Have you ever played a game that felt like it was designed specifically for you? A game whose gameplay, art direction, music, atmosphere, movement, and mechanics all blend together to form a beautiful harmonious symphony written, orchestrated, and performed specifically for your exact tastes? If you haven't, I truly hope you do someday my friend, but I have. And it's Satisfactory.

I am a very particular person. I like things neat and tidy, organized and straightened, meticulous and detailed. I'm also very efficient. I don't like to let anything go to waste, and if there's a way to trim any fat from my work, I'll spend hours cutting it. I also like taking my time. I go at exactly the pace I want to, do the job to the standards I think are best, even if it means I'm slower than everyone else, Satisfactory embraces all of those elements into a game that prioritizes methodology and efficiency in developing supply chain management systems with mathematical accuracy and precise product lines. In other words, you build factories so you can make bigger factories.

At its core, Satisfactory is an open-world survival sandbox where you're tasked with producing parts for FICIST Inc on an alien world. You harvest a few basic ingredients, transform them into a few basic products, and then transform those few basic products into more complex products, and so on. However, the genius of Satisfactory is less in the products themselves but in the process of producing them. The game's systems are easy to pick up and become surprisingly complex, but this complexity is eased by the complete lack of a fail state or any real urgency whatsoever. There's no monsters that come out at night. There's no timer looming over you. You have an unlimited amount of time to figure out the systems and design them exactly the way you see fit.

This laid-back approach to difficulty gives players the breathing room to develop their own method of design and functionality. One person might lay all his machines out on the grass, and another might build a big orange box, and another might create an intricate ornate building with marble pillars and statues. But Satisfactory doesn't care - as long as the products get made, the details are up to you. In fact players can even completely ignore the factory building mechanics for awhile and just explore the vast world, admiring its scenic waterfalls, towering rock formations, and dense forests. Exploration is encouraged to find rare materials that are crucial for game progression, and you're bound to come across a new macguffin to research and exploit.

But the biggest reason why I've played Satisfactory for nearly 200 hours is because of the sheer volume of content. I was probably about 60-70% done with the game before the 1.0 update, and now I probably have another 100 hours piled on top of that. And I love it. I love knowing that there's always something new to unlock, a new resource to find, a new machine to build. And it's all high quality stuff - there isn't an ounce of fat in this game. This kind of dedication to quality across hundreds of hours is rare, and I can't help but be impressed.

To conclude, Satisfactory shines in delivering engaging factory building mechanics in an alien open world where freedom is at the heart of the gameplay experience. Its rich and complex systems are quick to pick up but difficult to master, but allow players an infinite amount of time to approach these systems however they see fit. Combine this with a beautiful world to explore packed with resources and secrets and you've got a game with hundreds of hours of gameplay where something new is always waiting to be discovered. This game deserves a perfect 10/10 score and a spot on my list of the greatest games I've ever played. The factory must grow!