บทวิจารณ์ล่าสุดโดย Morse

I guess it's time for me to finally lay my thoughts.

I played a game quite a while in EA, made a list of features I want to see in the game before I return to it, and put it aside. It's been 3 years, and I think I can safely assume they'll never be there. The world is still empty, the gameplay is mostly grind and there is nothing in the creation system here that Space Engineers doesn't do better. You grind for basic resources, build a ship, go to the nearest moon for advanced resources, build a bigger ship, go to the PvP zone for a couple of super-rare resources, and that's when the game basically ends. The rest of the time you'll spend in creative mode fighting with unintuitive controls.

I think it's time for games to graduate to serious art, and hence be judged accordingly. Is the story good? No.

We used to stories in videogames be basically fillers, like in porno, as Carmack said. If it's not terrible - it's great! And by that standard the story in this game passes. It's not terrible. But if I saw something of this level in a movie, I'd say that it was pretentious crap. So congratulations "knights and bikes", welcome to the big boys club, you're a crap.

2K has some interesting definition of the word "quality".

UPD: in the first "quality" update they added the launcher, and in the second they removed it. Strange they didn't name it "qualitier update". Well, that's commendable and deserves praise. Now I can rate the game proper.

It's great.

I suck in this game.

Do you remember "happy tree friends"? I do. So, stylistically it's there. But gameplay-wise it's two different games stitched together. Dungeon crawling and base management. Base management is more time-consuming, has more variety, and after all - this is the part that has this "happy tree friends" thing going. But it has no goal, and is ultimately pointless. Yes, it makes you stronger for the dungeon crawling part, but you can unlock everything with just the most primitive base. Most of the base development will give you no bonuses in combat, it's base development for base development sake. The combat itself on the other hand is rather primitive and lacks variety. And VERY unbalanced. Still, I gave thumb up, if only barely. I do remember "happy tree friends" after all.

Exploration, missions, base building, good graphics. All that was expected.

But what surprised me the most, is that the game actually has a plot, which works surprisingly well on meta-level. You know you are the only human being in a simulated galaxy, but does your character know this? Why are you going forward, what's your goal? And by "you" I mean you - the player. To visit all the planets? That's impossible. To exploit the economy to earn the fortune? That's pointless. To see how it all ends? Isn't it exactly the reason why we want to continue living? Sean Murray said that the game is nowhere near finished, and I indeed want to see how this all ends.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but the game really spoke to me.

Good game nearly destroyed by the developers stupid stubbornness in enforcing a one-save system. I can understand when there is an option for an "iron-man" (or "hardcore") mode, but making it mandatory for everybody is just idiotic.

There are also some balance issues with half the units being useless, but that's nitpicking compared to the bigger problem.

Why do I keep playing it then? Well, I'm programmer, and I wrote myself a savescumming tool. With one of these, the game becomes even decent. Somewhat.

I consider this my favourite game ever. Even now, more than 10 years later, I'm yet to find a game that would equally provoke me to deep philosophical thoughts. This game has layers. On the surface - it is a simple platformer with time manipulation and a simple story of longing for a princess. Then there goes a final twist. Then there goes alternative ending. Then, there goes a whole ton of different meanings. Like any good art, braid doesn't offer any singular explanation. It's open to interpretations, and I find new ways to interpret it even to this day.

One day I'll finish it. Maybe when I retire...

I see many people complaining how this is not the original subnautica. I personally don't understand why do they need the same subnautica again, when we already have one. So I don't have a problem that the atmosphere is different, that the character is not a lone survivor anymore, and that half of the game is now on land instead of underwater. I don't even have a problem with the sea truck.

What I do have a problem with is a story. Many people complained it's too "woke", but I didn't see it. What I did see is a patchy plot with more holes than a cheese. Two plots, actually. That's right, they decided that one plot is not enough, we need two, with the one you start with being actually the secondary. Lots of useless dialogs, contrived coincidences galore, kindergarten-level philosophy, and a BIG middle finger to the original subnautica. This cure the entire alien race was searching for for years? Our hotshot sister produces it in a snap from salad ingredients. This badass lady presumed dead based on the audiologs? She actually survived. And ended up on the pole. How? ♥♥♥♥ you that's how. And this is also how she survived the infection. The whole plot of the first game started because some ship went missing over this planet? ♥♥♥♥ that noise, there is actually another much larger ship that already crashed here once, and nobody gave a ♥♥♥♥.

And that was the final straw. Not only is this game not good and full of plotholes, it actually makes the first game worse by retconning plotholes into there as well. Buy the original if you didn't already (and sorry for the small spoilers) and avoid this one.