Recent reviews by NetBlitzer

(Review date: release day) Does it have everything we had in Cities Skylines 1? No, not yet at least. But does it play like a modern-day city builder? That's a resounding yes.

Having played 2,000 hours in the original, I can say that there are many things still missing and I wished for; things like bikes, custom parks, props and placement options, mods like Move It and ploppable asphalt. But the improvements to the core game are immense. Progression feels far more impactful, traffic and the economy flow better and have more depth, we have proper medium densities and mixed use, services are more integrated and have more depth to their management. Considering the game just released, I can easily see this surpassing the original and providing us with many features we dared not dream of.

For all those with performance issues, I'm not sure where they're coming from. Sadly their reviews will stay negative far after any future patches, dragging the game down. I play on a GTX 3070 at 1440p ultrawide and was consistently getting 30-60fps with my city of 40,000+. It seems more like people are jumping on a bandwagon than actually having issues. I know of several others who have weaker systems than myself and can play just fine at 60fps. For those struggling, disable depth of field, make sure to manually set the in-game resolution, and turn off volumetric clouds and effects. Just those alone should make the game easily playable.

I thought this game was going to be similar to Terraria, and though that's correct in some ways, it's so gloriously wrong in many others. The only similarity really is the mining and 2Dness. Virtually everything else is different.

The sounds in this game are what really grab me. Most games sound dull and boring, and repeat music after only half an hour. But Starbound doesn't. Instead, its music and atmosphere are fantastic. I love to just sit outside and listen. And that's very rare for a game nowadays.

The visuals are also striking. I thought they'd be bulky and poor like Terraria's, but they're full of life and character. They're still pixelated, but the ambiance and colors vastly outweigh the slight texture loss, and the fact that there's so much in so little space is a great boon. The animations also shocked me. I was not expecting such smoothness from them. In Terraria, I can see each and every animation frame, and 60fps only feels like 60fps when particles are flying. In Starbound, I feel 60fps always. The only animation I've looked at and wanted better was the ship's engines. That's it.

This game I've found to be fantastic in so many ways that I can't really express it. It's a game that's nice to look at, but until you play it you truly won't understand its greatness. And oh my, it has quite a bit of that!