Recent reviews by Niet de AIVD

Started the game at 11am.

You blink once, it's 1pm.
Blink again, suddenly it's 6pm.
Blink yet again, it's 4am.

I like punching pigs

Pretty good for something released by EA

It's as addictive as some of the molecules it has you make.

Zachtronics does it again. Who knew that the same formula of puzzling is so successful?

Wow, where should I start...

First of all, grinding for tech. When you start the campaign, the AI already has more tech than you. You have to get research points and unlock better weapons and armor. Of course, you can do as everyone does and download the "building smasher" map, which gives you about 2000 tech points per game.

Second of all, the AI appears to have perfect map awareness and is omnipotent. The AI will just use its superweapon where your army is, even though it could not realistically know. You get a 1 second warning to move your army before it's too late. The AI, however, will instantly move its troops out of the way when you use your superweapon.

Your own unit AI is crap. Units will chase enemy troops into dangerous territory, but when a group is attacked, the group won't move to get in range properly. An entire army can get wiped by a single light rocket vehicle this way, if you're not paying attention(You won't get proper map notifications).

Building multiple factories does not give you multiple production streams. Instead, it gives you a 2x speed modifier on a factory. Who thought this was a good idea?

Also, the game is boring. The units are generic, without personality, part of the customizability, of course. The early game is always the same(setting up economy and factories) and so is the endgame(pumping out units).

The only good thing about this game are the graphics: They look amazing. But under that shiny exterior lies a game rife with balancing issues and cheating AIs. It's obvious most of their budget is spent on polishing rather than building a solid foundation.

You can polish a turd, but it'll still be a turd.

Do you like programming?
Do you like old-fashioned manuals that are required to play the game properly?
Do you like low-level programming?
Do you like your low-level programming limited by a bunch of parallel operating RISC processors with limited space for code?

If you answered yes to all these questions, this game is for you. Enjoy solving race conditions, deadlocks and other fun debugging tasks without having to study computer science!

I had fun for about 1.5 hours, then I just got frustrated. The difficulty curve is not a curve, but a cliff.

Everything happens at the same time and needs your undivided attention: Building broken? Fix it soon, or it'll break(Which takes up valueable space for the rest of the game). Comm Tower broken? If your comm link breaks, a part of your planet won't be defended! Everything wants your attention, all at the same time.

You get no breathing room, which adds to the challenge, but also punished mistakes with even a hint of mercy. This shouldn't always be a problem, but I get the feeling I lose more time fighting against the game. I also think a "casual" game shouldn't be this stressful.

Building a satellite requires you to spend a lot of time in the (awful) UI, just to select the right satellite and modules. Selected the wrong one? There's no way to cancel production. There's not even a way to remove an item from your inventory, other than placing it. There are no hotkeys, and why can't we press enter to add something to the queue?

By the time you ordered your first sat+modules, they are constructed, you flew up, put the sat down, docked, put all the modules in(Press the number, then press e, press the number... etc etc) and got down, you're already (at least) a minute into the game. 2 minutes into, the first wave starts. If you spend those 2 minutes putting down sats, bad luck: Half of your planet doesn't even have comms! If you spent that time building comms, back luck: You don't have any radar! It also raises the question: Why don't we have simple ground-based radar?

The amount of micromanagement is too high. Every sat needs modules, which you have to construct independently. You don't have time to think about what modules to put in your sat because OH MY GOD A MISSLE JUST SET THE HEADQUARTERS ON FIRE. Even if you shoot missiles out of the sky, you can't rest. If the missile was close enough to a satellite, you're going to have to fix that sattelite. Go up to it, dock with it and hold W for what seems like ages. Which sats are damaged? The only way to check on damaged sats is either going up there, or adding a remote diagnostics module(Which is another module to add!).

If your planet doesn't have full comms coverage and your satellites don't link comms together, your sat is useless until it gets back in range.

If you lose your Construction Yard or Research Center(If you're not done with research), you're screwed. There's no way to get them anew. They will just take up space and throw mocking glances your way, while you're busy defending against the neverending barrage of missiles coming your way, which you will lose, because you can't research/make buildings anymore.

Everything you research/build is free. Time is your only resource, but you never have enough.

On the positive side: The game looks nice and the gameplay does have a lot of potential. For the price, it's a good hour of fun. But it's nothing more than that. It's repetitive and stressful. I'd just skip this game and go for others, unless you really want to try it.

Crashes while saving, annoying movement.

Don't spend your money on this piece of crap.

The point of this game is to nuke everyone. The more nukes you fire, the more you win.

More nukes = More betters.