Recent reviews by Alex

you can pet the sheep and they can float with little umbrellas 10/10 no notes.

this game fixed me and my brain for real and dang is that feat of engineering never seen before~

I was getting very bored from waiting for the same 5 events to happen to make things interesting, but this really set me over the edge.
Came across some random flare in Flatwoods. I come up to it and it's just this box sitting there called a Government Aid Drop. I figured it was just a cache box like the others I've come across or like the one I came across during an event that I could freely take stuff from. I walk up and hit E on it and am met with a lockpicking prompt. It barely registered that the UI was pastel red (especially since the remaining UI is pastel orange/yellow). Ok, strange. I pick it. Suddenly, I get hit with a 10 cap bounty, and a note in the top left saying to avoid getting bounties by other players, don't steal from them. 1. I didn't take anything at all, I just walked away to do a quest afterward 2. There was no indication this was a player's (a barely noticable color change in UI is not enough, especially when in every other Bethesda game it just means an NPC owns it). I look up this supposed bounty system and apparently it forces PvP on (if I'm in pacifist mode then why am I able to do actions like this that force it on??) until the bounty is cleared, some say it lasts 2 hours, but most say it only goes away when someone kills you, and PvP is apparently so pointless especially to higher levels that no one even bothers unless you basically strip down and put a sign up that says "please off me." Uninstalled immediately.
Apparently this was a bug a while ago: "Initially, if anyone other than the requester took items from the supply drop, they would accrue a 5 cap bounty for each item taken. As of patch 1.0.6.0, requested supply drops cannot be accessed in any way by any character other than the player that requested it." Well, either the bug came back worse than before, or they decided nah let's mess with people. Absolutely top tier Bethesda game design right there. Good thing a different studio handles ESO lmao.
Also Todd give up NetImmerse/Gamebryo/Creation already. Thing runs like arse. Y'all have idtech right there.

Right away this felt so nice to control. So much of the game, the platforms and their mechanics, everything, is just satisfying. The levels are the perfect level of iterative where it's not too hand-holdy but doesn't toss a new mechanic into a mix of others without showing you its most basic form first. And shortly after something's introduced, it finds different ways to combine it and make it interesting. Simple to learn, likely a challenge to master (i.e. get S ranks/fully explore a level). There's so many diverging paths to reward you for exploring (and perhaps my only complaint is that in some instances it seems you can't backtrack(?)). There's little touches in there to make the game forgiving if you slip up (like regaining a jump if you collide with an enemy mid-air). The visuals are gorgeous, with or without the filters. The music is great. The game's just so darn fun.

It even has controller agnostic UI. More games need this. Please. There are big $80-game studios that still haven't got that figured out yet!

- 0-5 minutes in, wandering around a random dirt patch wondering what the heck I'm supposed to do.
- I go back to the main menu, see a tutorial button, and click it; a youtube video opens in my browser. Thankfully I have a second monitor to notice it. Watch the first minute or so to figure out any shred of context possible.
- Finally find the shovel and bumble around with my controller for a bit until I figure out the controls. I start putting dirt in the cart, thinking that's what it's for. Watch more of the tutorial, realize it goes in bucket. Try putting multiple dirt piles in bucket, can't do that. Eventually I figure out the process going back and fourth.
- After about 25 minutes I get a bunch of ore and gems and such, in the most tedious back and fourth process of dropping and picking up items possible. I thankfully noticed a map and try to orient myself, and go to somewhere that I guess is a shop according to the map? (if there were any signs or markers I didn't see any) I see a bucket in front of a building on the ground with a big sign a few feet over it that says SELL in big capital letters with a bright red button under it. It's getting dark out ("why is there a daynight cycle?"), but I can just barely see the gems I picked up. I put them in the bucket on the ground. I repeatedly press X on the button. Nothing happens. I look at the video again. Apparently I was supposed to put them in my OWN bucket on the TABLE a few feet next to the sign that is over the bucket on the ground.
- I run all the way back, pick up my bucket, and move the ore into my own bucket on the table. The sign has a little # indicator that changes to 65. I press X repeatedly on my controller on the red button. Still nothing happens. I try clicking my mouse. It works. I wonder for a moment, try one more ore piece, and try my right trigger. It works. Every other interaction so far had used the X button, but now suddenly I use the right trigger?
That was the point I quit the game. Saw the top comment on Youtube asking for in-game tutorials rather than a video, saw some top recent reviews also mentioning confusion, and realized that the rest of the game was probably going to be the same ongoing struggle to figure out how to do anything.

In UX/HCC terms, minimalism does not mean having little to no UI elements with little to no guidance for the player. It means putting the least cognitive/memory load on the user so that they can figure things out as swiftly and painlessly as possible. Slapping a video on Youtube that assumes default keyboard controls so you can have a "minimalist" UI and drop the player into a random world with no context or anything definitely favors the former rather than the latter. For example, when Satisfactory drops you into the world (literally), a voice gives you some basic tutorial-esque "objectives. You don't necessarily have to do them right away, as they are moreso to teach you the main mechanics. As you progress, they go away. (Also, hovering over interactable objects shows the buttons you need to press, 100% of the time) It's not too hand-holdy, but it still gives you context to your surroundings and introduces you to the basic game loop and game progression, and leaves you to discover more advanced mechanics on your own.
If this game really rethought its onboarding process and had more helpful tooltips (i.e. ones that explained item usage in better detail with the player's set input for it and was in proximity to the item rather than shoved in a small text box in the lower left corner), I'd consider it again. But as is, I just do not have the time nor patience to sift through guides and videos to learn basic mechanics. I apologize for how lengthy this is but I felt context is key here. I'm sure there's probably a mechanically sound game in here, especially if you learn well from and have time for player guides and videos. But oof.