You ever end up writing a 3000 word rant on your biggest ever gaming disappointment?



It's August 19th, 2019. My last summer break before I go to high school.

My 15th birthday.

It was an ok day. Some trouble arised and I wasn't able to go to my grandpa's house with some friends like we were planning to, and as such I just spent the day at home with some family members coming over after dinner, nothing special (to the point where some old messages might lead me to believe something bad might've made me think it was my worst birthday ever? Honestly I can't remember, and it doesn't matter).

That is, until around 11PM. While I wasn't aware, gamescom was also taking place at around the same time, and one of the projects announced there would go on to impact me in a way nothing else has since.

As I was wiping out my phone, a youtube notification popped in. "Kerbal Space Program 2 Cinematic Announcement Trailer". I was ecstatic, to say the least. Literally the best birthday gift that I, someone who has always been a bit of a space nerd, at the time thought I had and would ever have. A sequel to one of my little gaming obsessions. A sequel with all the features I could ever want! Colonies? Interstellar travel? MULTIPLAYER? All out of the box? Quite literally the game of my dreams, and it's releasing NEXT YEAR? Holy cow that is amazing!...

3 years, 6 months, and 6 days later. It's February 24th, 2023. I'm now 18 years old, and the second semester of college (and what would then be the lowest period of my entire life up until the moment I'm writing this) had just begun, and as I'm watching the game of 15 year old me's dreams release in real time in early access, what had seem inevitable to me since the system specs had been released is now actually happening.

If you've heard even a single thing about it, you probably know. It's a mess. Hell I'll even say that "mess" is downplaying it. It was awful, actually horrendous. Probably the worst release of an early access game I've ever seen. Content wise? Worse than KSP1 in its beta stage almost a decade earlier. Performance wise? You might as well just break into actual NASA to get one of their supercomputers and even THAT probably wouldn't be able to break 60 fps with a 1000+ part ship. Stability/bug wise? Literally hundreds of bugs found right at release. From locations done by mesh just spawning in completely random locations near the ship, to clipping through the ground constantly, to wings literally falling off planes when spawning into the most noodliest rockets known to man. To the maneuver creator barely working, from orbits just... decaying over time??? I don't think I need to keep spewing hyperbole here, it was truly a mess.

And even ignoring the issues that I just listed given that admittedly those can be solved, what was there was just, very underwhelming? Take the art direction for example, it is genuinely baffling. Everything is way too damn reflective. The parts look like they're made of plastic. The kerbals themselves look more Minionized than ever before. The UI looks hideous and near unreadable (I get it it's supposed to emulate how modern cockpits look, but I think they just took the aesthetic without actually knowing why it is that way? Like the text is all pixelated because it's just cheaper to have low pixel count displays on those, that shit is NOT meant to be on an actual video game UI, and this is just one aspect of it). I guess shit like the clouds and the atmospheric scatter look alright? But I reckon even they know KSP1 mods did it better because they literally hired a modder that was doing a volumetric clouds mod for KSP1. What a shock. And god don't even get me started on the Kurzgesagt-lite tutorial videos like god I'll have plenty to say about the tutorials later trust me.

Needless to say, it was all very disappointing. Especially for me, as up until the system specs were released I was literally IN THE FRONTLINES defending the team from every naysayer, and deflecting every red flag thrown at me left and right with what I can only describe now as excuses. "Oh the Take2 takeover was mostly the fault of Star Theory's management! Most of the dev team still went through to the new team!", "Oh the game getting delayed more and more is a good thing! It's just COVID that messed everything up! (Even though by this point most video game companies have already sorted their shit together)", "Oh the game will not actually run this awful at launch! It's just the Unity Debug Mode that runs worse!". All excuses that I remember spewing to this day. And even after the system specs were released, even after the mess of the launch, I was still willing to give the game a chance, albeit now with cautious optimism instead of blind defending, but even that didn't last very long.

9 months and 27 days later. It's December 20th, 2023. I'm now 19 years old, writing this paragraph in the college hall as I wait for the last class of this semester, as the impending deadline at the beginning of January for the main project and the following exams loom over. I'm a different man. I've played a lot of games. I've read some VNs that might've affected me emotionally in ways they had no right to do. Life could be better but... heh, it also could be worse. Even with all the new worries and things I have to think about, despite all the times I've told myself I would move on from this game, I just... cannot. It persists in my little noggin. I mean, it's no wonder I've decided to write this now, given that the For Science update just released, and like, am I supposed to think it's good?

Like, I haven't played it. Even with all the alleged performance improvements and the nice graphs their twitter account shared, I still doubt the game would break 60 at the lowest settings, so why even bother trying? And as I see ksp youtubers celebrating this update like the greatest thing to ever happen since sliced bread, I can't stop thinking to myself... is the bar that low?

Like, as far as I am aware the update is just... heating that as far as I am aware is worse than it was in KSP1 in certain key aspects (like visually for example, the heating effects look hideous), a "story mode" that is just the missions in the original career mode without the testing part missions and with """"""""""funny"""""""""" dialogue, and a progression system that is just... what the original's was 10 years ago (oh, but now some experiments take time! truly revolutionary and not at all a minor feature of many in the Kerbalism mod of the original, truly impressive Intercept).

And yes, there were a ton of bug fixes and optimization updates too, but there were also allegedly some regressions regarding other issues and... I'm gonna be for real, how much more can this game even BE further optimized?

One of the reasons I stopped defending this game at all is when I found out about something truly shocking, at least for me. One of the main appeals this game as a concept had was the fact that, well, it was an entirely new game! New game then, means new codebase, and if you know anything about the first KSP game, then you know a complete rewrite of the codebase was not only expected, but necessary for this game to run well, let alone handle multiplayer. HOWEVER, THAT WAS NOT THE CASE! As it turns out, data mining an Unity game is piss easy, and everyone quickly found out most of the codebase for the backend stuff was taken straight from a beta version of KSP1 (NOT EVEN THE MOST RECENT VERSION), so I guess this new game is at the end of the day just a glorified KSP1 mod, OOPS! A decision that was surely made at the time to cut cost on hiring actual engineers, has now backfired immensely given that now whoever poor bastard is working on this game over at Intercept has to worry about a decade of tech debt on a codebase made by a guy who wasn't even a programmer by trade at the time, fucking amazing! Amazing gambit sir Nate! Like are we seriously expecting the game that can barely handle a current late game save file at an acceptable frame rate (given a review from a KSP youtuber that I watched that got the new update early) will be able to handle shit that will be expected in a late game save of the game in its planned final state like:

- A lot of colonies running at the same time with multiple logistics paths of resources being transported left and right.
- A ton of interstellar mother ships which will probably have THOUSANDS OF PARTS EACH, WITH EACH PART BEING SIMULATED INDIVIDUALLY ALL THE TIME because yea thats a thing that totally should've been carried over from the first game (and not even mentioning that at the moment every single ship is being fully simulated at the same time regardless of what you're focusing on)
- And on top of all that, MULTIPLAYER, because yea THIS GAME, THAT IS BUILT ON TOP OF A CODEBASE THAT IS INCAPABLE TO HANDLE SUCH THING WITHOUT DOING A REALLY HACKY JOB, IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE MULTIPLAYER REMEMBER???

God what a fucking mess. And like I keep coming back to how they kept the old code base from the og game because... that's just a mentality that permeates throughout the entire game! Remember the noodly rockets bug I mentioned earlier? Well I LIED because it wasn't a bug actually it WAS A FEATURE. Local genius Nate Simpson apparently thought that the noodly rockets of the original game were... part of its identity!! So they kept that! And made it even worse! Together with a bunch of other flaws that really shouldn't have been in this brand new shiny game!! INCREDIBLE!!!

It's like these people are so scared of doing an actual sequel that they instead just default to doing everything the way the old game did, although maybe that's more due to laziness and lack of actual direction and not them just loving the og game that much. And the stuff they change/add... isn't that good either!!! Like the UI, forget how it looks, it's just so clunky and cluttered. Like what was wrong with the part info window? Why does everything need to be locked in a fucking list now that I have to scroll through instead of being able to organize everything the way I want across the screen? Why is the navball in a corner??? Isn't one of the big principles of UI/UX design that the most important elements always need to be at the center of the screen? If you wanted to make space to make it easier to see the rocket you could've just put it slightly to the side but still at the center! Why is the SAS assist command this ugly ass circle with a 3d model representation of your ship's orientation??? I already know what these symbols mean! Put these on a list that takes up less space like in the original! And if someone doesn't know what those symbols mean, then find a better way to do so because honestly i don't see how the way they've done it helps either. It's a goddamn mess.

And the priorities are just so all over the place. Even disregarding the fact that this game was very clearly not meant to be released in Early Access given that they've been working on every feature at the same time until close to launch instead of just building a good foundation first??? There's just so many... baffling decisions. Why are there so many simple QOL features missing? Why did we have to wait so long for a TWR reader in the VAB even though, as far as I am aware, that's literally something you can do in a spreadsheet in like 5 minutes. Or god the tutorials... why are there even tutorials in this early access release??? You know, the period where anything can change at any moment's notice??? Why not do those close to the full launch when everything is already set in stone?? Why waste resources on animations you might not even use by the time the game is feature complete??? And regarding the tutorials themselves they just suck. Disregarding the annoying ass YT Kids sounding narrator they are literally just .mp4's followed by the KSP1 tutorials again. No innovation, might as well just watch a Scott Manley video and learn the game that way instead (which some dudes from the PR team have LITERALLY SAID TO DO WHEN PEOPLE WERE COMPLAINING ABOUT THE TUTORIALS like god have I already mentioned how bad their PR team was throughout this entire ordeal? Genuinely such a lack of professionalism that I rather not get into it). You literally have the opportunity to do... idk?? Cool interactive lectures on physics concepts? You know?? Taking advantage of the fact that this is a VIDEO GAME?? But nah youtube videos have worked up until now let's just do that inste- GOD THIS GAME SUCKS THIS GAME REALLY SUCKS SO MUC

...ok I guess I could talk about stuff I like?? Uhhhh the sound design in general is excellent, props for that. Uhhhh the planets look nice? Not as good looking as some mods I've seen of the original but you know, they still look alright. And I guess being able to build multiple ships in the same workspace regardless of orientation is a good QOL concept? Wish it worked better tho...

... Look, I don't like to be negative, just look at my rating graph in my profile. Like god I literally gave UDG a 6/10 despite the fact that that game by all accounts sucks really fucking bad. Whenever I hate, I'm most likely just being deeply ironic at the main discord server I talk in, it's just not my thing to do unironically most of the time.

So... Why am I even giving more energy towards this game than seemingly its entire management team did? Why am I even bothering writing this 3000 word review about a game in a series that only I care about in all the friend circles I frequent? How many likes is this even gonna get? Five? If that?...

I guess it just comes down to what I said in the beginning. Even after this long, the space nerd kid still inside of me still wants... well not this game but the idea of this game to come to fruition. I want to be able to build giant complexes in distant moons. Building giant motherships which part towards far away stars, as I awe at both the immensity of the cosmos, and the beauty of the small specks floating through its milky vastness of nothing. For some people space might be frightening, but for me it's not. For me this setting itches that primordial instinct of mine that urges me to go out, find things, explore the unseen, and that makes me both afraid, and utterly attracted by the unknown. It's something I really wished to have but, this game ain't it. And I know about games like Outer Wilds and No Man's Sky that are kinda like that (if anyone uses NMS as a counter argument towards my sentiment that KSP2 has no future I'm crushing your skull with my bare hands btw), but... I guess there is simply nothing quite like Kerbal Space Program... I do still need to play those games at some point tho lmao.

Well, I guess there's that, if any aspiring dev teams want to make a name for themselves, maybe make the coop aerospace sim everyone wants! If you start now, maybe you'll be able to announce it in the same week as the inevitable apology from Nate about how multiplayer just "aint possible" and how they're instead just releasing the game as is (aka, soft canceling it and moving on to another fandom to grift).

And to any low level Intercept Games developer that just read through this, I really am sorry. I am sorry that you probably have to tolerate a bunch of passionless, directionless managers as you try to salvage whatever you can of this mess. In a way this is really what's wrong with the current industry. Not predatory microtransactions or buggy early access releases. Nah those are just symptoms. What is truly wrong is how much of this industry is led by people that just do not care for this medium, and only care about filling their pockets while the low level developers pull 24 hour shifts in order to pull yet another broken mess through the finish line. But while I could continue to wax poetic about the systematic problems of capitalism, I guess that's a bit out of the scope of this review.

I think that's everything I have to say about what is undoubtedly my least favorite game of all time, and I really hope I don't need to talk about it ever again (unless they somehow manage to turn this ship over, which as I elaborated, I don't think they will). May y'all have a pleasant day, and to end this review, and I mean this completely sincerely...


Fuck off Nate Simpson

While I wont be going into too much detail on any specific plot points, I'll be talking about the themes of the game in general, so be warned I suppose


"All is in the name of guiding humanity down the right path"

Over the past 6 months, I've been dedicating the majority of both my free time and what was supposed to be my non free time to going through Ryukishi's main (and most well known) franchise, that being the No Naku Koro Ni series (or, as it is more well known in the west: When They Cry).
From the quintessential VN classic that is Higurashi, to the somewhat flawed but still ultimately beautiful masterpiece that is Umineko, these games have been an hell of a ride to experience even with all the quirks that are oh so common with works written by this guy. And while I've been loving going through these, I've never felt like writing up something about them, mainly because of the feeling that I would never be able to do these games justice.
This time, however, it's kinda different.

Let's get the obvious jokes out of the way: Ciconia Phase 2 is never coming out; GouSotsu was trash; Umineko Gold is dead; what the fuck was 07th smoking when they came up with Beako; Ryukishi is an hack and a fraud so on and so forth.
That being said HOLY kerokero Ciconia Phase 1 is without a shadow of a doubt (at least in my eyes) the single best introductory arc of any WTC game EVER, and one of the best works by Ryukishi IN GENERAL (at least from what I've read, I'll read Higanbana and RGD eventually I swear).

When looking at the synopsis, it's clear from the get go how much the scope has expanded. A story of global conflict, conspiracy, and military action makes it a far cry from the series' old settings of a rural Japanese village and a small island turned catbox of infinite possibilities, and even if this isn't Ryukishi's first rodeo when it comes to alternative history/speculative fiction/whatever the fuck you wanna call it, just the sheer girth of this game's setting would make it seem like it would end in failure at first, but as the game progresses it's very clear that not only does Ryukishi have a really good grasp on competent worldbuilding, but he also does it while providing interesting discussions on the game's various themes.

Even if the game's writing comes with all the Ryukishi quirks you would expect, like repeating ideas ad nauseam or classic Ryukishi Bloat™, aside from the first half being admittedly a bit too much expository the writing is without a doubt excellent. While at times feeling somewhat preachy, the game discusses a lot of relevant stuff without feeling too much patronizing. From the game's setting you would probably expect the characters to repeat stuff like "errm war... bad!" over and over again, but instead Ryukishi just assumes that the reader is intelligent enough to already know that, and uses that time to discuss and explore surrounding ideas like radicalism, mob mentality, the nature of the military outside of war as a means of stability, as well as various other things. However, and probably most surprisingly, the game doesn't really discuss directly what its arguably the most prominent issue in this story, the nature of child soldiers, but while the game's character don't really discuss this at length (after all, in this society this is already not only normalized, but also needed, so it really wouldn't make sense for the characters to do that at lenght), the game instead uses its extended cast to explore this.

Ciconia's cast is... big. Really big. Even when only looking at the gauntlet knights, we're talking about 24 of them. And while of course not everyone has gotten their chance to shine in this phase, the ones that did get screen time are for the most part pretty fun! The main two squads that the game focus on in particular were very much highlights. Although seeing these kids goof off is fun and all, at the end the game is sure to remind you that at the end of the day, the situations they've been put in are not good in the slightest. Being the carriers of the most advanced form of weaponry in the game's world, the weight they carry is a lot, way too much for anyone to carry, let alone a child.

And as the game progresses, as it becomes more and more clear this is going to end in tragedy, as the cast discusses what it means to be a soldier, if they really have free will, or if they really are just pieces on a gameboard, to be discarded after they got no more use, the game reaches its climax, where their individuality gets stripped of them and they turn into what they're supposed to be... soldiers.

Without spoiling what actually happens, saying that the game's ending is great, would honestly be a severe understatement. The game shows you, at the start of every chapter, the Doomsday Clock. And as its hand reaches the end, you realize that what's about to happen is inevitable... And yet, that doesn't stop the ending from being absolutely tragic, with an incredible last chapter+epilogue combo that will leave you feeling betrayed, angry, confused, sad, and most importantly of all, craving more.

Early jokes aside, it really is worth pointing out that as of writing its been 4 years and a day since the release of Phase 1, and while this wait hasn't been exactly radio silent, with Ryukishi giving a couple of small updates here and there that basically boil down to "I'm still working on it guys!", the fact that he's probably busy with other projects like Silent Hill f means that we might still need to wait a while to see this story get continued.

But, to be honest, I'm willing to wait, because what I see here is something that, even if it hasn't reached the peaks of his previous works yet, absolutely has the potential to be Ryukishi's single best work yet. And hell isn't the notion that in order for a miracle to happen you need to believe in it one of the biggest messages in Higurashi? So I guess I'll believe in Phase 2.

However long it takes, I'll wait to be welcomed again to A3W, even if I have to wait 2 more years for it to come on a white horse.

For the last few months, I have been replaying the LittleBigPlanet games. Well, I use the term “replay” liberally here, as from the 5 games I have touched until now, I only really grew up with two of them (LBP 2 and Karting). But still, playing through games like LBP 1 and Vita for the first time just made me realize how truly special this series is.
But this review isn’t about any of those games (although maybe I’ll write something about Vita in particular, whenever I get inspired to do so). This review is about LBP 2, one of the main games I grew up with, and possibly the first game I played on my old PS3.

So where am I even supposed to start? Should I talk about the incredibly fun and imaginative story mode? About the new power ups and how fun they are? About the countless new tools that make this a worthwhile sequel? Maybe I should talk about how this game’s creation tools have quite possibly the best Skill floor/Skill ceiling balance out of any game with a User Generated Content focus ever? Or maybe I should just go on and on about how both the OST and the licensed track selection is full of bangers.
Well, I think I should start with the event that kind of led me into writing this review in the first place.

Recently, two very important announcements were made regarding both Media Molecule and their most recent game Dreams. Not only did Mm announce that they would stop live supporting (releasing updates) Dreams in September of this year; but Mark Healey, the cofounder of Media Molecule and the director of LBP1/2 and Dreams, would leave the company.

If I were to go on a tangent and explore the many reasons that people give about what went oh so wrong with Dreams, we would honestly be here all day, but still, one of the main reasons I keep seeing pop up regarding this is how Dreams should’ve, in some way, allowed for users to monetize their content. The mere existence of this idea made me extremely confused, to think that one of the main faults of Dreams, a game whose main ideal is being all about sharing, about many people coming together and sharing what they know how to do best, and together forming countless experiences, being that it didn’t allow for its users to charge money for said sharing, left me extremely dumbfounded, because honestly, it is true. And that’s when I realized that something like LBP 2 happening again isn’t really possible anymore.

In many ways, what LBP 2 set out to do isn’t very different from what Dreams set out to do. While LBP 2’s tools are far more limited, there’s still a huge focus on not only being able to do platformer levels like in LBP 1, but also full on games. Both made sure that a vast majority of the game’s user generated content was available for all to experience free of charge. There was no monetization model, and the only real barrier of entry would be the few levels that were created using DLC tools. And yet, LBP 2 saw great success, while Dreams didn’t really see that. So, what happened?
 
Well, for one, the UGC market is just way to oversaturated nowadays. I mean, while games like Roblox and Minecraft did exist in 2011, they weren’t as huge as they are now, not by a long shot. And aside from that, it just comes down to the fact that most UGC games nowadays either have some sort of monetization model or have a pretty high skill floor that prevents many people from deciding to create stuff in it in the first place.

Roblox, for example, is pretty infamous for its rampant monetization model. Not only are most games filled with Robux purchases, but the users that make that content in the first place barely receive anything for it. For Minecraft, you either know how to build really well, know how to use command blocks (or make datapacks), or you know how to code in Java. And this is only really applies to the Java edition, as for Bedrock, you have the marketplace, which is yet another example of companies monetizing the content their own users make.

And aside from those two, are there really any other relevant UGC games out there? I guess there’s that new Fortnite thing related to the unreal engine? And even if games like Garry’s Mod still exist, be honest, who here even knows how to use Hammer?

I might be extremely nostalgia biased here, but there really aren’t any UGC games like LBP 2 remaining anymore. Games that not only are solely focused on their creation tools, but ones where really the only incentive to create is the fact that us, human beings, have that innate desire to create, to express ourselves, to make art. And even if the LBP series continued for a while after 2, it never reached the same heights. LBP Vita, for as good as that game was, was stuck on the PS Vita. And LBP 3 is… well, LBP 3.

I mentioned earlier that LBP 2 was most likely the first game I played on my PS3, but honestly, it might’ve actually been the first ACTUAL game that I ever played, aside from maybe Club Penguin. Before that, I only really only played edutainment games on my V Smile, or shitty flash games on sketchy websites. When my dad decided to get me a PS3 for Christmas of 2011 (I really wanted to play a Phineas and Ferb movie tie in game surprisingly, given that my dad ended up buying Uncharted 3 sometime later, I feel like he bought it as much for him as for myself), he got a bundle with LBP 2 because he thought Sackboy looked cute on the box. Honestly that might’ve been the best coincidence of my life.

Hadn’t it been for that, I would’ve never even touched an LBP game most likely, let alone as my first true gaming experience. And as years go by, I realize that maybe the whole reason as to why I’m so interested in going with game development as a potential career is because I played LBP 2 in the first place. Maybe as my little 7 year old brain looked at the endless sea of levels, I subconsciously realized that not only do people make these electronic entertainment experiences, but that maybe, one day, I could do them too. And as much as UGC centric games nowadays might make kids realize that too, the fact that LBP 2’s user generated content didn’t have barely any barrier of entry whatsoever is probably why I’ve always viewed games as a way of self-expression, as an art form, first, and as a product second. And that’s why its even more sad that we will most likely never see such a game happening any time soon. And while the servers have been closed for a good while now, the memories, the private servers, and the countless current and future game developers that were inspired to pursue that path due to the LBP series, will most likely carry that dream of boundless self-expression and creativity until the horizon.

It's been a while since I finished this game, but was cleaning up my backlog here so might as well throw a few thoughts.

This fan remake of the classic pc game Half Life (that I'm sure doesn't need introduction) is a extremely impressive piece of work, considering again, it was made by fans on their free time, and that fact alone is worth praising, although I did pay money for it, so I can't exactly sweep under the rug every flaw just because "it's a fan project".

First, gameplay: this remake, while having the same weapons as the original, still does things very differently from the original. Not only there are new physics based puzzles to take advantage of the source engine, but the gunplay itself feels different from the original, more closely resembling the Half Life 2's gunplay, and the same thing can also apply to the HECU soldier's AI, which also more closely resembles the Combine's AI, although they were made changes to try to bring it more close to the HECUs in the original. Although these changes were not a deal breaker for me, if you preferred HL1's gunplay and AI to a massive degree when compared to HL2, you might not like these changes.

As for the plot, before Xen the game still follows the same plotline as the original game, for the most part, On Rails was very streamlined to be less confusing. And this section of the game has a very nice pace and flow that ultimately culminates in Xen.

Xen... Is weird...
I like the asthetic changes a lot, and the area looks gorgeous (although it does come at a cost of some semi rare frame drops here and there, didn't bother me much but I had to point it out). And even outside of looks many of the gameplay elements are well implemented and fun. Where I start to have an issue with it is when Xen gives you too much of the same good thing. Like seriously it drags SO MUCH, like seriously there's like 5 different puzzles where you have to go to 3 places to activate something and it gets annoying really fast. Although I did take breaks from time to time so that certainly helped (and weirdly enough I ended up enjoying Interloper a lot, even though that's the least popular chapter of the game, and even then I wish they cut down the fat, specially near the end).

So basically, you have a remake that does a lot of stuff right, and some stuff wrong, and although I could say more stuff about this game, I'm writing this late at night and this was supposed to just be some quick thoughts on the game, so yea.

4/5, this is the same rating I would give HL1 if I made a review on it, and while I think this is a pretty good remake, I also recommend playing through the original too, as they are both different games that are both worth checking out.