Thanks for the tag, Key-J! Yes, I can definitely share my initial thoughts and provide a review. Also, for anyone who wants to just watch a little bit of our gameplay we now have a few of our streams posted on Twitch, which you can see here: AFKids Gaming https://www.twitch.tv/afkidsgaming
In terms of a review, I should preface this by saying that purchasing a new game is very much like a new relationship – at least for me lol. So there may be some blindness and I’m definitely in the honeymoon stage, hahaha. But I will try to quickly summarize the game and be at honest as possible.
What is the game?
- Sea of Thieves + simulator game + space = Star Citizen
- In brief, you are a citizen living in the Stanton System and you have a spaceship which allows you to go and make money and essentially live however you want
What can you do?
First Option: Be a law-abiding citizen
- Explore
- Collect bounties by hunting down AI and player criminals and neutralizing them (ship to ship or ground combat)
- Protect check points (e.g. security bunkers and other depots) from waves of pirates
- Purchase or rent a mining ship/ground vehicle and mine the minerals found on planets or asteroids
- Deliver supplies to plants or outposts
- Play the market by purchasing a material at one location and flying it to where is rare and selling it at double the price (Warning: Don't die or get shot down or you might lose it all!)
- Rescue players/medical evacuations
- Players can become stranded if someone steals or blows up their ship while they are on a planet and they must create a general call contract (quest) that gets sent out to the server for a rescue
- You can have your medical ship go pick up these stranded players and you can tend to them if they are wounded
- Et cetera – so much more!
Second Option: Be a pirate
- Go to prison
- If you break any of the Stanton System’s laws (e.g. killing non-marked players or NPCs, having active weapons in an armistice zone, et cetera) you will be taken as a prisoner and put in jail for X amount of time based on the violation
- While at prison, you can choose to become the crime lord of the prison, wait out your time, or hack the system to go free with a clean slate
- Avoid bounty hunters, including other players who have been contracted to neutralize you
- Work as a smuggler by loading your ship up with drugs and weapons and taking them to different planets (Warning: Watch out for AI policing ships as they do have scanners and can scan the contents of your ship!)
- Attack and invade outposts to secure data and locations
- Et cetera – so much more!
So there you have it! I should note that I’ve only been playing Star Citizen for a few days, so I have not yet tried everything the game has to offer. Below are a few of my highlights and lowlights.
- CRUISERS:
- After chatting with another player online, he let me tour his full-blown cruiser, which honestly felt like a Star Wars cruiser (so cool lol). I started pushing all the buttons and I found little things the owner didn't even know about. We may have almost been thrown in jail as I turned on all the weapons system, but hey it was fun.
- FLYING:
- Flying is a little bit difficult! The AI recently had an update, but it still needs a little bit of work. You can only use quantum travel (hyperdrive) for a limited amount of time/distance, so getting to distant/obscure locations means that you have to actually fly for quite some distance to reach your intended destination. I found myself flying my one-seater ship using sub-light engines for 15 mins (ish), which can be either boring or relaxing depending on how you feel about that lol. Larger ships may travel faster though, and you would have other things to do, including playing pool, drinking at the bar, or restocking your gun shelves.
- PROTECTING CHECKPOINTS:
- Protecting check points from pirates was extremely nerve wracking at the start, simply because if you die you can lose everything. Given that when you start the game you have very little spending money, it would suck to lose it all at the beginning. But hey, high risk can also mean high reward! If you succeed you get to loot everything from the pirates. Having said this, I did notice that the AI lacked in that they were not very smart and they had a slower reaction time. We ended up trying this out for the first time with a high-ranking player who kindly shared some of his higher level contracts and in the end I felt as though it should have been more of a challenge. Finally, I should note that in the bunkers there are some guards (allies) and the markers wouldn’t always show up so you had to memorize their armour colour and type. Don’t shoot the guards as it is a crime and you will go to prison!
- DELIVERIES:
- The deliveries that I tried have seemed simple and a little bit boring. However, they have been a useful training tool in that they helped me learn how to fly, land, and navigate. Having said that, I have heard that deliveries can be very lucrative and more dangerous once you develop a bigger reputation in the Stanton System. As I understand it, the higher your reputation, the rarer material you will be given to transport and the more likely you will be attacked by pirates.
Again, I love the game so far, but like any new game, there are some bugs that need to be fixed:
- DESYNCING:
- Desyncing with other players can be an issue. For example, you can be holding the elevator open for your friend to enter as they appear to be standing on the other side, but on your friend’s screen they have already entered the elevator and are waiting for you to click the button to the next floor. This didn’t happen to me a lot so ultimately it did not bother me that much, but in a higher pressure situation this may change.
- FINDING THE MENU TO LOOT:
- When looking at a body or an item someone dropped on the ground it can be difficult to find the right angle to get the loot menu to pop up which can be very frustrating. Crouching to loot seems to help so perhaps the game developers were going for maximum realism here, as you would definitely need to crouch to loot in real life!
- FALLING THROUGH THE FLOOR:
- After a bad landing on a weird angle, I exited the ship and fell through the floor. If this continued to happen more often it could be a game breaker until fixed, but fortunately this only happened once.
- SOME HUD NOT SHOWING INFORMATION:
- I’ve noticed that sometimes information is missing, which is problematic as not seeing the friendly NPC marker can end with you in prison.
- INVENTORY AND LOOT NEED AN OVERHAUL:
- I don’t mind the weight area system they have in place to calculate the amount you can carry, but right now you have to click and drag one item at a time from one inventory to another. This can be really slow at times and I think an overhaul of this function is needed.
- DETAIL AND REALISM NOT YET FINISHED:
- There is so much detail in Star Citizen, including tiny objects that you are supposed to be able to interact with while playing. Unfortunately, the game isn’t quite there yet and instead the game developers are working on putting out the next ship. Obviously this isn’t the most important thing, but sometimes you just want to sit on a ship and play pool lol. ALL IN GOOD TIME.
I hope that this review has been helpful to everyone! If anyone has any questions or would like to play, just shoot me a message 😊
**Canadian Gamer & Father - www.twitch.tv/AFKidsGaming** - Live Wed & Fri at 8:00pm PST - Come join!
