Recent reviews by bicZoid

I love this game.

But: I have yet to play through the story, preferring instead to turn off tutorial and story because I personally find the story elements intrusive, especially when you find *a military dude* and he radios constantly asking for help. Now, that wouldn't be so bad but every time you get a story element (message), the game defaults back to the slow speed, which is damn slow, and then afterwards you have to keep switching the speed back to where you want it. Is there a tweak for this in settings? I'll admit I don't know; with story and tutorial off it doesn't matter, and although I'm sure the story would be interesting, right now I just want to build and progress on my own.

The real-world locations are a kick; I enjoy setting up in places I've actually lived. The "translation" of map into location isn't quite perfect, but it does what it needs to. You get street names and some real-world building names, but some just have a generic title. And don't expect tit-for-tat exact building reproductions (but I realize the insanity that would be required for that, so it's really a non-issue).

The graphics are... functional? The game doesn't look bad (again, the elements are there to do what it aims to do), but oh man, it would be so much cooler with an overall graphics and color improvement.

It runs well and is pretty intuitive once you get the hang of it. If I could offer a suggestion it would be to have the mouse remain active when you manually choose a specific resource to gather (as opposed to just selecting a building which gives you multiple resources during deconstruction) so you could then move to another spot and select more of that item without having to go through the gather menu again. That is, if you select "Gather wood" and click on a tree or you draw a box around multiple trees, once the selection is made the cursor defaults back to, well, default, and if you move to another area, you have to go through the gather menu and select what you want to gather again. I just think that having the selection remain active until, say, you hit RMB or something would make the process a little less tedious.

I'm just being nit-picky, though; I have no major disappointments and, as said, am loving this as is. Any improvements would just be icing on the cake.

Loving this so far; it seems to already have that perfect dopamine loop - for me, anyway. I can play this while half my attention is elsewhere. Order and place stock, set prices (pay attention to fluctuations), expand the business, run the register yourself and/or hire help.

It looks good. Could look better, of course, but it's already decently developed. The day/night cycle is nice, and being able to actually walk around the nearby town is a nice little addition (although the stores and buildings tend to repeat and after you've done it once or twice, no real reason to do it again).

I also like that time does not start moving in the morning until you open the store; that gives you time to order stuff, customize, etc. before the clock starts ticking and customers start arriving (same goes for closing in the evening; you can do everything except order products after 9pm and then when you hit "start next day" it goes to (duh) the next morning).

Something I would like to see: ability to shut doors (store, storage) because who in their right mind would leave their doors open all night? And heck, while we're at it, how about having to lock them too or you just may return to find you've been hit by looters? Just an idea.

Also, I haven't unlocked the "Locked" door in the store, but from its placement I'm assuming it leads to the storage area maybe? That would make a lot more sense than having to go outside and next door; may as well just pile your stuff up in the store within easy reach.

Definitely looking forward to seeing how this game develops, and especially customization.

I am loving this game. Looks good, mechanics are good, story is good, love the gameplay. Oftentimes these types of games end up unnecessarily complicated, but this one gets it right. Skills, upgrades, battles, all the "stuff of life" is to the point (of a sword, haha). I bought this quite a while ago but only yesterday said "Hey, I really need to dive into that again, with both feet." I'm glad I did.

As of right now, not recommended. That may change if the game gets an overhaul, but for now, just... blah.

By now I'm sure you've seen videos and read reviews that discuss the good and bad in depth, but I'll keep this simple because I don't feel going into it all :-P

I played about 30 hours, lost interest for a few weeks, then decided to start over and managed to get up to around 73 hours by last October. I quit again at that point and haven't been back since.

To me, the games they've put out since Oblivion come off as "Oblivion but with a different skin/setting." And that's a drag. They don't really introduce anything new, and Starfield just seems like the same old stuff rehashed and repackaged, and dumbed down even more.

Choice is an illusion. This isn't a "choose what you want to do" game; at best it's "Oh, you don't want to do this right now? Ok, come back when you do." And the game WILL force you to do it at some point. You might not WANT to, but you will HAVE to. There is no real ability to deny anything they throw at you. You can't decide who and what you like better and pursue that, or go your own way. Everything is a soft shoe horn into what they want you to do.

And the dialogue, my God. It's torturous. I can't believe this is their idea of "world building." For even the simplest task you have to listen to endless drivel when all it boils down to is "Go here, do this, there's a good boy." And every character sounds like they're extremely bored (and truth be told, if I lived in this universe, I would be too).

Graphically it's ok, and yeah, a step up from the past, but mechanics, inventory, all that "game" stuff? All you have to do is watch videos of other games as a comparison and man do the flaws really stick out here. I don't know why they're so in love with their outdated engine that doesn't allow them to actually innovate. I just started SpaceBourne, and I'm only in the tutorials and I'm like "Holy crap this is so much better already." That says a lot about a triple-A studio that seems content to rest on its laurels and coast on (and tarnish) what it's already accomplished.

So, yeah, this was, in essence, a major disappointment. I'm not even going to address the "space travel," because that speaks for itself. I still have no interest in pursuing this game, and it's too late for a refund but I certainly would refund it if I could.

41 hrs and I haven't done much yet in this game. That's a good thing (to me). Granted, I've restarted many times (I like to do that with games until I feel completely comfortable with them and understand how everything works).

I think it looks great, runs great, haven't had any issues.

Although this is probably one of my favorite game genres, I must admit I'm not a HUGE fan of all the "personality" stuff in this and similar games. If I'm out to build a major civilization, the last thing I want to be concerned with is somebody whining because the trees aren't pretty enough or something. Feelings? Who cares? We're building Empire here! Mush!

But seriously, this game does give you good options for addressing that stuff (adjusting hours spent sleeping, leisure activities, work, or a more generalized "just do stuff" directive (good if, like me, you just click a bunch of stuff on the map that you want collected, for example), or just eliminate certain activities altogether. And you can at least "vanilla down" your MC by not giving any weird traits, or only giving ones with benefits. It doesn't seem to be a "prevent-all" though, but at least you're not going to start out with a weirdo right out of the gate.

I play on Lone Wolf on the Peaceful, Normal setting (for now) on a large random map.

A couple FYI's:

If you want to mine a large area, don't create it all at once. Start off small, and once you've got enough space to build stairs (if needed) then build them. I recently had to load a previous save because all three of my peeps were mining a large area and before I knew it all three were down on the next level with no way to get out (no sloping land, no way to go get resources to build stairs and...

HOLD EVERYTHING! EUREKA! This is another thing I love about this game. As I was writing the above, it finally clicked in my head: hang on, I was only thinking about wooden stairs! If you pay attention to what you're mining (ahem), you may just very well mine the very materials you need to build other types of stairs.... duh.

Anyway, here's another: if you want to kill someone in Peaceful mode, select your "MC," click "attack," then select the target with a right-click. AND BE SURE TO turn off the "tend/treat wounds" action on everyone else, or once the target is unconscious somebody will attempt to treat the wounds - and that's just opening up a never-ending circle of torture, lol. Also, once the target is unconscious, keep attacking to finish him or her off (otherwise once the target falls unconscious everyone else will leave off and go do other stuff).

Research can be slow unless you pretty much have a peep who will tend to default to that action when not doing other things. I'm sure I'm making things harder than they need to be by going Lone Wolf (and so far only admitting two others), but hey, that's the way I like it.

Let's see, anything else? Food is important. Gardening is important, even if you only have a handful of peeps, because the cyclical nature of the resources may lead to some empty stomachs. Unless you want to have someone spend pretty much all their time chasing down wildlife.

Anyway, guess I'll shut up now. This is hands-down the best early-access game I've ever played.

Loving this game: I can see that it will be quite a time sink, and that appeals to me. I like games that let you try and try and try again. I don't mind restarting until I feel like I've got the best approach.


-looks great, imo, and I love zooming in and seeing detail - but that's not to say there's not a few wonky things:

-if you turn the Sun "on" you can have day/night cycling but as lights don't actually cast any light nearby everything is rather dark and that basically renders the mechanic useless.

-I haven't discovered a way to rotate decorations, which is odd. A bench, for example, faces one way, and good luck finding a spot to put it where and how you want.

-if you're down on street level, vehicles pop in and out all the time, though it's not really as noticeable when you're zoomed out unless you're specifically looking for it. There is a good sense of traffic and movement overall, and being able to hop into a truck and drive around is great for getting different views of your city.

-the power and water approaches are pretty simple, which is nice; who wants to spend hours placing pipes or lines? (not me). Pick the pipe extension, draw it where you want it and it's done.

-I'm glad managing citizen expectations is more of a "group" effort; it's easy to see what they're happy or unhappy with and to rectify things (I prefer this approach over those games that make every single citizen a pain in the butt to deal with).

Yeah, I've got a long way to go, but to sum up this rather simple review, I think it's great and I look forward to many more hours and watching my creations grow.

I bought the cheap table saw and then spent a lot of time cutting trees, sawing them into lumber, and selling it for the sole purpose of buying the better table saw so I could do it all faster.

My chickens from the tutorial ended up dying, even though they had food and water. Admittedly, I DID forget to open the door to the small chicken coop after I built it so they were never able to go inside. Maybe the elements killed them. Or a predator. It is a mystery.

I built the small two-story house. The only issue with that is whenever I want to go downstairs I have to crouch because apparently our character is TOO TALL for the stairwell opening (not going up, just down). Weird, that.

EDIT: This only seems to happen if I'm "too far left" in the stairwell going down (not that there's a lot of room to
maneuver anyway). As long as I make sure I'm to the right as much as possible I don't get stuck.


The graphics are serviceable and have gotten better since the game first ventured out.

At this point I would like to see a focus on improving the base game. The gas station, for example. You can get gas there, and that's it. The inside of the gas station is empty and you can't go in. Seems like a wasted opportunity. Should be able to go in and buy stuff there too. Would be nice to see all the buildings expanded upon and with more options related to them, like being able to talk to the counter guy at the burger place.

I've also noticed that if you get too far from "home base" you can't cut down any trees, so I'm wondering what happens when I run out of available trees to cut. Guess I'll find out when I reach that point.

EDIT: Hope to see replanting/regrowth of trees at some point, but I realize that there are lots of other
ways to make money - I just haven't pursued any yet. :-)

It would be nice if vehicles in the showroom would rotate.

Sure, the game needs some work and TLC, but it's pretty addictive so far. I'm digging it.

So far this is great! I'm still working my way through the tutorials (three double-sided pages of notes on a legal pad so far!).

The look is functional; not necessarily extremely detailed but detailed enough (in other words, it looks fine, but of course it could look much better).

On first glance the game might appear to be too complex, but once you get the basic idea of what's needed to accomplish this or that, it's quite intuitive.

I also appreciate the speed. It's quick to load and run, no issues there. I love these types of games but often they seem to get bogged down somehow (to explain what I mean, I still think Banished has one of the best engines for this type of game and rarely do I feel like I've found one that is comparable in that sense. This is, in my opinion).

I like that you can choose to either buy many things outright or spend time and resources on constructing them.

I like the little bits of humor here and there (don't forget to paint your Secret Police vehicles black!).

I know I've still got a lot to discover here but it's firing on all cylinders for me.

So I don't have a lot of time in this game yet, but I already love it. I chose to play through the "conquest" setup, which is basically being confronted by certain situations and making choices before actually getting into the game, and I found myself thinking "Damn, I would love to read some books based on this lore."

I chose to play on Normal, and I died during my first fight. I thought about it, reloaded, and was successful the next time by thinking about how I had built my character and adjusting my approach. I don't mind replaying sections of games at all, and this one makes it easy (that is, if you die, you get to reload at a point that's not too far removed from when you died (that's been my experience so far, anyway)).

The writing is great and definitely consistent and thought out. I love how you may choose one philosophy/approach and then be confronted with situations that really make you think about how you respond to things (and whether or not you need to adjust your thinking) and the possible ramifications of following your instincts and maybe going against what you "should" be doing. I like to play games as "me" to the extent that a developer makes that permissible, regardless of initial setup, and this game has accommodated that nicely thus far.

Well this was quite a surprise, and a pleasant one at that.

I had this on disc all those years ago when it came out, and LOVED it. Eventually my disc got so beat up I couldn't even successfully install the game anymore. I told myself if it ever managed to hit the digital market it would be an insta-buy - and thus, it was.

I'm not sure if my memory is faulty or if the map textures aren't quite at the level they used to be; I remember everything in this game being crisp and clear - but now some of it seems to have that "washed-out/smoothed-over" look. I also don't remember having to "alt" to access the mouse during the game, but perhaps my memory is just faulty in that respect. It just seems a little awkward to me now, but it's a small annoyance that I'm sure I'll get used to.

Since I've only just purchased this version today and wanted to jump into it to check it out, I don't yet have the answers to some of my questions, such as: is Steven Patrick still around?

Anyway, I liked this game because for one thing it gave me the creeps. Wandering around you really get the sense that things have gone horribly wrong, and you never know when bad news is going to come out of nowhere. Run-and-gun, sure, but remember to keep an eye on your six. And your nine. And your three.

Weapons, customizations, options - all plentiful. This is basically a "kill and grind your way through missions" kind of game, but it doesn't get old (for me, anyway). All the nods to real-life people and fictional characters was an interesting touch the first time around; I'm anxious to see if they've kept that.

It's too bad that some people are having issues with fps, but it seems to be hit-and-miss. I've played for an hour and had no issues whatsoever; it plays exactly as I remember it. I recommend it because it's a blast.