Recent reviews by Richman

A wunderfull, cute game - or better, a piece of art, with a emotional story, that conveys without words or text. And a good successor to Lone Sails, with more "features" and a longer story!

A wunderfull, cute game - or better, a piece of art, with a emotional story, that conveys without words or text.

When I first got a recommondation for Stormworks from a friend, I tought "No, that game looks to blocky, that's nothing for me."
But now I logged over 1'000h within a short time. And considering it soon became the one game I spent most of my time online in, the Devs have done something right.

Even though it looks disapoint at first, Stormworks offers the player a huge, living world. But it's strenght lies in the vehicle editor, where you can create whatever means of transport you can imagine (or a base too, if it's what you like).

With it's custom controls, it's easy editor and the simple logic, you can design craft control to the depth you desire. You can use simple dials for your vehicle speed, or choose to use advanced logic to display information on intrinsic screens, overlay on live camera feeds.

If you enjoyed LEGO or even are a fan of Mindstorms and like to program some creation of yours, than this is the perfect game for you. In Stormworks, you can not only build something to roughly looks the way you want, it can also WORK the way you want. And not just to pretend doing something like in other sandbox games. The world is full of missions and things to do for you and your creation. From rescueing, trading, exploring, drilling and refining oil, even fighting, you can actually test how your creation performs and improve on your design.

Even if you don't like tinkering almost as long in the editor as just playing the game, there are A LOT of workshop creations. Some amazing stuff there, that just invites you to play around. And for free!

Sometimes, the Devs release a poorly tested updates. This happened and probably happens again, but they're eager to get their baby working again. Don't expect a perfect game. It has flaws here and there, but with the amount you can do now, it really just the minority of things that don't work, compared to things you can actually have fun with.

The best vehicle sandbox I encountered so far. With it's newest DLC, you can build boats, cars, trains, helicopters, planes, hovercraft, bases, and now even rockets and space ships.

Absolutely recommended for someone who likes tinkering with their very own vehicle pass the test of a variety of missions and challenges.

I played this game on it's Free-Weekend. At first I felt like it's just another boring survival game. But even though the available characters look like a car accident, the game play is actually fun.

With it's "skill tree", the tech-level you can unlock with level-ups makes it fun to discover more of a beatifully handcrafted world and more of your own abilities.

It feels well balanced, and none of the challanges, from hunger, thirst, O2 or enemies feel like of balance or frustrating.

I only played for a couple hours, but the game left a craving for more. It's now on my whishlist. ;-)

If you like Skyrim, or Fallout 4, then a Bethesda Game like Starfield is for you. But don't expect the next big space-game. Starfield is merely a mod for Fallout 4, with all the gameplay Bethesda hasn't changed for years.
And all the bugs, and all the annoying things, Bethesda chose to do in the worst kind of ways, like inventory, weapon mods, and a world full of useless trash.

Even with all it's flaws an bugs, Starfield has it's good sides:
- A lot of work has flown into visuals. The assets (ships, weapons, tech, animals, etc.) look cool and authentic.
- There is a full voice over for all the dialogues in game. Even random side quests have (too?) detailed dialogues. (But the player can't talk, as oposed to Fallout 4)
- There is a cool ship editor, which allows you to assemble your ship from basic modules, and it even looks good (in most cases)
- Skybox and daytime correspond to position of celestial bodies in solar system. If you land on the terminator of a planet, with it's moon rising over the horizon, you actually encounter dawn an see the moon in the sky.
- You can actually fight in zero-g, which is kind of done well. Weapon recoil has an impact on you and on what you hit. Looks cool and feels surprisingly new and refreshing.

But there are also flaws in Starfield. Some very annoying, others just too obvious, and some just because Bethesda didn't seem to be able to learn from previous mistakes:
- It's called a space game. But it's not. It's just a fancy space themed mod for Fallout 4. You want to fly a spaceship? You can, but only to fight other ships in a worn out WW2 style dogfight. Fly to other planets? Land on them? Dock to Ships and Stations? Yup, loading screens and cut-scenes all over.
- They say you can land on thousands of planets and moons. Probably true, but when you have seen one, you have seen all. Most landscapes follow the same predictable layout. A lot of rocks, some structures here, some there, most of them full of space pirates and the occasional unknown feature.
- You can afford a spaceship capable of interstellar travel. But once landed on a planet, you have to WALK everywhere! WALK!!! Aren't there any cars, buggies, hovercrafts or even a simple bike? No vehicle (or mounts) whatsoever. So this ends in you fast-traveling all over the place. Doesn't really help with immersion either.
- Space. They even feature a splash citing NASA for their textures for some planets. But all about space they seem to know, comes from their knowledge from kindergarten. Sound in vacuum. You (and your enemy) hear your footsteps, gunshots and the like. You encounter a lot of places, where NPCs seem to have a relaxing sandwich and a beer in some garden stools, enjoying the view in the VACUUM ON THE MUN SURFACE! I mean you're wearing a space suit, protecting you from said vacuum. But while wandering a planets surface you can actually get lung injury from an Argon vent. ARGON! IN A SPACE SUIT!
- The skill tree. Something every Bethesda fan loves (or do they?). But if you want to craft a weapon mod, you not only need some rare ressources. You also need a certain tech unlocked. You can unlock said tech with more rare ressources in the research station, but for that, you need to have the perk for weapon mods unlocked. And to unlock said perk, you not only need a level up, but also have modded a certain amount of weapons before. So everything you want to achieve is blocked by a cascade of prerequierements you have to fulfill. And if you eventually unlock said perk by modding a thousand weapons, the counter starts from zero for the next level. How motivating! Same for almost every other perk.
- It's nice they have invested so much funding in voice overs. But your loved companions always brable in the wrong moment. You tried to understand an important task someone gives you, sure Sam and Cora have a long discussion, which makes it impossible to understand what your task's about.
- Then, there are bugs. A lot of them. From flying trees, to your characters invisible space suit, to quick-keys or workstations suddenly not working, scopes only working in first person, random crashes to your ship suddenly completely missing. There is something for everybody. Take your pick. I could accept that amount of bugs and unstable gameplay from a small indy game early in development. But from a lead producer, for 80.- bucks? Are you ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ kidding me?
- And there's probably more. If you can spare the overpriced money - I totally recommend againgst - you could find some.

I actually believed Starfield to be the next big space game. In line with titles like Elite: Dangerous or Star Citizen. Boy have I been disapointed. It really only is a mod for Fallout 4, showing again, that Bethesda is unwilling to improve over their titles. Sad, but one more big producer that makes me reset my expecations from high priced titles back to zero.

An absolute complete space adventure, with remarkable puzzles and a world you instantly fall in love with!

Highly recommendable.

Singleplayer is entertaining, but GTA Online with it's hordes of mostly uneducated, bloodthirsty players and it's imense loading time is mainly a great way of wasting ones precious life time.