Recent reviews by TV4Fun

WTF did I just play?

This game is everything that is wrong with the modern games industry summed up into one package. It has absolutely stunning visuals, a beautifully touching story, and absolutely no gameplay whatsoever. Like they literally could've just made this into a movie and it would have been just as effective, if not moreso. Yet somehow it is beloved by critics who have stomped better games than this into the dirt for lesser issues. I don't get it, but I'm assuming mind control is involved.

Update: If you are having issues with the game, there is a hackfix out at https://github.com/AdmiralCurtiss/dgs_hackfix/releases. My negative review stands until Capcom releases an official fix instead of leaving it to the fans to do their job.

Y'all done any more of that playtesting? Is this just the norm now, release a game totally broken after months and months of anticipation and then worry about patching it later? This has to be one of the laziest ports I've seen and I can't believe the PC version took them more than a few hours of work. There are multiple bugs making it unplayable for many people. There's really no excuse for this, it's not like this is the first PC port Capcom has released. I hope to change my review once this game is fixed, and I hope that won't take too long.

The website has a better interface and no annoying handholdy mandatory tutorial.

Lot of fun management and a very sweet story.

Played this game since it was in early access and had practically no content. I can't believe how much depth they've added to it since then. Definitely worth sinking many hours into to explore.

Even setting aside how easy it is to get into a death spiral and not realize it before it's too late, it's just not a very deep game. There's very little you can control, colonist occupations are fixed, and there's only a handful of buildings. Once you figure out how to control population so you don't run out of food, everything quickly becomes a grind. I might have been good as a mobile game, but as a PC management sim, it's very lacking. It's basically Baby's First Dwarf Fortress.

I really want to like this game. It has a lot of good elements to it. It reminds a lot of the classic Star Control 2. You explore, you meet and form alliances with different alien races, you gather resources, you keep your ship alive. But while Star Control 2 is about gradually building up power, exploring while you have a home base to go back to to regroup and rebuild until you are strong enough to go and save the galaxy from an existential threat, The Long Journey Home is about getting home after being thrown to the other side of the universe. In other words, it is the Voyager to Star Control 2's TNG. Comparisons are similar in other ways too. While the characters you meet in Star Control 2 have depth and personality, everyone in The Long Journey Home feels very generic. I want a compelling universe, and this just isn't it. It's still a good game, but if you haven't played Star Control 2 (aka The Ur-Quan Masters) yet, do that instead.

This game concept has a lot of potential, and I will definitely be interested to see where they go with it, but in its current state I can't reccommend it. It's very unpolished and the puzzles have an extremely tenuous connection to the machine learning that it's supposed to be about. It positions itself as an educational game, but there is very little about actual machine learning you will learn by playing it, which is a shame, as this is a field too few people understand. I hope they keep working on it, and maybe in the future I will be able to reccommend it.

This is a case where I really don't like Steam's binary review system. Because, while I like this game, it has some problems, and I wish I could reflect that in my rating. It's an obvious mobile port, the tutorials didn't even bother changing "tap" to "click". The cutscenes will give you flashbacks to the mid 90s. While it does have good aspects as a programming game, its puzzles won't scratch the programming "itch" as well as a Zachtronics game would. The solution space is too narrow to allow for truly innovative solutions, and the puzzles overall lack that "eureka" quality. Overall, the game feels like it lacks polish, and could have done with some more development time. While I did enjoy the game, and I do recommend it to those who enjoy programming games, my recommendation is not as strong as it would be for other games in this genre. Maybe buy it when it's on sale.