Recent reviews by Orbital_Armada

I really enjoyed this game and had a great time with it, but I can't quite give it an unreserved recommendation, so I figured I'd put down some of my (longish) thoughts about it.

In many ways this is a perfect mid-budget game from a new studio: a unique take on an established genre coupled with some truly awesome art enabled by UE4. Unfortunately, it also has some real disappointments due to that mid-budget scope as well as some annoying unforced errors.

Before getting to those I'd like to gush a little about what I enjoyed and kept me hooked for a weekend marathon! First off the art is awesome in the literal sense. I'd occasionally just stop and get out of the car to admire the landscape, lighting and structures off in the distance. Driving felt good and had a nice weight to it where it was never too hard to control but you still had to be careful lest you lose control and crash! Putting the map in the passenger seat was also great choice; you have to balance watching for hazards with knowing where you're going. I think the real highlight for me though was just the basic survival crafting loop and returning to the garage after a successful run to fix up the car. Listening to the radio in the background while the rain patters on the garage roof and you're trying to decide which color to paint this new door you just bolted on is SUCH a great vibe. There's nothing really novel in the survival crafting formula here, it's just executed well and seeing your car take shape over the game is super fun. There's also just a lot of good little touches (quirks system!) I won't get into as well.

BUT now for the buts. Most of them are individually pretty minor, but taken together have kind of killed my desire to play past the ~25hr story run time.

First among these is the story itself. Stalker/Roadside Picnic partly revolve around humans interacting with powers and forces that are uncontrollable, unknown and in some ways unknowable, emphasizing our insignificance to the greater universe. In Pacific Drive that theme is replaced with... quippy humor. The characters are winsomely voiced, but the actual plot is paper thin and I never really felt any connection to the characters. This isn't helped by the lore being relatively scattered and a bit of a pain to get to in the menus, while also having that same, super quippy tone. It wasn't so bad once I got over it, but it's not the tone I was hoping for going in. That being said it's easy to tune out and didn't really detract from the game, just didn't enhance it.

I also felt like the smallish scope of this game let it down a little. Instead of an open world we get instanced levels with the same ~10 buildings repeating throughout. Not a huge problem but a little more fleshed out world with seamless driving would have absolutely slapped. This also ties in a bit to the progression. Every upgrade in the early to mid game felt impactful, with enticing choices, but by the end the tech tree felt rather narrow and unnecessary.

The driving experience also got a little repetitive quicker than I would have liked. When driving on roads you're confronted with generated obstacles blocking it just about every 30 seconds (seriously), so you're never really driving ON the road, just weaving around the general area of the road. Let me cruise please!

Finally the anomalies themselves end up being pretty harmless generic video game effects. Although combinations of them can add up to be fun challenges (ie getting dragged into a spike field during an acid storm), by themselves they're rather static and boring.

Even taking all the stumbles and misstep into account, I think this is a super interesting and fun game. I'd put it as a perfect $20 buy if you're willing to take a little risk to see a fresh new vision. The first time the music really kicked as I was rushing to a closing exit gate and desperately driving through an acid storm as my car melted around me, pleading with it to just HOLD ON A LITTLE LONGER will go down as some of my favorite gaming moments! Give it a go :)

A cute game to play with the missus! <3

it took me two weeks to beat my friends but yeah I won so perfect game 👍

Spent an hour tweaking settings to finally get it running acceptably. Unfortunately the graphics are still just... kinda fugly. I was hoping for a more detailed and challenging simulation compared to CS1, but it seems that's not the case. There's also economic, simulation and traffic bugs still present at release. I understand the trials of modern game development, but this was one of the more disappointing releases for me personally, and one of the only games I've refunded.

Check back in a year and on discount.

Please buy this game, especially if it's on sale like it is right now. This game practically oozes style; the art is absolutely gorgeous in both the cut scenes and the game itself and I frequently listen to the soundtrack by itself it's so freaking good. The gameplay systems actually made this one of my favorite games of 2014 to experiment with and replay. Transistor is not without its flaws though. The rather short length of the story that still manages to fall apart and a series of boss fights that really don't live up to the potential of the systems prevent this game from being perfect, leaving it merely REALLY ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ GOOD.