Recent reviews by Nef

OK, so I'm a sucker for agribusiness games and the FM series has always been enjoyable, if a little rough around the edges.

They actually made a step change with this one; there's a lot more moving parts, and for the most part they work well and it's refreshing.

There's a few janky bits and some early access hiccups but it's in better shape than a lot of EA releases, the development team are actively soliciting feedback and have already pushed a more glaring balance fix.

As it stands it's in the region of 15GBP; I've already got my money's worth and it's a chill little farm game.

Had promise, but it got a few hasty patches just after launch and then the developer gave up and walked away.

Just enough gameplay to take you over the refund limit and that's only due to fighting the bugs, avoid.

Bought this years ago, it got canned and I forgot about it since.

Only coming out of my well to warn mankind because they have the audacity to suddenly try and promote it as some 1.0/left EA ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ when it's not been updated in an age. I wrote my ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thesis in the interim for ♥♥♥♥♥ sake.

Keep looking into this, and keep bouncing off, FWIW I do some work with AIML in my day job.

Like their other game it's hugely misleading, it throws around a bunch of ML terms and a couple of lines about them, and then you're doing basic sorting puzzles that are heavily abstracted from concepts.

Basically they're using buzzwords to try and hawk this as Learning Factory, pretty sleazy tbh.

Got this on a deep discount out of curiosity, review at just under five hours having completed the game, with easily 2 hours be restarts so, maybe 3 hrs of content tops.

Main issue I have, borderline false advertising aside, is it's so simplistic, and most of the 'challenge' is busywork fighting against the jank from being a novice Unreal game rammed with assets and effects and clutter; it chugs.

From the blurb:

"First-person mad scientist simulator"
- OK, yes it's first person, and you mix chemicals, and there's halloween music.

"Complex resource and inventory management"
- There's 14 ingredients, you mix them to make compounds, there's a tiny bit of deduction to work out which one is what at first but it's on rails after that. Inventory is carrying one item at a time, and having a stockroom that gets so full items spawn over eachother, it's a mission to scan the shelves and every empty bottle (you'll get at least half a dozen per mutagen shot) has to be taken to a disposal object or just kill your framerate.

"A strategy element - plan raids on the city and prepare for encounters with the military"
- There's a map, you click where to go next, there's also an investigation timer but this didn't even get halfway during my playthrough. Also ignore the animation on the store page; fights are static, poorly communicated and strategy seems nonexistent, just batch one mutagen and spam that creature, job done.

"Thousands of different mutagens to discover - you name them all"
- But most are crap and the effects are on a poster in the lab, so just make one and roll with it, as you'll need the same one to heal and add body parts anyway, so variety is punished.

"Unique body parts to grow and attach to your test subjects"
- Maybe about half a dozen, again just go for biggest number.

"A unique fear mechanic that lowers the chance of your hideout being discovered"
- A panic bar that can be raised with missions, and purportedly slows investigation, you have to max it for a story mission early on anyway, so it's a non-feature really.

"Singleplayer campaign mode"
- It's singleplayer, yes.

"Endless replayability with new substances every time you play"
- The 14 ingredients get new names and colors, so you have to spend at most 20 minutes working out which is which. Yay.

So yeah, it's a short mindless game, just ignore the sales pitch and realize it's an inch deep.

There's a Blahaj in it, GOTY hands down

So I'll admit I'm fine with a bit of jank in my lite simulators, it's something of a guilty pleasure.

But dear gods this game is terrible; enforced motion blur, horrific optimization, huge variation in asset quality and all the other hallmarks of a team that doesn't know how to use the engine, it's a cynical cash grab and nothing more.

The mechanics are...trash, basically, and there's so many sloppy shortcuts that make the whole experience jarring. On top of that the gameplay loop is all but nonexistent.

One of the worst games I've ever tried, and I've played some utter ♥♥♥♥♥ in my time.

Nice idea, but it's menial (every job has a step-by-step, every part to click on is highlighted etc.), janky visuals, the UX is awful as the camera is constantly zooming in and out, it's random if a part needs you to pick it back up before interacting etc), nonsensical (you sometimes have to remove, media blast and re-blue a simple washer), unrealistic in how firearms are stripped and serviced, and most severe of all, it's massively unsafe practices, with you wandering around with a magazine in the weapon and leaving the bolt closed, among other huge red flags.

Cannot recommend, sorry.

Followed this for years, played the demos and it looked promising, but the actual game is radically different, and very much for the worse.

Even ignoring the contrived and jarring intro section it is massively vague and gated, gone are the bases and rovers and gradually building up to self-sufficiency and all that enjoyable stuff, and it becomes a directionless grind hoping you find the right action to gain XP, or hunt for ruins to find the right tablet to build anything, so you're left with a mission objective telling you to "survive", and just standing around by the one lightpole, well and solar panel you can build at the start wondering how the hell a promising title ended up so bland.

EDIT: One last thing before I forget, the mandatory ROG branding all over the spacesuit and tablet that found its way in between demo and release is massively jarring. Not a dealbreaker of itself but just adds to the litany of bizarre decisions.

This just gets worse every iteration.

Compared to the original it's a mobile game, compared to the last iteration it's soulless, garish and the handling and camera controls are an absolute trainwreck. Avoid.