This game...
I swear to God, I hate it and yet I still hold out hope for the idea of it. After the first hangar module released drog-knows-how-long-ago, I poked around in it to see if walking around my ship was worth a fap. It was alright, but hardly anything to write home about. Then I just completely lost interest. Not butthurt or looking for a refund or anything, just... you know, if there's no THERE there, might as well just move on to something else and see if it surprises me later. It did teach me to never catch Kickstarter hype again. If a game is good upon release, reviews favorably by real people (fuck the journos), then I'll consider parting with the cash. Never again will I buy into "what could be".
Nevertheless, I had a couple of ships to my name, so the door was always open to take another look. I did this past weekend. Off the bat, I'm just going to say that it's virtually unplayable. Poorly optimized, and while my computer isn't the latest and greatest, it's not a potato and can handle most new releases turned up to 11. Despite all that, I figured I'd give it a fair shake. Not all areas are a slideshow, and the more egregious ones just need me to pause all movement until all the assets load, and then I can get around reasonably well. I've no interest in the Arena Commander or FPS modules, but I did want to check out some of the other PU mission types.
I'd read that the best way to do the FPS mining is to pick an investigation mission, which consists of ABC insurance company wanting you to go to N planet or moon and look for a missing client in a cave. This way, you can go to a cave that doesn't show up on the radar for other people (not instanced-- it's just a random cave), and your chances of dealing with goon squad or whatever are minimal. I have to say, the caves are pretty well done. They can go pretty deep and branch off in multiple directions, so having a few chemlights come in handy for trying to find your way out. Along the way, you can pick up a decent amount of ores, so long as you're equipped with a backpack of some kind, which is available in some of the armor sets.
I also picked up a couple of delivery missions, and I really enjoyed them. They're not fancy. Fly to some outpost in the middle of nowhere on a planet or moon, pick up the cargo, then fly to another outpost somewhere to deliver it. What sold it for me is that despite all the Bad Shit™ that exists about RSI, some of their developers are really good at things like environments. The ambiance of some of those places is fantastic. There was a level of immersion, where the act of finding a suitable landing spot for my Freelancer, and picking my way through trash and rubble heaps to the pick-up location, all while wind and dust blew around, really gave me a sense of being there. If they can pull off VR with that kind of atmosphere, it'll be amazing.
But, not all was rosy. The game frequently crashed, which resets your character to the last official base you landed on and rendering any progress void. It was frustrating, but not for a lack of earned credits. Money and anything you buy with it are wiped with each update, so I wasn't so much interested in the acquisition of more stuff, rather the gameplay of going through the motions.
Make no mistake, this thing is as rough as it gets, and whether they actually finish it is anyone's guess. But in all honesty, when I allowed myself to set aside my critical factor and just enjoy what I could, I found myself actually having a decent time.
