This is quite the harsh review

I often watch TotalBiscuit's reviews first impressions and you know what I notice? He often says things like "I had to look it up" or "I browsed the forum to see if others were having similar issues". Then he'll put forward the completely valid criticism that the game does a terrible job of telling you that, but at least he checks to see if it's there or not.

Sadly he's just going to destroy this game in his review haha!

They shouldn't have to bother to find it. This falls under the missing tutorial.

Which is why I think Uber's original plan for map topology has its merits.
Beside torus, I have a alternate game concept that won't meet the lack of information problem:

A RTS that's played on multiple neighboring floating islands with bottom sides walkable for units. It would still be a game with novel map topology, and the player could easily get a overview of the whole map with just a top minimap and a bottom minimap.
It might be a better idea for RTS gameplay, but sadly it is certainlly less marketable than the idea of a multiple planetary RTS game.

Did you even read what I said?

I said it before, and I'll say it again. Little tips and hints, scrolling along the bottom of the main menu, and lobbies or loading screens, would inform new players of general strategies or techniques that would make their first few games far less frustrating. Jeez, I'LL write them if someone would just put them in already....

That's the main point of his review. There is no documentation.

Imagine if you will the little kid playing this game. The little kid that looks at manuals. That's the kind of kid I was.

You're relying on there being enough documentation on Steam Guides and so on. You're not helping out the player.


ICT in general has pretty poor documentation sometimes though.So...

Except they did bother trying to find it. They looked for it through trial and error and intuition. While they were naturally playing the game.

Having to go outside the game to find something in the game is poor design. It's not a stand-alone product.


He points out that picture-in-picture would reduce the situational awareness problem, if he knew it existed. Presumably he discovered that from the forum.


The review is very valid.

Holy **** Kiwi is back!

And we realise the tutorial doesn't explain all, and that a nice comprehensive tutorial should. But saying a feature doesn't exist, when it does, is incorrect. A reviewer should do his research. Judge it's tutorial even more harshly, but don't make claims without actually looking elsewhere first.

I pop in every now and then, when programming or maths or physics depresses me more than usual. Hopefully I'll be more active come the summer-time

Reading for meaning, that paragraph sums your issues with the review

He acknowledges that some of the features exist, and he slams the learning curve about what features are present, (rather than about how to use them for best advantage)

This guy is hilariously full of ****. "Why make this game when you can play Supreme Commander?" Oh, hold up guys, I'm about to kill this guy in SupCom with a planet Smash.

The review itself harsh but had solid points on a few things, but at the same time went over the top a bit from someone who clearly didn't know much about the game or certainly enough about the game to formly do a full review at the time he wrote it. I like a solid review that doesn't beat about the bush when it comes to what works, what doesn't, what the gameplay is like, and what is just simply terrible. The reviewer was simply far more interested in making sarcastic remarks for the sake of it which put me off from taking a lot of what he wrote seriously. I don't need a life story telling me about why a game should have proper doccumentation, we are fastly approaching the golden age of digital distrubution, if you can't get that, or don't understand that, then that is an issue for you, not the game.

I am a gamer from the golden 80s, where games came with manuals and boxes and floppy discs, CDs, CDs on cover magazines before the internet destroyed the PC magazine industry. I have played 1000s of games over the last 30 years and the amount of times I've gone and looked up something in a game manual I can barely count on one hand! NO ONE reads manuals, you just pick up the game and played it, THAT was part of the fun, figuring sh*t out and how stuff worked, it was part of the mystery of the game, if you are seriously going to give a 1 star review because of that? you're simply just being a b***tch. How on earth someone like that is able to be in the games industry is completely astonishing to me. It takes 3 seconds to google something, there is more than enough information out there and your too bloody lazy to ACTUALLY look for it? jesus.... I'm sorry people but when I read that entire review I could not believe what the hell I was reading for 60% of that entire review!

He did make a comment about picture-in-picture on one of the responces there basically claiming it didn't help him much to see any more of the planets then he could normally. What he fails to realize to that this mechanic isn't finished, when it is, you'll be able to have multiple PIPs accross multiple screens and have them stretched out as big as you want them to be, NO problem micro managing multiple planets from that, in fact its going to be easier then supcom ever did it.

The online only is valid points which we all know, same with singleplayer, same with some of the features not being fully finished for release, but to be honest PA has been around for, quite a long time now, if you didn't know there wasn't going to be a campaign for it, well thats again solely on your lack of wanting to find out information. The GW was a last ditched goal at the end of kickstarter, to even have any sort of GW in the game right now has been a mighty feat and its far from finished anyway. There was never going to be a campaign like singleplayer, and thats been known right from the start of kickstarter, so dunno wtf hes talking about lack of singleplayer, the skirmish vs AI is the singleplayer and Uber have never hid that fact.

The only one faction is one of the most relevent points he makes as I think a lot of us were a little disapointed about the lack of variety about that when we first found out about that (well I was at least) but I got over it pretty quick, it doesn't ruin the game in any fashion, just means there is no variety in the battles because everyone is using the same units so everything looks the same. Part from that, thats the only draw back. Plenty of reasons why its actually better, unit balance is only one.

If he had even bothered to do the research on the commander skins, then he would have known they are the kickstarter backers commanders from higher tiers so the fact we could potentially purchase them when we shouldn't even have them in the first place, is pretty nifty itself actually, don't agree on the price though.

The whole tutorial thing though, it's like he didn't even consider the fact they don't have proper time out from developing the game to make a proper tutorial? maybe the community is just simply better at explaining things to the masses than Uber are? did ya consider that? no you just went off on one instead....

The game simply isn't finished and its up for debate whether uber should have released it this early or not, doesn't matter now its out, and there is going to be a LOT of things still to come for which anyone reviewing this game HAS to treat this like you would with an MMO when that first gets released. Server issues are common, with bugs, and more features to come, and all reviews should stamp their reviews as "In Its Current State" until we get the full complete game.

Sorry guys this was long, that review just erked me because it wasn't an honest review, and only had very few valid points.

killerkiwi AND storming kiwi?! what is this attack of the kiwis?
OH MY GAWD!!!

as i said the part that pisses me of the most ... people not getting the seling point of this game...
what is this game other than TOTAL ANNIHLATION .... .... IN SPACE!!! it SCREAMS TA from almost every pore ... no shields no upgrades ... experimentals werent a thing back then but still UBER stays true to this very core (no pun intended)

Never heard of that website.
Hard to care.

Is it unreasonable to a assume a released game to be complete? Games used to be reviewed at the time of release not years, multiple expansions and countless patches after that. If the game is not complete, well, tough luck.

Game was never said to be complete, it never really will be complete either. "Complete" is highly up to what your opinion is on what complete means. Semantics essentially.

You release a game when it's finished, whatever Uber says.

So World of Warcraft, Starcraft 2, Planetside 2, Diablo 3, etc etc.. were never released? Because you know they are still being worked on...
According to your logic Starcraft 1 was just released 1 or 2 years ago when that last patch came out.

This is a released game.

Just because it is going to receive updates doesn't mean it won't be judged, or shouldn't be judged, by the standards that every other game is held to.

TF2 receives updates. So does Eve online, WoW, Dota, lol, the list goes on. Does that mean those games shouldn't be judged?

Yes, it is semantics. And by the semantics that Uber is using (that this is "released"), it will be judged as a complete game. If they didn't want it to be judged as a released game, they shouldn't have released it.

That is why I consider the official release to be the most fair point for providing a review. Nobody is preventing anybody from doing follow-ups if and when new content comes in.

Never said as such. The game can definitely be judged, and should, but I'd like to see more reviews using the "currently" or "for the moment" or even "when I wrote this review" and so on... As it's a bit odd to state the game is like that and always will be, when it easily won't. It's like judging tf2 saying "Wow, it's terrible, I have to fight players, there's no game mode for just fighting waves of enemies, don't buy the game ever" before MVM comes out. Then once it does, that review is not only void, but completely false. As long as reviewers give some indication that what they played will not be the end (until that arbitrary end point actually does come) I'll be more content.