Recent reviews by =[BSID]= ethzero

Playing since the first SE2 release on January 2025 and I'm very pleased to say there has been very steady progress of this early access throughout it's lifetime over the last year-and-a-bit.

The graphics are vastly improved from SE1 from the texture fidelity to the levels of detail including levels of construction/destruction.

The default game takes a more focused, narrative approach on having the engineer tasked with fixing a range of existing stations and ships as well as the other sandbox and creative modes.

The so-called "Vertical Slice", VS2.2 has just released which induce some basic mechanical items such as pistons and rotors and the much need ship toolbar.

Can't wait for water to be officially added 😆

UPDATE: Now played a solid 24 hours of the full-fat game and it's *excellent*. Only had one crash in that time but I've subsequently found that there is indeed an autosave setting that it set to 5 minutes.

Spotted this game on YT/@LetsGameItOut

Played the demo for a good 5 hours I thought the game showed a very promising start with a lot of potential, so much so I bought the game the next day.

I've see people mention about various bugs and occasional crashes-to-desktop. I got one crash oddly, while on the Main Menu when idle and when loading the demo save into the full-fat version of the game all of the items duplicated - normally a bonus! However, this including the Boat... that clipped into itself 😜

Really, truly an excellent game with a tight game loop.
This game also has the distinction of been the first game in 20+ years of having a Steam account that I've unlock all 100% of the achievements.

First impressions was with the free demo and I'll be honest, graphically it didn't initially impress with it's rather "polygonal" terrain and simplistic hand-mining animation. However, after being hand-held through the first step of crafting the early game's mechanics that slowly let you roam an ever increase range by the end of the demo I was sold, literally.

120 hours later I have a thriving, fully terraformed planet having explored every nook-and-cranny and hidden secret.

Overall, very impressive and highly recommended game.
Can't wait to re-play on a harder setting and speed-run process! :D

A very good start 👍
It's "Alpha" so naturally the game is very much incomplete and features may come and go.
Like with SE1, I'm looking forward to the steady progress of SE2 over the coming months & years.

UPDATE 2025-12-03
VS2 launched with a very significant update of survival & colonisation mechanics along with planets.

Impressions after completing colonisating the first sector are generally very positive however while being able to "backpack build" certain simple components I remain skeptical about the contraversial decision to _dumb down_ the manufacturering process by removing ingots.

Not only does this feel like we're being robbed of a step so many of us are used to in SE1 but this has the secondary effect (I'd not considered until now) of not being to take a salvaged or over-produced component, break it down to ingots and recycle it as something else.

Therefore I stand firm that unless Keen backtrack and reintroduce ingots or some kind soul mods them into the game no amount of yet-to-be-released water physics will wash away the bad taste this leaves.

Again, it's Alpha - we shall see.

Yup. Pretty good. Just landed in New Atlantis.
Running on a 3080 with an ~8 year old i7-6700K with the default "Ultra" settings and it's absolutely fine.

UPDATE: As mentioned in my preliminary update comment on Oct' 3rd, after now +150 hours of side-questing the arse out of Starfield I've finally completed the "Into The Unknown" mission and all I can say is.... "whoa" 🤩.

Love Starfield.

Slightly surprised a few "core" items like re-entry effects are missing but on the whole a good start. Naturally it remains to be seem how KSP2 development progresses.

UPDATE: The above was written on 24 February, 2023 with 4.3 hrs of game play. It's now October 2023 and I've added a mere 16 hours more play time. Why so little play time? Simply put the developers have made no progress and the feedback to the community is practically non-existent.

I fear that as with CyberPunk 2077, KSP was kicked, nay, dragged screaming out of the door, fingernails firmly embedded in the door frame.

What truly baffles me is that stuff like re-entry effects are MIA 7 months later. Sure, it's "cosmetic stuff" and doing some of this stuff now may be premature but you'd expect some development progress on *something*🤷

For this reason I rescind my previous game recommendation and will come back in Q1 2024.

UPDATE: 2024-04-01 - "Last played: Nov 1, 2023". That speaks volumes about the pitiful progress of this project. Reading the few patch notes since then, "Science" has been added to the game. Big. Whoop. An entire year to add another core/KSP1 feature. I'll set the alarm for Q1 2025 and check back on what single additional core feature has been added with the accompanying litany of bugs.

UPDATE: 2025-07-03 - This "game" is thoroughly dead with Valve marking it so having now not been updated in over 12 months. The most shameful thing? It's currently being sold for £45.
Totally deserving of its "overwhelmingly negative" feedback.

UPDATE: 2026-03-05: In a parallel, non-T**** universe, this game would have been maturing nicely and the community would have re-implemented a ton of old mods and the Devs would have been nearing completion of the roadmap. Instead: I've not played the "game" since 2025-07-03 and my time played is still 21.4 and whoever-the-hell owns KSP2's IP still have the absolute nerve to sell this for **£44.99**. Absolutely disgraceful.

In showcasing RTX in Portal NVIDIA have unwittingly demonstrated that ray-tracing brings little to the table when you have a great game in so far as, I had to keep actively pausing in the game to work out what bits where enhanced by RTX.

Don't get me wrong: The stuff that was obvious like the energy ball glow as kinda cool, but it just reminded me of the original Quake II game where you had slow moving orange bolts of laser light to show off the engine - impressive for the time - but didn't feel like it actually added much to the game play.

Plus all the original Source engine bugs are present from approximately 1,000 years old, e.g.: Change pretty much any video setting - crash; alt-tab out of the game - crash.

Overall, I _marginally_ give this is a 👍, but would happily play the original.

Obviously surprised that Valve didn't get around to doing a VR mod for Half Life 2, but the people behind this mod have done an admiral job!

Fantastic!
Barely scratched the surface with over 6 continuous hours of game play.
The tech tree is massive but progression paced just right that you'll spend a good amount of time optimising resource flow and tearing up conveyor belts :)

Edit: Played a further 120 hours and gearing-up to reach the nearest star systems. Absolutely engrossing game. Can't wait to start all over again after I've bled the galaxy dry of resources :)

Edit - 2023: Steam tells me I've play *980 hours*. Starting a new game on a new PC :)

Sublime.
My first session was 14 hours long, and I can see I've only just started to scratch the surface from the looks of the tech tree. Sure, this game is "early access" with a few items I've discovered so far clearly marking this placeholder content but the game is well polished for what is there, from a relative novice's point of view.