UKC

Anyone playing this?

In reply to aln:

Mate at work has told me about it... It sounds a lot like Elite?(which means it's only a matter of time before I buy it)...

In reply to aln:

65days of static soundtrack. no idea about the game, but i might have to buy the album

In reply to toad:

Few mates have played it, overall opinion is its great for 2-3 hours then it gets very 'samey' and dull. Shame.

In reply to Steve nevers:


Im on the verge of buying it right now but there is that nagging feeling that it might get a bit samey... But then again i played the arse off elite when i was younger (I'm talking years and years here). I have that obsessive nature where I can quite happily play games to death.... Skyrim. Red dead...fallout...

Sod it. Im buying it

In reply to aln:

Might even grab a PS4 if there is a good enough deal on console + NMS.

In reply to aln:

Massive game. Spawned on a planet called Pongxianqin with a knackered spacecraft. Out foraging for resources to fix said craft I was attacked by a plant and then fell into a cave, promptly getting hopelessly lost. Eventually (by following caverns that sloped upwards) I surfaced, located and fixed my ship. Still no Hyperdrive though so I venture towards a neighbouring planet on traditional engines. This takes 3 hours! THREE HOURS!! The game is as frustrating as it is awe inspiring

In reply to aln:

Soundtrack is bloody ace!

In reply to aln:

It's interesting. The way I'm playing at the moment is I've come across one of the alien races and I'm just trying to learn as much of the language as I can. I'm also kind of cruising along to get myself to this Atlas thing to see what that is all about, find stuff, trade it, I upgraded my ship, catalogue the flora and fauna and just explore. I'm not interested in fighting unless it's in self-defence, I just like the exploration aspect and trying to make sense of the other races as it is a rather "lonely" game.

In reply to PamPam:

I am in the same boat as you.
Learned 30 words of Gek and just exploring around.
I have my hyper drive and just got a new ship (after using the hyper drive to get to the next bit where you learn to make the fuel for it).
New ship has 21 slots.

In reply to Dax H:

I came across the Gek but decided I'd learn about the Korvax as they were the first I came across and they kind of intrigue me.

Sentinels can be really annoying though. They were hostile on this planet which was really abundant in resources but they threw a right tizzy if you took anything! I made a swift exit after that!

In reply to PamPam:

Had a hour (okay it ran to 2) tonight and made a couple of mistakes.

I found a crashed ship and swapped it for mine but I was short of 2 zinc to repair it and apparently there is none on the planet.
Second mistake was going in to a cave.
It took me a hour to find the way out again and still no zinc, fortunately once out I found my old ship and swapped back again.

In reply to Dax H:

So should I buy it? I'm the one who has only ever really played Skyrim, Read Dead and Fallout 4..and I've played them to death. I'm talking YEARS.....

Will I lose myself in this?

Would you recommend it?

In reply to PamPam:

I must be in the same general region as you I'm up to 50 words of Kvorax and 3 Gek!

In reply to ThunderCat:




You will definitely lose yourself in this I got stuck underground for 4 hours (went hunting resources but lost the entrance and emerged a good hours walk from my ship.

In reply to aln:

Anyone else been through one of those black hole yet?

In reply to ThunderCat:




I honestly don't know.
I too played to completion (well the main quest and most of the side mussions) the games you list and it's very very rare I stay with a game long enough to finish it.
This one is a funny one.
Other than exploration there is very little to do but I keep coming back to it and I find that if I turn it on a few hours have vanished before I realise.

My judge on game buying is this.
What us the entertainment per hour value likely to be.
Going out for a meal, £50 for 2 to 3 hours fun.
Renting a new movie £8 for 2 hours
Going climbing, can't really quantify because I have had the gear for year's
No man's sky, £50, got about 10 hours in so far so £5 per hour. Not bad value really.
As a comparison the game Destiny including the DLC has cost me £150 but I have over 1000 hours in over 2 years so it works out at 15p per hour.

In reply to Dax H:

Call me a mahoosive geek but I've calculated it's going to take me about 2 years to complete this. I'm finding about 1 black hole a week that seems to jump about 2 light years towards the centre. Approx 180ly to go (about 90 weeks of gaming)

In reply to broken spectre:

To be honest I am now bored of it.
It's just not grabbing me like most exploration games do.
Seems strange with an almost unlimited number of planets they all look basically the same.

In reply to Dax H:

Indeed - it turns into an endless cycle of mining Plutonium, Zinc & Heridium; buying suspension fluid, crafting warp cells then warping to a near identical system. I don't think the reward (whatever that may be) that you get on reaching the Galactic Centre can be worth the effort!

In reply to broken spectre:

Don't forget learning a new language every time you warp to a different galaxy. At least I assume this is the case. I have been to 3 now and met 3 different race's.

Back to destiny for me I think, new DLC is only a month away now.

In reply to broken spectre:


That's pretty much my feelings as well. Borrowed if from a mate at work, Got my ship working, got the galactic hyperdrive workings, flew around a a bit and I do get the feeling it'll be a constant case of picking up those elements to keep your life support / thrusters / lasers working.

Spent about four hours on it last night.

The acid test is usually me sitting at work thinking " I can't wait to finish to get back home to play it"...and I'm just not feeling it.

Really wanted it to hit me the same way Elite did back in the 80's.

Meh. Never Mind...I hear rumours of the next segment in the Red Dead franchise is on the cards?

In reply to aln:

I haven't played it but have looked into it a lot.

Reviews both professional, youtuber, and friends is pretty poor.

First off - HUGE bugs problem. Lots of people failing to get it to run at all and taking a lot of time for others to get it running vaguely ok.

graphics - initial thought is "ooh that's pretty". Then you realise that really every world is the same with slight reskins, and actually if you look properly the effort put in is pretty poor. It would rate highly if this was 10 years ago.

gameplay - extremely samey. This was thought by many who pre-ordered way back that it would be an mmo type but it's completely single player so yes a huge universe but it's a very lonely one with very samey (you'll have done it all in the first hour) gameplay. Every world you land on it's "yellow stuff is zinc, red stuff is plutonium, and the big blocks are ...whatever they're called". There's not really much in the way of a story and what there is is half arsed. When you get a call to go somewhere it gives an estimated satnav style timer and usually is 15-20mins and actually means 15-20 mins of walking. With nothing interesting on the way.
it's very like mobile gaming brought to the proper gaming platforms. Enforced wait timers followed by enforced grind unless you want even longer wait timers.

Best description I've seen is that if you saw it as it is and it was a beta or probably early access you'd be excited, but it's so lacking that for a full release game it's shockingly disappointing.

In reply to Scarab9:

Its an Indy game marketed by Sony as AAA. The dev team at Hello was 10, I think 15 at max. Not sure what happened there between them and Sony but I'm assuming everyone has become millionaires. But they are going to be in trouble over their next realease based upon the disingenuous marketing and publicity surrounding this. Never played it because it doesn't interest me, its just grinding and 'exploration'. I'd rather read a book.

D

In reply to Scarab9:

That's a shame, the idea had so much promise.

In reply to aln:

I really wanted to like it.

In reply to a few people:
Have got it, am playing it, not sure whether I'm enjoying it but also not sure whether the problem is with me or with the game.

Back in the 80's we had Elite, which was very similar. Massive amount of exploration, not a right lot happening otherwise. No real "defined path" apart from a few ad-hoc missions. Really bad graphics.

Since then we've got used to computer games with "missions" and a very defined plot framework, where the player is forced down a defined path.

But one of the reasons mission-based games were developed were that by forcing the player's path, a vast leap forward in graphics was possible, as building models was a lot of work and hence you were only rendering the bit the player could get to/see. It also gave the player something to "achieve".

NMS is a return to the "unlimited world" scenario with nothing much to do but explore (of Elite) but with a computer generating the graphics on the fly, hence getting around the above problem.

I *think* that the problem is that I've been playing mission-based games for so long (Doom/Quake/Unreal/Call of Duties/Mass Effect/etc) I've forgotten what it's like to have free will.

So not sure if I need to change my mindset, or there's something missing in NMS.

In reply to John_Hat:

Lack of multiplayer seriously hinders its long term playability as an open world exploration universe sandbox and Hello were coy about its implementation. They kind of glossed over it saying you were unlikely ever to meet anyone as the game environment was so big. Now we know there is no multiplayer code in there at all. I think what they've achieved with it for such a small dev team is incredible but there's a big chasm between the presumably Sony financed AAA hype and the reality.

D

In reply to John_Hat:



Eliteangerous is pretty cool if you want an update to the Elite model. It's pretty much the only game I've ever played, from the C64 back in the 80s, through Elite:The New Kind, and Oolite, and now Eliteangerous. The graphics are, of course, well improved over the original wireframe graphics

Well worth a look if you liked Elite.

In reply to John_Hat:







I at first wondered the same about No Man's Sky. Was it because an Indy / Niche game type was going mainstream and the AAA gamers aren't prepared for something that doesn't spoon feed them plot? (not meaning that as a slur, nothing wrong with that if that's what you enjoy). But I do like games that make you explore and make up your own targets (or just enjoy the scenery) and the problem with NMS is that the 'randomly generated' doesn't make it very random!

The yellow thing that gives zinc might look a bit different on each planet type but it's still the yellow thing that gives zinc. Ditto the red thing the black thing the blue thing etc.
The creatures are similar...and don't interact and form any context or ecosystem, they just bumble about on the most basic of AI's.
The settlements you find are all identical, uninhabited, with nothing interesting there.

It's not a huge randomly generated game, it's a very narrowly generated game with nothing much to explore or get lost in.

In reply to aln:

nearly put this yesterday... if anyone is after big, exploitative type games, as long as(usually) you don't mind poorer graphics (indie games) then check out a youtuber called ManyATrueNerd. He does some great lets play/intros to games like that. He's done a few space ones recently.

In reply to Scarab9:

This made me chuckle.

Game trailers, as opposed to the final version:

youtube.com/watch?v=RvAwB7ogkik&

In reply to Dauphin:


It seems that's the modus operandi of software these days. Prevalent behind the scenes is a "ship it ASAP so it can make money ASAP", which with a simplistic model - makes sense. However if your model includes you only get one or two shots to influence your audience or otherwise lose all longterm viability, then getting something (no matter how shitty) to market ASAP is not as important.
Another example is pokemon go. There's almost no game to it. However in that case, they managed to succeed releasing it early - people didn't care there wasn't any game aspect to it.

In reply to Scarab9:






That sums up NMS perfectly.
With games like Skyrim and Fallout I typically spend more time wandering around exploring then following the quest lines, normally to the point that by the time I get round to the main quest my dude is that powerful that it's a breeze.

There is nothing to explore in NMS though. The planets all look the same, maybe a different colour and some are pointy and some are curved but basically the same.
The upgrades are poor too.
Wow I can upgrade my multi tool to mine faster or shoot pointless sentinels faster.
3 galaxy hops and around 9 planets was enough for me.
Pitty I got the download instead of the physical media, I would have sold it by now.

In reply to Dax H:

Yup. That nails my feelings as well. Lucky enough to have borrowed the game from a mate who raved about it pre release and then loaned me it after a week...never a good sign.

MY machine couldn't cope with this, or No Man's Sky. I was looking through the Steam lists for less power-hungry alternatives and came across 'FTL', which seems to be in the same general theme. Anyone tried it?

In reply to Removed UserBwox:


That youtuber I mentioned has done a load on FTL and rates it mega highly. Might be worth having a look. (Manyatruenerd)

not checked it myself though.

FTL is simple but good.

And also hard as nails, unforgiving and infuriating at times.

In reply to nr:

You think someone who loved the original elite and wanted to recapture that with NMS should give elite dangerous a go instead? Might have a Google later on and check it our...

In reply to ThunderCat:
I haven't actually heard much about it in a while...I was excited about it as I was a big fan of the original Elite, but it didn't sound too great when it came out and I didn't get round to checking it. It seems to have gone quiet. May do some digging and see what it's like at the mo.

edit- mate who backed it on kickstarter said for the first month he really enjoyed it but then found it lacking and very dull.

Then they announced a £30 expansion which allowed you to land on planets and everyone he knows said 'screw that' and left the game. (sounds like ignoring the obvious problems and adding something extra that no one wanted...plus mixing space and planet exploration never goes well for games)

In reply to Removed UserBwox:

FTL is a game in which you control a crew manning a space-ship that is... er... going somewhere. Can't honestly remember where. Doesn't matter - the game is awesome.

You fly from point to point and, at each point, something happens - it's a bit like a board game. What happens? Well, nothing might happen (phew!) or you might be attacked and have to fight - commanding your crew members to man the guns, put fires out before they burn up all your oxygen and repair your engines or even beam across to the other vessel and run about in person. It might be a story-encounter; it might require you to make a Decision of Great Importance; it might just be a benevolent first-contact with aliens who take pity on you, you poor thing.

Every play of FTL is different and they all last a little over an hour. You can suspend them and exit the game, to be resumed at a later date, but you can't save and load so your decisions actually matter. The game is tough and it will punish you. It will take a few plays before you finish it - much like games used to be, back in the day, and just like games of yore, every run leaves you with a little more "player knowledge" so you'll do better in the next run, despite starting from scratch.

... or you won't, because a hilarious comedy of errors will thwart you!

The graphics aren't incredible, to be fair, but they're good enough to give your imagination a framework in which to dream of space adventure and desperate quests to go... wherever the crew are going. Ultimately, your imagination has a higher resolution, better shaders and can render way more pixels than any GPU.

Most importantly, FTL is pure-blooded Indie and it shows. It's small, it's simple, it's cheap as chips, it has a very tight and very well defined "concept" and it's loyal to that concept instead of sprawling about trying to complete a Bingo card of game buzzwords.

In reply to aln:

I like the look of Heat Signature for a space indie game too. Not fancy graphics but graphically very nice (if that makes sense...simple done well basically) but gameplay looks great fun and it's only alpha at mo.

In reply to ThunderCat:


Yes, I'd say so. It's obviously a big learning curve from the original game, but it retains the open-endedness of the original. If you want, you can trade, make money, buy a bigger ship, make more money etc. etc. Or fight, or go bounty hunting, or go mining, or even just fly around the galaxy exploring. The multi-player aspect of it is a bit of a parsons egg really. Some people love it. Others just don't get on with it at all, as you do get some people who fly around just shooting other people for kicks. But you can always play in solo mode, or in closed groups.

If you want to recapture a 'purer' form of Elite, I'd recommend Oolite. It's free, and stays faithful to the single-player gameplay of the original Elite. It adds a lot of expansion packs, new ships, missions, and much improved graphics. Highly recommended.

Big difference is that Oolite is free. Eliteangerous is £20, and then further expansions (or 'seasons' as they're inexplicably known...) cost a further £20. Then again, there's a lot more content in Eliteangerous. Is it worth £40 for the latest version? Dunno. If I hadn't been one of the original backers, I probably wouldn't want to shell out that amount now for a game. But I was already in for a few quid, so paying the extra £20 for the first expansion didn't seem too bad, and it does add a lot to the game.