http://www.pcgamer.com/these-disappointed-no-mans-sky-players-are-turning-to-star-citizen/
I read this and was like wtv.. moving right along..
Because as a Star Citizen backer, which was easy since I loved Wing Commander and Freelancer etc.. even hoped Chris Roberts' movie company would have made more movies since Outlander was a great Sci-Fi film.. tossing some money into a fountain to back Star Citizen didn't seem like a big deal.
Of course paying hard earned money to a company based on vague promises.. backed up only by the developers previous work, Wing Commander for Roberts, and No Man's Sky's Sean Murray's work on Burnout... sure they have credentials and both have shown what a great open world Sci-Fi game could be.
Star Citizen is presented to the world as a space shuttle. Hop in and you're magically transported to space. Done.
No Man's Sky on the other hand, which required buying a PS4 or upgrading a gaming PC.. I did both, to play didn't seem like a big stretch when SC was supposed to be available some time later on.
But it isn't a space shuttle. It's a pair of muddied roller skates. And the wheels are broken. You're not getting to space with these.
Arguably the buy in for the ticket on the space shuttle is cheaper.. except that for SC, you need a PC.
So it makes a bit more sense to try No Man's Sky first.
But then.. screw both of those games. SC is forever unfinished and No Man's Sky is just heartbreakingly terrible. It promises some great things but failed to deliver.
I told her that I wanted to try Aven Colony. It seemed like a really interesting game. She said DO IT.
So I did.
After a few days with it.. I'm torn.
It's even dumber than No Man's Sky, but for less than half the price, it is interesting. At the very least if you thought No Man's Sky was boring, irritating and pointless..
https://twitter.com/avencolony?lang=en
https://twitter.com/MothershipTeam
As a beta the game is verging on miserable for a fan of much better Sci-Fi games.. but after pulling myself out of that little funk that follows being hyped about a game and finding it lacking.. I was able to figure out how to play it and somewhat enjoy it.
It makes me miss No Man's Sky because it present base building on a barren world. But after being able to visit countless procedurally generated worlds crawling with weird alien creatures.. it probably going to be impossible for any game to be interesting.
And I mean I can't blame the team at Mothership for there being no possible way for this game to be more interesting than No Man's Sky or Star Citizen.. but at least with what they are presenting I expected a little more science.
Sure the game IS a great, solid, and compelling representation of colonizing a new world.. so it does everything that they set out to do, but it is heartbreakingly limited.. or just too small to be taken seriously.
I watched the lets try Aven Colony video for a few minutes.. and basically everything you can see in that few minutes is what you're going to get no matter how many hours you try to sink into the game.
Sure there's a story to the campaign missions.. but it more like Destiny's BS story than some really compelling Sci-Fi narrative. Everything you're presented with is just about describing a narrative of objectives towards completing a scenario the way Mothership wants to do it.. not how you'd want to. I mean going from objective to objective is kind of amusing. Only progressing when Vory asks you to do something.
This illusory control bullshit while shackled to a silly story though really pisses me off after a while.
But again, that's not their fault. The game is too limited to allow the player too much real freedom.
After getting over that.. and forcing my imagination to just sit on my shoulder and watch me complete each scenario.. with rationality and common sense also left to twiddle their thumbs on the other shoulder.. it IS somewhat compelling.
Compelling in the same why that No Man's Sky ended up being after figuring out that yes, that IS all the game has to offer.. but for a time at least you can diddle around with it.
Completing the scenarios was actually hard because it really is very easy to over spend and ignore the basics that the colony requires to survive. Once you figure out how to get the colony to survive for at least a little while (a little like getting the basics down in Ark), you're given objectives that are bars in the spokes. Some of them are things that you really don't need to do and while trying to complete them you might miss things like low water, or polluted air.
I say the game is limited but compelling because they make it hard to fix problems. Inattention tends to generate really bad problems that are often exacerbated by the constant emergencies that pop up.
So completing what should be a simple, very limited scenario turns in to juggling managing colony growth, dealing with emergencies and stupid objectives which only give you more junk to clog up your already stuffed inventory.. I think I mentioned that this game reminded me of Destiny. And probably I'm really irritated so much with it because of that similarity.
Really what bugs me is just imagining how this game could be significantly better. If each mission was based on launching from the mothership in orbit. Picking out a landing zone.. making sure you have just the right load of cargo necessary for the mission.
Then launching. Getting down to the planet. Watching the lander open up and seeing the initial 16 landing crew set up the base.
None of that requires a static mission map. Where the bigger the map is and more mobile you base can be, the easier it is to cope with actually getting started and then moving the base is shit starts to hit the fan.
It feels impossible to play this game without imagining what it would be like set in No Man's Sky's game engine, or Star Citizen's.
There was even Planetary Annihilation. That game failed to hit the mark but did have full planets and at least the developers tried to have other nearby worlds and things in orbit. Focusing the whole game on PvP combat was probably a stupid idea. That and charging hundreds of dollars for it. Go fuck yourselves.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=video&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj79Iat9rbRAhVs3IMKHX75BGwQtwIIHDAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fstore.steampowered.com%2Fapp%2F233250%2F&usg=AFQjCNERwgdz_rrWhRpGLTGtOJxRPk37qQ&sig2=OGtgDt_eQit5gNW4EGzg5Q
That all looks super fantastic.. but.. you know.. where's the sandbox? Where's the campaign? I actually just got choked up a little consider that Planetary Annihilation was from 5 years ago.. Wow.
Like how can any development team release a game that doesn't aim for that bar (surface to orbit and full planets instead of these shitty postage stamp mission areas) to begin with or at least something close to it. The game feels totally pointless.