Recent reviews by baltoria

The included assets are fine, but there's very little variety and very little to evoke "beach".

New trees should be in the base game.

As someone who purchased the Ultimate Edition at launch, I'm incredibly disappointed with this included DLC.

For some time I was considering leaving a negative review - but really, I've now played close to 100 hours and mostly enjoyed it. Quite frankly, the issue is really that I went into Cities 2 with incredibly high expectations. I have a lot of annoyances with the game in its current state, but none of them make it truly bad.

Performance is pretty poor at the time of writing. That's been well-established. I have a new mid-range graphics card (4060Ti 16GB VRAM), a top-of-range current gen i5 and 32GB system memory. On my 3440x1440 display the game averages 20-30 fps, which is playable, but disappointing. Travel into an industrial area, and two or three smoke plumes slash that to below 10 fps. Not good, but CO have said they're actively working on this. Hoping for the best, and we'll see how it goes once it's out of early access (ie. a few more patches).

In terms of gameplay, its at a point where things are mostly fine. It's still unclear to me how the import/production/export of material and immaterial goods actually impact on your economy. The numbers just go up and I silently nod in agreement. Commercial constantly complains of lack of customers with no explanation. Traffic seems to be undercooked, and the traffic agents aren't as smart as they were made out to be. The lack of advanced lane adjustment in vanilla is criminal. Parking prices seem to have zero impact on travel mode behaviour. There's no cycling infrastructure.

Visually, the thing goes from shiny and lovely to potato with no logic behind it. I think it's a bug. I suspect I've got bonus issues playing at higher than the recommended 1080p (really, in 2023?), but there's clearly a lot of ironing out to do here while we're still in early access. The real crime in visuals that I expect won't be fixed is rendering of zonables on slopes - why are bins, benches and treehouses on 45 degree angles? Must I flatten every piece of land?

All these things are annoying, but don't make it a bad game. I've played 100 hours on vanilla and I expect I'll play 100 more before any DLC comes out. I think it's been worth the $AUD129 pricetag. But the question of whether I'll keep buying DLC and enjoying the modding space to best the 2,100 hours I had in Cities Skylines remains unclear.

Stationeers is beautiful. Mining and crafting, base building, vehicles and eventually rocketry. The complex gas and power management systems are super cool. Manage power networks and program logic circuits and integrated cirucuit chips with infinite possibilities. Create artificial atmospheres, and airlocks to travel between them.

A great space sandbox. If you like base building games and space you'll like Stationeers. If you like logical problem solving, base building and space, you'll love Stationeers.

It was hard to make a binary decision on whether or not to recommend Bus Sim 18. It was really tempting to recommend against, because it has so many frustrating flaws.

On the flip side, it scratched that very niche itch for a bus driving game with a dash of management simulation and despite constant frustration, it's provided me with a lot of fun too.

Pros:
- you get to drive a bus
- you get to make bus routes
- the missions early in the game are fun and keep you interested
- amusing passenger conversation
- good variety of bus models
- generally good controls and viewing angles
- representation of people with disabilities and the queer community

Cons:
- #1 flaw in this game is the traffic simulation. AI vehicles just sit there. I'm sure there's a logic to it, but the lack of intelligence in traffic simulation makes it impossible to keep to timetables without going full GTA and driving onto the sidewalk/wrong side of the road/running people down
- visibility in mirrors during rainy weather is terrible; mirror practicality in the MAN buses is also awful
- missions get boring and tedious the further into the game
- too easy to make money
- steering wheel sensitivity offers no way to lock the wheel (jolt jolt jolt)
- passenger conversations are so limited - for some reason they seem to have hired 20 different voice actors to all act out the same 50 lines. there's so much potential here, because the passenger conversations make the game feel so much more immersive and human - but it makes no sense to write such a limited amount of lines (writing lines is free?) and then pay several people to speak *the same lines* as each other

I'll almost certainly buy the upcoming Bus Simulator 2021, but if overhauling the traffic simulation isn't a primary focus I'll be returning it for a refund.

With the number of negative reviews, I expected this to be riddled with bugs. While perhaps unpolished, it's a fun game. I've experienced only one obvious bug (total game crash) in ten hours play time.

First play through you get a feel for the game mechanics. There's a minimal tutorial to get you started, but to understand the full mechanics it's up to your self-exploration.

Second play through you'll have an idea of which research tracks to pursue and how to make more efficient use of production modules.

Actually meeting scenario goals likely won't come until your third play through. At this point I'd expect you'll have mastered the game and can "beat" it.

If this is your sort of game, you'll easily get 20+ hours of play time which you'll enjoy. I got the game in a Steam sale, so feel I got great value for money. I expect many of the negative reviewers wanted a mobile app-style "design your own car with three flicks of the finger" game without the kind of investment in self-exploratory learning that Production Line requires.

Buyer beware: SimAirport is highly addictive! It's a fantastic resource management game that I just can't seem to put down. Build your airport, set up a flight timetable, create passenger facilities and profit.

There's a lot of features which the tutorials don't tell you about and aren't exactly intuitive to pick up, but once you do it's fine. A few bugs still persist as well, but I've found only one that saving, quitting to menu and reloading the save doesn't fix.

If you like (city/tower/hospital/anything) building and management games, give it a shot. You'll like it.