PA Steam Reviews

Yeah I bought Far cry 3 in the Steam sale. I got to play it for two days before it stopped working entirely. Literally force closes on launch. Looked it up and its a well known issue on Win 8.1. No fix in site. I won't ever buy from those devs again. PA in comparison is a dream boat built for a fraction of the price.

Why specifically? If you can give us some info on the issues I think we may be able to help

The game is pretty stable now, there are a few things that can really hurt it though:
1: Lack of memory, 4gb of ram is the absolute minimum you can really attempt to play with, and then you must keep it to small systems and close background tasks to conserver memory. 8gb is prefferable.

2: Unsuported drivers (old gpu's e.g. AMD 4000 range or earlier) don't have proper driver support on Windows and thus may work but crash often. There is a solution to this one actually- if you can spare some HDD space stick a free Linux distro on to run beside windows, as the open source AMD drivers are kept up to date on the older cards.

3: Very poor internet connection- as the game is streamed from the servers. Offline play *is coming* so this is just a case of waiting for now, although connection required to play isn't that high (about 6mbit is sufficient).

If you don't have any of the above problems, then it's likely just a configuration issue, which we should be able to fix!

There is no 'scam' ?! You can buy the game, and play it.

The game does deliver on the concept shown in the kickstarter and even improves on it in some ways. This *isn't* the same as saying there are no issues (certianly a few features that are expected- save for example- are missing at the moment) however the game very much exists and is very playable. They have done alot with a minimal budget and they've stated catagorically that they haven't finished. I think the reason it is released is one of the logistics of putting out a boxed eddition in the shops (it takes a great deal of time to organise physical distribution on a large scale), so they had to pick a date and stick to it.

Should they have left it longer? Probably looking at the feedback, still there is no 'scam' to be seen here. A scam would have been to take the money and run.

I can't know whether love was present or not. In my experience love breaks down when there's more than two people involved in it.

I'm giving my genuine opinion that this game was a speculation, i.e. the funds invested in the project at the beginning were never enough to deliver all of the features promised. Indeed, I don't think anybody will claim that the game is currently feature complete. Having established the facts, it's just a question of trust. I have no reason to trust these developers and therefore I see this 1.0 version as a desperate move to save a sinking speculation. Certainly with trust it might look differently.

Having followed the development all the way though, they have earned my trust. You are correct that this was 'speculative'- the developers themselves have pointed out that 2.2 mil was the funding to get the *started* and that is one of the reasons they have been selling early access since. In fact Uber was at the point of going under before PA (after SMNC failed to take off in any meaningful way), the owners were pouring funds into the company to keep it going. Since then they have expanded the team, as well as launching several (successful) mobile games to help generate revenue, these guys haven't had it easy but they haven't given up which I think says allot of good things about them.


The current game delivers the main goals, and a first pass on each of the stretch goals, so from a game-play perspective they have delivered what they promised. It's all the little details, as well as some of the functionality that will make the game easier to live with (offline, save etc) that’s really missing right now. Offline mode is confirmed next on the hit list, along with a competitive play update (as actually PA is developing quite a nice competitive scene, not suggesting it's going to rival Starcraft but there is certainly main things to like about PA from a competitive gamers view point). Save will probably be a bit longer as they have quite a novel plan for it (if you've played the game you are probably aware of the neat 'chrono cam' feature where you can rewind a live game, this is also the replay system)... they are hoping to use Chrono cam to allow you to load up any replay, and then take over at any point creating a new game from there. This is so much more powerful than a normal save function as you can literally retrace your steps and try again from *anywhere*.

Btw, the reviews are already positive again. Or at least reasonably critical.

as a single person you are absolutly not obligated to do crap for the game, you play have eventualy a good time and move on ...

but the active community has an interest for the game to be succesfull so the community around it can grow allowing for more competivness (if thats a word) regarding mods bringing in more creativity more ideas more diversity more everything ... you just need to look to what starcraft has spawned .. and every game that allows moding and editing the game making new content or entirely different games and modes out of it brings this oppurtunity to be more than just a game getting potential out of it ...

i cant say it enough ... but the potential and scaleability of this games engine is what impresses me the most ... to no end ...
i may exagarate but to me it seems like PA itself is "just" the tip of what this engine could theoreticaly be capable of ...
you are currently a army controlling commander right?
now imagine if you were controling say a bot like the dox from its point of view ... how suddenly much bigger everything could be ... just as example

... imho opinion this is quite a opportunity right here ...
get the creative guys on it as many as possible and let them go crazy ...

That's kind of a given. $2.2m is a miniscule budget for a game of this scale. Uber have both invested some of their own funds and sought additional revenue through the Early Access program that have significantly added to the budget for this game.

Uber are under no obligation to discuss their current finances and budget, of course, but I understand that the game is performing healthily and its continued development is and should be evidence to that effect.

These boards have some really well implemented quoting.

I have no reason to doubt that the developers are doing the best they can in a brutally competitive world. Actually, I'm inclined to believe that that's exactly the case. Releasing this game in its current state as an official launch is dishonest, though, and let me try to explain why I think so.

Now, there have been precedents of games that have released and then have continued development. Not just bugfixes, but new features and content, for free. One such game that I personally enjoy very much is Skullgirls. Skullgirls (a fighting game in the vein of Marvel vs Capcom) continues to release characters that were promised in its Kickstarter campaign well after the game's official release. The big difference here, is that Skullgirls will remain fairly close to being the same game, gameplay-wise. If I main certain characters, I am confident that if I take a break from the game for a few months I can come back into it and basically encounter no problems other than match-ups with whatever character was added.

As illustrated on my Skullgirls example, I think that the main difference between an early access game and a finished game is that I can take a long break from it, and then come back feeling like it's the same game. I believe that this is what many people are expecting when they buy into a game that has been officially released.

The problem with PA is that even though it has been officially released, sweeping changes are still planned to be implemented. Now obviously the line here is fuzzy. New content is a treat, there's no doubt about that. However, at some point changes are so big that they risk alienating people that enjoyed the game pre-patch. There is a clear difference with how development of unfinished and finished games should proceed, and Uber are not committed to making the shift.

let me say it this way ...
weither you donate over KS or buy into early access you should
expect the risk of a possible fail
durring developement that may make cease of further developement ... i think there have been more than enough of examples of delopement fails for you to be cautios ...
if You have that in mind you should be able to invest or donate accordingly or just dont do it at all ..
if you still are intrested in the game but have no intrest in getting in early then don't just wait for release but for the reviews of that build as well ...
are you obligated to inform yourself? no but buying products on good luck won't save you from dissapointment ... never do that but get as much information out of the product of interest as needed to make a propper decition weither to buy or not ...
that way you safe yourself from missinvesting and dissapointment ... not all the time but most of the time ...

I'm not sure the changes will be much game play wise though. There is only 1 *major* game play feature 'missing' from the main game- the unit cannon. This was in the KS trailer (although not listed specifically as a feature) and has proven a nightmare to code so I'm not sure if it will ever be in the game, although if they do add it I agree it will be a big change.


Other than that, things that are coming are not related to the core game:

- Balance tweaks and maybe a couple of new units

- More integrated competitive features (for example the ladder system is currently comunity run, this will probably get an official pass at some point)

- Save (or reload game) from chrono cam

- Improvements to system generation / possibility of hand crafting of planets

- Integrated mod system (again currently using a community developed system, namely PAMM) + extended mod support

- Offline play / private servers.


All these things fall into the 'living with it' category- the actually *game* itself is pretty much there imo (for the vanilla version at least).

It's fine if you feel this way, I would just ask you to watch the game over the next month or few, and see how it progresses. It was never going to be a triple A polished title with boatloads of features, with the time and money they had, so we are having to accept that we get the core of the game first, then wait for more features as the game sells. I, for one, am happy to do this, as there is a LOT of potential. Hope you stick around

I was able to play perfectly fine right up until release. Come release the game freezes up whenever I start a game and won't unfreeze even if I wait half an hour.

Well, what I'm doing to help is up votting recommended reviews and down votting not recommended reviews. Right now the most helpful reviews on steam are Recommended ones and I'm happy with that. Also, I'm waiting for my steam key to write my own review.

All the reviews are positive again. So that's something.

The game is still running fine for me though (on 2 differnet systems) so I think there may be an issue with your set up. Can you post a dxdiag? Also do you have any mods installed? Finally are you launching via the uber launcher or through steam?

How do I post a dxdiag? No mods. Steam, was previously using Uber Launcher.

From your attached DxDiag: Driver Date/Size: 4/16/2013 17:11:08, 8867328 bytes

Your driver is very old. You need to go to the Intel website and download the latest drivers. As you appear to be on a laptop they might not install using the standard installer. In that case you need to get the 'zipped' drivers...

Link to drivers:
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=23714

Instructions for 'zip' drivers if the standard ones don't work:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/233250/discussions/2/558749190911446231/

I had the same problem, as soon as I launched, it said: 'Updating Uplay', but as soon as it started updating, it crashed.
Ubisoft had one of his minions (with no 'enter'key on his keyboard) send me the following response:

I am sorry to hear that you are experiencing issues with the Uplay launcher. Could you please provide some information regarding this crash error from your PC and we will pass this onto the development team for investigation. These files can be found in the following folder: Ubisoft Game Launcher\Crashes The format will be shown as: Uplay.exe_4.4.2.2825_2014-05-
02_12-14-23.dmp Please attach this file to your support ticket. To try and fix the issue could you please try running Uplay as an administrator. To do this navigate to where Uplay is installed and right click the mouse button on the Uplay.exe file and select run as administrator. If this still does not work then please try reinstalling Uplay. To do this can you backup the Savegames folder found in the default location (Default c:\program files (x86)\ubisoft\ubisoft game launcher or c:\program files\ubisoft\ubisoft game launcher) When you have backed up the savegame folder can you then uninstall the Uplay client from the computer and then delete the Ubisoft Game Launcher folder left behind. When this has been done can you restart the computer and reinstall Uplay from this link http://static3.cdn.ubi.com/orbit/launcher_installer/UplayInstaller.exe After this has been completed can you move the save games folder back to the new Ubisoft Game Launcher folder and try again. Please note: When you uninstall and reinstall Uplay you may also need to reinstall some of your games.

Basically you have to remove and reinstall your Ubilauncher.

AND THE REALLY STUPID THING IS: THE UBISOFT CRAP DRM WAS MOST LIKELY DEVELOPED AS AN ANTI PIRACY MEASURE, BUT SOMEHOW IT GIVES PIRATED COPIES A HUGE ADVANTAGE BECAUSE THeSE DON'T HAVE TO DEAL WITH THE INSANE UBI-DRM CRAP!!

ISN'T THAT IRONIC (DON'T YOU THINK)

Oh, and btw sorry for the caps, it's just that a red mist seems to descend upon me whenever someone reminds me of the Ubi-soft DRM

A fairly honest and accurate review of the game by some science guy: http://scientificgamer.com/thoughts-planetary-annihilation/
Tl;dr he likes it but recommends not playing it until saves are implemented and stability is better.