This is quite the harsh review

also german gamestar has a quite negative review but everything in it is true:

http://www.gamestar.de/spiele/planetary-annihilation/48731.html

the conclusion is:

compared to TA and SupCom Gameplay is not so intensive in a lot of situations
Singleplayer is boring and without love and not to recommend (boring GW)
tutorial is a bad joke
lots of bugs
instable performance / high RAM usage, big systems unplayable
instable multiplayer / slow servers
missing features promised in kickstarter (40 player games, dedicated server)
release was too fast

they recommend SupCom FA as an alternative

i can agree to everything although i still like the game. but uber has to work on that points... instead praising themselves for e.g. chronocam, which might technically be a great feature, but in gameplay it's rather useless in 99% of the situations...

i found it really stupid how they praised it in the release live stream as a game changing feature... it just shows, they dont understand their own game.

but the worst thing is currently the performance... im playing just right now a game ... but it's so slow, i need other things to do... like writing here.

Guy is just a noob, ignore the revieuw man.

I use chronocam. Additionally, I am big into it becoming used for save game feature.

I also would still argue that SupCom FA is not the same ballpark.

That is like me saying, american football is a terrible sport, it is generally more dumbed down, I recommend rugby as an alternative. Like one should always replace rugby if ever considering american football. They are basically close enough, just NEVER choose one and ALWAYS choose another. Doesn't work that way.

If you have been playing FA now for as long as it's been out, then if FA is your recommendation, then you shouldn't cry like a bitch when your genre support is dropped and you are still stuck playing only FA in ten years when shooters are still being made in bulk. Get over it, FA is what you suggested remember?

It isn't like SupCom plays exactly like PA, so why ever play PA? They don't play exactly alike at all. I would argue C&C games play more like PA.

That comparison irks me even deeper than that. It is like "hurr durr supcom fa beats pa in featurez". Well hurr durr FA had a 5 year head start. If I walked up to a 14 year old and knocked them cold the f*** out, its child abuse, but FA can simply proclaim dominance over PA?

The biggest fallacy behind that, is how I wonder FA will run in 10 years. Not the best hardware scale wise. And possibly not at all if OS changes much. I mean, I have to emulate old DOS to run Chips Challenge. What happens when FA is that old?

But it's okay, because SupCom totally made a better sequel. Definitely a promising future for it, that SupCom...

they have to fix performance. When will they get suitable servers? To me this is the biggest issue right now, cos the game is unplayable on 1/10 of regular speed!

The review also mentions the current state of the game, which is the main reason for the low score, and they will update their review at a later point.

They don't seem to know that the server bug that was ironed out at release.

if its ironed out??? why is my game going on 1 min ingame in 10 min realtime? Its ridiculous

50 minutes game time, 90 minutes realtime.. and once we killed 1600 units of our team on purpose to make it run faster again!

Because ubers servers are small in order to handle as many concurrent games at the same time.

Not to handle a small number of huge games at once.

can we maybe not use the term "finished" because it is pretty vaguely used ...

the thing is uber thought the game ready for release which a lot of people disagree ... but it should be obvious by now that it wont have been feature complete by release .... technicaly starcraft 2 were blizzard announced 2 expansions isnt featurecomplete either ... but was released in a more playable state and with enough information ...

He has quite a very valid points, the most obvious of which is the premature release.

Here, have a comment from me about the reviewer, maybe it will help explain some things.

This game does not require more strategic thought than supcom! This game is more demanding than starcraft ever was in terms of macro/micro. The gameplay is so simple and minimalistic compared to supcom. The interplanetary scale is flawed because its impossible to manage and pay attention to more than 1 planet at a time. With the "miniview" you can manage 1 round planet but not more. The interface is not suitable for the scale delivered. The pathing is a pain.

But the worst thing is the performance of the servers, that let you play at 1/10th of the normal gamespeed. They are unstable crash a lot and still you defend the release politics.

All known bugs for a long time, but the game still got released and is actively defended by the fanboyism.

Hehe, I see the word fanboy used a lot. I lack the understanding of that term.

Either that, or everyone else does, but meh. Because... I don't see defending a game, and a company, with facts is fanboyism. When a review arises that had obviously not taken the time to really search through the game to take the whole experience and then goes out and tells everyone of his fraction ed opinion, we'll I see that as wrong, and straight up lying.

Don't do a review of a game if you don't even know all about it, then you're obviously going to be missing so much iformation, AND spreading false information.

How about I call you a Supcom fanboy? Ey? Because obviously you have no Idea what you're talking about, and my RTS is obviously the ruler of all, and none may compare. /sarcasm.

See? Fanboy is such an idiotic term, I don't even know what counts as fanboyis.. I assume someone blindly following one game, but we're not? We have been here for a year, some two, some more. We know so much about this game, and it's development. We've learned of the harships that is game development, and many of us understand the lack of something. Of course there are things that have gone past us, we feel they released early as well. But what they released was not bad, and is basically what I wanted with the game all along. Offline would be amazing, and I can't wait. But it isn't completely required, and the unit cannon looks like a bunch of fun, but I don't mind not having it yet, I don't even see it being a super core thing. (Though it's probably going to be a super unit esque thing)

So finally... Don't go throwing terms that could easily apply to you, or anyone really. And to reviewers.. play the game through and through before you make a false review.

Obejectivity is the whole point of a review, to get an unbiased source for what games people should play.

Thank you.

It's pretty clear that the game was released somewhat early due to commercial reasons, but I don't think spreading negativity around here or elsewhere is going to help anyone.

Let's hope the players and reviewers see the vision behind the game and -- taking into account the technical challenges and limited budget -- cut the developers some slack. Plenty of people seem to be already having a great time playing the game.

well no, its no help to spread negativity, but maybe we can get some official statements from uber about the situation?? The server situation is bad for >2 weeks now, and no single word about what they plan about it.
We paid for this after all! we didnt make them a gift for nothing, right?

PA is already a superb multi player game, especially when played with friends in shared teams. Unfortunately people new to the game have to get past the quirks in single player and lack of tutorial and so on before they get there. This is where many reviewers are missing the 'x' factor the game had and write it off

If a reviewer doesn't know about certain features, it CAN be their fault for not trying hard enough but it's very much also the game's fault for not teaching the player about it enough.

Yes but the review should be:
"I couldn't figure out x and it wasn't until I'd done a search on the internet that I found out how to use it. The mechanic is there, but the game really should tell you where it is."

and not:

"I couldn't find x. The game sucks because it doesn't have x."

I'm surprised you're all getting so worked up over this fellow, to be honest. It's not a very big or popular site, his reviews of previous games are similarly poorly-researched and more opinion pieces than anything else. This is like complaining that your village magazine put out a bad review of PA - entirely expected and mostly meaningless

I have this exact same issue, its ridiculous how much the game can slow down... 1 second in-game can become 10 seconds real time..

The review has some good points, don't agree with 100% of them, but its a fairly good. I've played PA for awhile now and I love the whole concept of it.... But it certainly doesn't feel ready for release. Its plagued with performance issues, balancing issues and missing "promised features".

Yes, Uber plan to keep brining new elements to the game after release, but unfortunately you usually get a peak in profits at the initial release and then profits for that game steadily decline as less people buy it (as it gets older... that's expected.. most people either own it or it becomes old news). Obviously it's that lovely cash flow which pays for development to continue, and if its not great you can't expect a great investment of talent to be put into the game.

Only time will tell how PA pans out, now that has been "released", but like many others, my expectations aren't high. I suspect there are a fair few people who will keep their wallets closed when looking at PA for the foreseeable future.

But that negativity out the way... I still love the concept of PA and have enjoyed a fair few battles! Most of them before release however... Lets hope that Uber look at all the constructive criticism that some users have posted and take it on-board and in a few months time we might all wonder what the fuss was about! Hurrah!