Space Engineers – Review

Boring Stuff

Space Engineers is a sandbox game about engineering, construction and maintenance of space works. Players build space ships and space stations of various sizes and utilization (civil and military), pilot ships and perform asteroid mining.

(Source: Space Engineers Website)

Exciting Stuff

So here’s a game that’s eaten through my time today. A game where you play as an astronaut and build things and, if you’re me, crash them.

As games go it’s very well done. The game has a fully functioning and rather amazing physics engine that controls everything from pieces of your ship as they causally float away when you remove the wrong section, to the rocks that fly off as you mine them. You can actually control how many objects the game controls before they start to de-spawn and vanish. Though it does suggest to limit it to around 60. It goes much, much, much higher. I don’t have a pc capable of running that much though. I usually go for a few hundred objects. I should say however that this limit doesn’t include ships, space stations or anything else that’s big. This limit is just for the small objects that tend to ping off and around in the Zero-Gravity game.

At the time of writing, this game isn’t even finished yet. There’s still so much they want to add, yet it’s already an amazing game. There’s something satisfying where you start with nothing and build it all up. You feel so attached to the things you build, you hate any kind of damage to them. I even managed to lose a ship. Literally lose. I parked it somewhere and never found it again. That’s how big the smallest map is. Big enough to lose a bright red ship with lots of drills and lights on.

The game currently has two game modes. Sandbox, lets you play around and build things with unlimited resources. Build the best ship you can and enjoy it.
Survival meanwhile puts you in a world with nothing but a small ship with virtually no fuel and you have to survive from there by drilling into asteroids for resources. Very good fun.
The game also supports multiplayer games with up to 16 or so players. It’s definitely more fun with other people.

The game does have it’s downsides. It’s beefy and needs quite a good computer to run. That and, as i said before, it isn’t finished. They’re still constantly updating it. Which can mean that things change in your saves and break them or delete them.

 

In conclusion, it’s well worth the £14.99 that it costs. The game is just awesome and fun. I look forward to them adding the AI so i have somebody to try the weapons on.

Goat Simulator – Review

Boring Stuff

Goat Simulator is a small, broken and stupid game. I t was made in a couple of weeks so don’t expect a game in the size and scope of GTA with goats. In fact, you’re better off not expecting anything at all actually. To be completely honest, it would be best if you’d spend your $10 on a hula hoop, a pile of bricks, or maybe a real-life goat.

(Source Goat Sim website)

Exciting Stuff

Now this is a game i’ve been excited about for a while. Don’t look at me like that, you haven’t played it yet! In the game you play as a goat. What you do after that is up to you. This includes going to space, smashing up a game dev studio and oddly enough sacrificing goats to the gods.

It’s not a simulator in the traditional sense. You don’t play as goats with glowing green diamonds above their heads. You have a single goat and a world full of physics to play with. There are no real aims to the game. You just do what you want. There are a few goals the game sets but you don’t NEED to do them and you don’t have to do them in order. They more or less suggest things to try.

It’s a game that actively encourages you to try and break it. As it states on the website, they won’t fix any bugs, except game breaking ones. And the bugs are everywhere. But they’re funny bugs. For example when you climb ladders (Yes a goat can climb a ladder, who knew) The goats head gets stuck through the ladder and subsequently jitters about everywhere. It’s insanely funny to watch. You can also set people on fire by dragging them onto the BBQ. I totally didn’t spend half an hour making a HUGE bonfire.

I can tell this game is going to get Game Of The Year for simulators. Or I hope it does. Just so they can make some form of joke making it a GOATY or something.

Goatpack

All in all, Goat Simulator is an amazing game and almost certainly worth the £6.00 they’re charging for it.

Kerbal Space Program – Review

What better way to start a new blog than to start with a strong game?

 

The Boring Stuff

Kerbal Space Program (commonly abbreviated to KSP) is a sandbox-style space flight simulator with gameplay elements currently in development for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

(Source: Wikipedia)

 

The Exciting Stuff

According to steam i’ve logged around 50 hours on KSP just building, crashing and modifying rockets with the intention of landing on planets. It’s fun!

The game currently has two modes. Sandbox and Career mode.

Sandbox is like the name suggests, a mode to go mad in. Build a crazy rocket and see if it flies. Most of the time it won’t and you’ll see some rather spectacular explosions. Every so often though it’ll soar into the sky like a coke bottle that you stuffed too many mentos into. Everything in unlocked in this mode and you don’t need to worry about anything.

Career mode however is different. In this you have to do scientific experiments in order to unlock more parts for your crafts. The more you unlock the better things you can build and the more you can unlock. At this time there’s no real penalties for failing except the loss of a beloved Kerbal (the inhabitants of the planet)

 

The game is set on an earth like planet known as Kerbin. Outside of this planet there’s a variety of other planets and moons to explore. One of which is made entirely of gas, something it took several failed rockets to learn.

 

This is almost certainly a game to go and get if you’re into NASA simulators, sending things to space or if you’re down right bored and looking to waste a few hours building insane inventions.