Recent reviews by FluffyPhocks

This game has design problems. It feels like a bad continuation of the fallout franchise in the sense that they actively tried to avoid any of the improvements that Obsidian pioneered with New Vegas and that they, Bethesda, made in Skyrim, but instead chose to double downed on the bad decisions in their previous Fallout 3 installment.

Bad decisions such as the perk tree. In FO3, there were perks that didn't really fit into the game or were effectively worthless. They had basic stat increases like "Daddy's Boy/Girl" and you gained some percentage increases to a few skills. These skills could be flat out improved by just leveling up and putting points into the appropriate talent skills, you didn't have to waste that perk point you got from leveling up on it. This effectively made about 1/3 of all the perks worthless.

This is also one of the most important upgrades that was made in New Vegas, they overhauled the perks so that each and every one of them was unique and added something to your character. A good perk in fallout is always slightly game breaking, allowing the player to circumvent a small aspect of the rules. The bloody perk talent, for example, increases damage and grants a chance that enemies will explode in bloody gore when hit. The cannibalism perk allowed players to eat bodies for food/health but at the cost of karma. You were never shoe-horned into taking certain perks as the combat skills of the game was in a completely different category.

Imagine if in Skyrim, using skills didn't level up the talents in performing those tasks. That smithing daggers didn't level up your blacksmithing skill but instead contributed to general exp. When you leveled up, you could put points into black smithing, but at the cost of everything else. This is a major problem and is what plagued players back in oblivion; things scale to the players level. By "wasting" your perk on something that is not combat related, you are effectively kneecapping yourself. By taking that blacksmithing perk, you are giving up the any increase to your sword damage. By taking aqua boy/girl, you are not taking rifleman. You can really screw over yourself if your not careful.

This is a huge problem. The stat system they designed for this game is beyond terrible. Skyrim was a great improvement over Oblivion, no need to reinvent the wheel, just tweak a few things. The stat system combined with the general bullet sponge enemies and a secret % dmg decrease/increase that they tied into the games difficulty settings leaves you with a cheap shooter that has a "pretty" fallout skin for it. If you want survival mode where you have to eat, drink, and sleep, you have to take it with all of the other things they force on you with all of the bad game designs for those systems. Again, a great game that does survival fairly well was New Vegas, where survival mode and difficulty settings are two completely different systems.

If you want to see a good game with great combat difficulty scaling, look at the Witcher III. Enemies change tactics on higher difficulty levels, they flank, they coordinate, and it adds a real challenge to the game! The new Doom has a fantastic hardcore mode, where players have to evaluate every action they take as a simple mistake could completely destroy all their progress; players analyze each room they enter, plot where they are going, their actions, and are forced to strategize. Fallout 4 will crash and waste the last hour of your life because you didn't sleep in a bed or you got one shot by a legendary raider with a pipe pistol from a bridge before it could even render.


TL;DR - An ok fallout themed shooter were you have to follow a cookie cutter build to keep up with scaling enemy damage (or turn down the difficulty) and many bad game design decisions throughout.

This game is incredible. It borrows heavily from multiple games but the developer did an amazing job combining all the different genres while also giving everything a unique twist and personality. The games story and space combat remind me of EV Nova with some FTL energy/weapon/crew mechanics mixed in. Ship combat is strategic with players commanding their individual ships on a 2D map directing movement paths and weapon targets. While cruising between planets, the game reminds me of pixel piracy where you have to manage food, entertainment, and rest. The ground combat also feels a bit like this as you can command a group of people to move/attack but don't actually have individual control over a single person as you would in a game like starbound/terraria.

Music is amazing and fitting to what is happening on screen.

Story appears to be linear and the planets that you land on are not procedurally generated.

That being said, some of the random events that can take place can contribute to some amazing character development! My captain was blasted by some form of alien light and had his chromosomes mixed up. Soon after, while still coming to terms with her new identity, she was pelted with a high level dose of radiation and lost her hair (same with the other crew member at the time). Donning a bird mask and alien armor, she forged ahead, slowly building her crew and ship into a small fleet with her weapons specialist (baldy) becoming her number 2. But not all events turn out so well, she reflects back upon those that were lost and who she will lose next as she continues her journey to save mankind (as well as turn a quick profit).

This game has some good elements to it and will do remarkably well with a content patch later on to address some of the issues below. Personally, I would love to see some procedurally generated content/worlds to explore!

The Good :
-Pixel Art Style with equipable Armor/Clothing graphics on all the races.
-Customizable ship interiors
-Amazing game combat
-Music
-Character development via random events
-Good planet designs, not terribly large but enough to have fun with.
-Witty humor

The Bad:
-Crew path finding can sometimes go full stupid as they get stuck in a loop of trying to make a jump only to hurl themselves off a cliff or just completely forget what it is they were doing and stand there.

-UI can be a tad clunky. Hotkeys and button placements try, but don't feel streamlined. Really needs a "combat stations" button that will reassign all crew members and energies to a player saved setting.

-Pausing the game in space combat does not stop asteroids from moving, just the ships/projectiles.

-Each faction only has a handful of ships to play with.

-Nothing is explained! What does this symbol on your armor mean? How does armor work? What are the basic mechanics/principles for individual crew inventory? How do you use ship armor plates to repair?

The Ugly:
-Resource gathering takes FOREVER! Launching a ship back out to space, watching the 7 second animation liftoff, moving a single item into the appropriate inventory, and finally re-landing the ship all to sell a stupid 20mm gun that you picked up in a fight is TEDIOUS! Everything in this game eats away at your precious time in small 1-7 second intervals!

-Item inventory can also get a tad ugly, especially when trying to fit out ships in your fleet and you can't tell if the engineering stations in your fleet inventory is better or worse then what you have currently equipped to a fighter you never directly fly with. This stems from the clunky UI design, but it doesn't become terrible until this point.

-I found an asteroid where I wasn't able to leave from! My captain was at the bottom of a cliff that I couldn't get back up from. Luckily the game auto-saved prior to me landing on that rock.