Baptized in Fire wrote:1,561 of 2,047 people (76%) found this review helpful
Not Recommended
0 hrs last two weeks / 36 hrs on record
Early Access Review
Bear in mind that this is a review of the game in its current state
Starbound sets out to expand the foundation built by Terraria and create a fully explorable universe with different planets, all with their own look, feel and randomized creatures. At first the game feels absolutely massive, and entering new biomes and finding civilizations can be a blast.
Upon starting the game you're given the choice between 6 different races, and get to customize the looks and appearance of your chosen character. You then start in your spaceship, and beam down to your first randomized planet. From now on you'll have to explore, mine, hunt and survive like in most games of this caliber. The game has some nice startup quests to 'ease' you into the game, and teach you the basics of crafting and hunting. As of now they run out very quickly, but more quests are hopefully getting added in the not-so-distant future. Audiowise the game is really good, and the music is nice and relaxing.
Unfortunately this is where the game takes a turn for the worse, and you're left with a tedious grind for resources and Pixels (similar to the xp in Minecraft, except that it also functions as currency for vendors in the game). Everything you want to craft takes Pixels, and let me tell you, they got really carried away with this idea. The best ways of getting Pixels is by killing enemies, the harder the enemy, the more Pixels they will drop. Say the enemies drop 50 Pixels each. Let me give you an example of how this gets really redundant. At one point in the game you need to create a robot that summons the second boss of the game, which will give you what you need to advance and see new parts of the universe. All in all it costs you 3000 Pixels to build it, that's 3000 Pixels to advance slightly. that's an absurd amount of monsters you have to kill. Another way to acquire Pixels is by using a refinery which transfers ores into Pixels, a method which prolongs the already massive amount of time spent mining in the game. I can appreciate a good grind and working towards something, but this is just ridiculous.
Combat in the game is laughable at best, and pretty much amount to pressing the button until you, or the enemy dies, and the navigation as you're both jumping around is frustrating beyond belief. The guns in the game are completely worthless and feel more like peashooters than actual lethal weapons.
Overall Starbound could have been a good experience if it hadn't fallen flat on it's face in so many areas. As of now, you should not bother with this game. There are far better Early Access games out there that deserve your money and attention.
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THE DEVELOPERS & MODERATORS
If the game doesn't already sound bad enough, I am sad to inform you that Chucklefish (the developers) are ♥♥♥♥ing idiots. Stable updates are very slow, with little worthwhile information being released to the public. The official Chucklefish forum is one of the most heavily censored websites you will ever visit on the internet. Every single criticism, how valid it may be, gets brushed under the rug as ''trolling'' and the user has a good chance of getting banned. They've gone ahead and blamed their playerbase for the lack of updates and the slow development, as well as claimed that the negative reviews are rising to the top because of ''vote brigading''. Head over to this review if you want solid proof of some of the things they've said:
http://steamcommunity.com/id/sweetjbro/recommended/On the 3rd of July the Steam forums for the game took a turn for the worse, when two new moderators started appearing, one of which greeted us with a very concerning post titled ''Welcome to the Steam forums!'' the post can be found here
http://imgur.com/hay9EI1 (In the following screenshots I will be censoring the usernames of regular Steam users, I will however not be censoring the moderators, as I feel they have greater responsibility, and should be held responsible for their actions.
''Please don't attack the game or the development team. Criticism is great, criticism is welcomed. Personal attacks, however, are not''
By ''don't attack the game or the development team'' she means not to criticise the game, and this has become abundantly clear over the last few days, as several posts criticising the game (in a civil matter, mind you) has been locked. Very few people have gone out of their way to ''attack'' specific members of Chucklefish. What I'm guessing they see as a 'personal attack'' is criticism of Chucklefish the developer. Someone saying ''♥♥♥♥ chucklefish'' is not a personal attack, it is someone showing their frustration with a developer who gladly took their money, and opted to treat them like garbage.
''Also I'd like you to refrain from discussing your experiences from other Starbound communities and sites, as well as in servers. This is the place for Starbound game discussion.''
All this is, is Chucklefish trying to cover up the fact that they've been mass banning and treating their customers like dirt over on their own forum, and this is their pathetic attempt at stopping people from sharing their stories.
http://imgur.com/heVz2osWhen she refers to the 'nasty' Steam page, she's talking about all the posts filled with criticism, complaints and quite frankly a bit of anger, from the people being silenced and treated like trash. That is the only thing that was 'nasty' on the forums aside from the occasional troll spewing their typical nonsense. Silencing everyone because of these select few, is just plain wrong.
http://imgur.com/YQVAPs6Our definition of censorship, is the same as the definition of censorship. As I'm writing this (4th of july 2014) out of the 53 posts on the first 4 pages of the Steam Forum (excluding pinned ones) 19 of them are locked, most of which were criticising the game, or the developer. THAT, is censorship.
By ''Keeping things on track'' and to ''to stop this place from being as nasty as it's been allowed to become'' she means to silence critique. The Steam forums were the place were customers could both praise and criticise the game, and now the latter right has been taken away from us.
http://imgur.com/HTrldFqGod, I wish she would've stopped after the first sentence, but of course she had to go on about people's supposed conspiring against Chucklefish. Of course people are going to be upset, of course people are going to criticise Chucklefish when they're being treated this way. There's also the threat in the middle ''I, as well as a typical player, don't care if you got banned''
http://i.imgur.com/1xSFeET.pngTranslation in this case: ''Don't criticise the game''. Why was the thread locked you ask? Because someone criticised the game. In a calm and 'civil' manner, mind you.
I am not one to tell you what to spend your money on, but if you don't want to support this kind of behavior, and this kind of developer, avoid this game like the plague.
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MORE SCREENSHOTS
http://imgur.com/YAy7166http://imgur.com/37oZHddhttp://imgur.com/m2k53jHhttp://imgur.com/uhyNRmPhttp://imgur.com/Haoz9gghttp://gyazo.com/94c29fae2e5a8c45cd533040b4a11847OTHER REVIEWS TO CONSIDER
http://steamcommunity.com/id/Omegacorp/ ... ed/211820/http://steamcommunity.com/id/sweetjbro/recommended/Posted: 4 Jul @ 4:30pm
Updated: 12 Aug @ 4:03am