Recent reviews by Voidnull

Is it a game yet, I ask myself after another year of inactivity. I download the updates, and start fresh. And every time the answer is, "No, not quite."
It's called Space Engineers, but they want you to start on a planet. You spend 5-10 hours mining stone to get a the beginnings of a base, that has no storage, because storage, rovers, and ships are locked behind cobalt, a rare mineral that is too deep for your ore detectors to see.
You spend 20-40 hours finding minerals, and upgrading your base to be capable of building a space ship. You spend another 10-15 hours designing and building the ship to get to space. You then abandon all that hard work, and your rewarded with having to find all the mineral again, this time, in space.
You can participate in fixed and empty economy, trading, or doing the most boring missions to earn money. You can fight computer generated factions of space pirates that have unlimited resources, including ammo, that will hunt you down, and spend as much time as is required to destroy every computerized component of your ship or base while firing continuously, while you had to earn, mine, refine and craft every bullet that you use. Leaving you at square one.
I feel like a beaten lover. I keep finding myself attracted to these games, that are 10-15% away from great. As if, somehow, if I just loved them more, or kept showing my support, that they would change, and stop mistreating me.
This game has the capability of being wonderful, but as is, it's vast, empty, and uncaring of your time. It's better with friends. It's better when PVP is well organized. It's better with mods. But as a base game, a survival game where progress is centered around building larger and more complex vehicles, and smaller and more specialized vehicles, it falls flat, even 800 hours, and ten years later.
Space Engineers, we love you. Be the game we know you can be. Stop coming home drunk and expecting us to clean up your mess.

They keep updating. There are even more mission and craziness to be had.
Reasons to Love this game:
Humor, the working class dwarves frequently crack jokes and make chit chat as they are in the most dangerous hell hole in the galaxy. They get drunk, toast the fallen, smack talk the bugs, and gripe and complain in a way that adds so much life in the world.
Onboarding, it's so important to help new players understand how to play a game. This game handles it quite well. If you're a dwarf on their first day with DRG, your manager gives you a basic rundown, and the random voice lines and button prompts make you seem like a pro from the get go. The dwarves tell you what to do next with out sounding like a tutorial.
Ease of communication, You don't need voice chat in this game. If you are like me, and don't like actually talking to strangers, you can point to things using the laser pointer, and your dwarf says one of dozens of lines relating to what you're pointing at. It gets the message across without having to actually having to talk to another human being.
Customization, there are 4 classes each with access to their own three heavy guns, three side arms, a traversal tool, a unique gadget, four different grenades types, and module options for each. More ammo, more damage, armor penetration, range, reload speed, blast radius, pick and choose how you want your layout to work and really make the class your own.
Ridiculous Cosmetics, The dwarves have hats and helmets, hairstyles, and most importantly, fully physics enabled beards to unlock. Armors and paints, weapon skins and pickaxe parts, everything you want to dress your dwarf like a the crazy gun-toting prospector he is.

Original Review: Four different classes with weapons and tools to get the job done. Dozens of nasty alien bugs types to kill. Fun missions working for the man. Significant attention to detail in the world. Lots of customization options.
A great Co-op Game for friends or strangers. Space Dwarves mining on the richest and most dangerous planed their company has rights to. Grab a pint, sharpen your pick, load your guns and get to the drop pod. Leave no dwarf behind.
For Karl!

Warframe is quite the game. It's a third person parkour space ninja co-op shooter grinding game.
The game loop: Do a mission which involves jumping, shooting, slashing, and running like a space ninja, to gain crafting mats, to upgrade your geer, to do tougher missions, to gain more geer. Very grindy, but rewarding. Lots of play styles. Lots of things to do.
Plot: Yes, there is a plot, and they are still adding to it. It’s revealed slowly over time, as you progress in the main quest chain.
The Good: Free to play. Can have access to everything except a few cosmetics through grinding. Procedurally Generated maps using a variety of tilesets that each have their own feel. Lots of styles of powers, guns, side arms, and melee options to customize the feel. Nice open world zones, with a few interesting NPC’s. The game has crafting, mining, fishing, skateboarding, lots of minigames. Lots to grind.
The Bad: There is so much to do and unlock, that a new player may feel lost. The community prizes speed over all else for mission competition. So if you play with a random group and don’t know your way around, you can get left behind and miss some plot. There are lots of things that simply have no tutorial. So you’ll have to check online, or depend on the chat to answer any questions you may have. There are so many options of things to craft, many have been replaced by simply better options, with other options abandoned over time. So maybe too much grind.