanner could more accurately identify them.

A basic, but enjoyable, space sim game that's completely ruined by that fact that it requires a active internet connection to launch.

Even if you're wanting to play single player.

Do they disclose that they are using a form of always-on DRM? Scummily, no.

As much as I love this game, I can't really support it for one big reason...

The developer intentionally broke Win7 compatability.

I don't hold things like that against early access games, because well... Early access. System requirements can easily jump during development. But this isn't a early access game. It was a full, finalized, release.

The game worked fine for years on Win7. Because, you know, the game was developed for that system. But then, come 2021, they went and broke compatibility with a OS that the game was sold with support for.

The worst thing is that this is a game I recommended for years to people with low spec rigs, because well, it was a fun game that could run on pretty much anything. But nope, lets just arbitrarily jump the games system requirements years after release.

I'd avoid anything by this developer for now on. No telling how long the dev will let you play the game before they decide to arbitrarily break compatibility.

Given how badly Capcom half assed this 'release', this game should have stayed on mobile.

It's a extremely simple mech game, hack and slash or run and shoot. Just depends on how you prefer to play.

Progression is pretty much complete mission, switch out old parts for the stuff that just dropped, do next mission, repeat. Nothing all that fancy, barebones essentially.

What is a otherwise 'meh' game becomes awful when you look at how good, or rather awful, companion AI is. It can't seem to dodge anything - So whatever, heal them and use em as meat-shields right? Well, you can't heal them.

So yeah, boss battles are absurdly hard because the AI just stands right in front of the boss and eats whatever back attack it uses - Either a full barrage of missiles, or a high yield laser blast that will take more than half of its health in one hit.

I can't recommend this game, even on sale because of how god awful the AI is. As cheap as the sale price is, their is no enjoyment to be found here. Just rage and anger at a companion AI that offs itself in seconds.

Oh and random framerate stutters and a inability to reassign controls.

The gameplay is basic at best, and the trees have some really odd graphical glitch (Which, honestly, is probably due to age.), but the writing is funny as ♥♥♥♥. Pokes fun at a lot of other popular series, pokes fun at a lot of common rpg tropes, laughs all around really.

I'd buy this if it pops up for $5 on a sale. It's worth that for the comedy alone, which just so happens to be this games only real selling point.

In these dark times of parts shortages, tariffs, scalpers, and miners, PCBS is the candle that lights the way to better times.

It's a interesting take on a tower defense game, and as much as I want to like it their are two 'big' things that kinda prevent that.

One, achievements are broke... And have been ever since release, apparently.

Two, the really big one here... The devs kinda forgot to add in a 'exit game' button so you have to tab out and close the game from either the taskbar or task manager, whichever you prefer.

Minor complaints are garbage keyboard controls, and the mouse being pretty useless even in instances where you'd think mouse controls would be beneficial... Sadly not a issue limited to this game, Aksys games in general seem to treat KBM controls as a afterthought as best.

Honestly, it's just another poor quality PC port. Pity since the gameplay is rather interesting. I'd wait until a sale - 75% of minimum - or a bundle to get this game, it's not worth full price given how half-assed this entire port is.

So, I'm loving this game for one specific reason. It's a game that I can actually play online, even with my ping being constant ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. (On a good day, 200. On a average day, 400. One guess what I get on a bad day.)

Not exactly the most well-thought out reason to like something, but these days I'll take whatever I can just to break the monotony of SP game after SP game.

Also, ♥♥♥♥ Centurylink.