25 June, 2017

Carrier Deck Review

Carrier Deck is a simple management game where you control the deck of a carrier, select mission loadouts and manage who flies and where. Don't be fooled by the suggestion of a simulation game. It is definitely not one of those.

While it isn't the most detailed by far, and certainly not hard, it is capable of occasionally providing decent challenges and keeping the action up at a decent flow in the campaign. There are however several issues with it that make it difficult to really get into it.
(Campaign) Missions feel too small, and don't seem to really present a challenge except for the last few. But they are decent enough and enjoyable to play. On the contrary, 'quick' missions and endless mode are not really enjoyable as there is a large amount of waiting and when things do happen they seem to be randomly throwing things at you regardless of whether it's possible to succeed. This makes the endless mode more about luck than actually managing your carrier.

The other flaws include the hitbox for clicking on things being just too small on many things, leading to clicking off something and wasting time, and the airplane/heli pathing being terrible. They only move in pre-determined paths, and when they run into one another they wait for only a second or two before deciding to turn around and go back to where they were before you ordered them. This in turn makes managing any more than two or three things at the same time a huge pain in the ass, as you need to babysit almost everything or risk them deciding they don't really want to do what you told them to.

Yet with all that, it's still decent. It's certainly not amazing, but it does what it tells you it will do, and it does so well enough to entertain. But it doesn't go past that, or try anything special, but it isn't bad at least. It's worth the price it asks for, but I wouldn't recommend it if you weren't into any kind of management game. For those that are, Carrier Deck is worthwhile enough to try out.

23 June, 2017

Orbt XL Review

Orbt XL is a small game about orbiting a black hole and not crashing into things

It's simple, cheap, and a pretty decent price. The control scheme is simple(Left mouse button to go further, let go to go closer) and the gameplay itself is varied enough to be entertaining.
A few special cases mix things up, the obstacles are varied enough to be entertaining, and the gameplay simple enough to be easy to understand.

It represents a good price to value ratio, and it is pleasant to play for a while but it is certainly just a short thing to spend some time on and then move on. Worth picking up if you run across it bored or otherwise have a euro laying around doing nothing.

09 June, 2017

Take on Mars Review

Take on Mars is more simulation than game, and clearly showing that the goal was a simulation first, and a game second. That said, it remains very interesting and works quite well as a game, when you can figure out how to do things and get it to work.

And that is one of the problems. The biggest problem however is the complete lack of time acceleration and slow speeds. I understand wanting realistic speeds in your simulation game, but this is not an experience that any but the most patient people are willing to go through. For reference, to complete the unmanned campaign you will need to travel ~50,000m at speeds between 1.5m/s and 2m/s, or in more understandable terms, your rovers go at the speed of an old man with a walking aid and you need to travel roughly a small country's length. The game does helpfully offer you a realistic wheel speeds option, which will bring your speed down to around 0.6m/s, or roughly the speed of that old man if he had to stop to take a breather after every step. I firmly believe that I am one of the most patient people in the world and submit this game as proof for that.

With the biggest problem out of the way, the smaller problems are still noticable. It essentially does not tell you how to do or use most things. When starting a campaign, the first thing I had to do was push every button on my keyboard in the hopes that it would move along the interactive first landing of an historical Russian lander. It worked eventually, and I could play the game after that. After that, you are never told how to use specific instruments, and you aren't told what technologies actually do for you as a player. But that is something you can figure out as well with a lot of looking for things, so eventually it will work out.
There also still appear to be a fair amount of bugs in the game, including random missions asking you to take microscope pictures of the atmosphere, and one that makes it so missions do not spawn when they should so the game literally becomes unfinishable. With the last one in mind, I had to stop my playthrough before I could get to the manned stage, as the missions I needed to complete did not ever show up. The physics at times become a large problem in that your science instruments need to be held still to do science, but the physics tries to make your rovers almost dance, which makes it nearly impossible to use your instruments unless you forcibly jam them against the rock or sand you are trying to perform experiments on.

Even then, Mars is a nice and often varied place, with a lot of interesting terrain and good looking locations, with missions placed so that they show you to all the good places with almost scenic tours. The economic part of the game- Getting your funding, is very rough early on and practically doesn't exist in the later stages. This may be to save up money for the manned missions, but I never actually reached that part, so I wouldn't know.

All things said, Take on Mars needs work. It is not an unpleasant experience for one with a lot of patience, but I struggle to see what would draw in anyone other than the most scientific minded people who at the same time don't mind gameplay. For anyone else, it is a nice novelty, but very repetitive and slow. There does not seem to be that much here, at least not in the unmanned campaign.

There is also a multiplayer mode, but I've yet to be able to motivate anyone into playing it with me. I will update this review whenever I get people into a server with it.