Recent reviews by drink

I'm seeing a lot of people complaining that this isn't things it isn't, like a remaster. They're right, it isn't. I'm seeing a lot of people complaining that this is going to ruin all their mods. They're wrong, it isn't. The prior version is still there. This is just a version that works better on modern Windows, allegedly. I can't speak to that, but I can tell you that it runs fine on semi-modern Linux. I have up to date Nvidia drivers and a modern (6.18.9) kernel on my Devuan system, and this game is running very nicely. It was fine in whatever Steam was running it under by default, but I put it in Proton-GE and that's working fine as well. I am using a 360 pad with a cheap USB receiver dongle, and it's giving me the correct button labels and so on. No notes on this rerelease they didn't have to give me for free but did.

Mas Tropico! This is a little less clunky than 5. I think I have most of the series now from bundles, and this is the easiest to understand for the amount of complexity presented so far.

I was gonna recommend this game to other players but then it crashed while I was placing a logging camp.

In all seriousness you should still buy this game but that was annoying

Flippy AF. Little wheels. Do not buy.

This is a pretty fun game with a great concept, but the physics are tragic and the UI is worse.

Besides the comedy physics, you can boil most of the problems down to bugs, nerfs, and fudge. The rest is terrible UI.

Physics:

This is the biggest problem, it's essentially a game about physics, and the physics model is poop. This game has some of the poorest collision detection I've ever experienced. Some things you unexpectedly clip through, other things you hit before you even hit them. A trailer you're towing will intersect with another trailer and make a Besthesda-esque escape attempt. I've got a trailer stuck about 80' up in the air on one map from this.

On another occasion I parked on a bridge and went to another vehicle, when I came back the vehicle that was on the bridge had clipped through it and fallen into the river. I disconnected the trailer from the vehicle and came back with a heavy crane. The cargo (a shipping container with lots of surface area) stayed put but the trailer (a flatbed that was upside down) washed downriver. If a cargo starts rocking then rather than some reasonable physics based thing happening where the tires and CG actually matter, it just gets worse until you slow down no matter what.

Bugs:

The PC version (this one, that is) has a bug that causes it to stutter on autosave. While this is happening the physics also stutter, because physics are obviously 100% tied to the rendering thread. This will cause you to lose traction, drop logs off the crane, etc. There is a third party and open source autosave stutter fix available and has been for years, so this bug should be EASY to fix, but they don't bother.

If you were thinking you would go ahead and buy this on the premise that they might fix the bugs someday, don't, because they won't.

Nerf/Fudge:

This game has an XP progression system where basic things like mud tires are locked behind a level wall. This wouldn't be so bad except for all the nerfing where you slog through to get to those higher levels and those things suck. For example, mud tires are poor on pavement. That makes sense for the most-ribbed mud tires but not for any of the others. Anyone who has actually driven on pavement with mud tires knows they are very grippy. Same problem for chained tires, which are way more effective than this game makes them out to be. They worked well in the original version of this game (Spintires) but work poorly here.

Vehicles are also nerfed and/or bugged. Bandit has a unique crane which is superior to the stock loading crane but it conflicts with the cab of the vehicle so it makes it super tippy. There's also no good reason why that crane should be limited to only that vehicle. Azov 7 has a big stupid bumper you cannot customize. When they brought the vehicle out, when you ran the bumper into things it would do super damage. So they fudged this with a special case so that you usually take no damage when it hits. They could have let you change it like you can on so many other vehicles but they would have had to edit the model, so they didn't.

Cargoes are actually heavier when attached to a vehicle/trailer, ostensibly so that they are easier to lift with the loading crane. A technique called "overloading" can be used to exploit this.

UI:

The UI is bad in just every way, I could write a whole review on it. But what PC players should know in particular is that the mouse pointer is practically invisible at 4k. Game developers just shouldn't be allowed to change your mouse pointers, and this game is the poster child for why. Photo mode defaults to too much depth of field effect. Every time you go to the map you have to re-click to make the mouse control the camera. The camera can't be inside of a structure even if it's hollow (like the base of a watchtower) which limits your view. Changing vehicles or maps changes your mission selection.

The same key is used for interacting with everything and the default is always the thing you least want it to be. E.g. at a refuel depot where you can also pick up fuel as a cargo, the default is to pick up cargo, but you FAR more often want to refuel. Or when you're towing something and want to move to another map, the default is to toggle the engine on the towed vehicle, not to move to the next map, which is obviously what you want.

This is also a driving game where you don't get a speedometer on the HUD, and an offroading game where you don't get a tilt gauge. TBF the latter would probably not be that helpful because the physics are so inconsistent. You also can't get good control over what gear you're in like you could in Spintires.


Conclusion:

This is somehow still a fun game, but you have to expect it to do stupid things. I do not understand why anyone would ever play this game on hard mode as if it were a valid simulation of anything. You can do everything right and the game will still bone you, and it autosaves (frequently, it might be noted) so once some bug hoses you, you will still have to deal with it. Don't expect this game to ever make sense. Development is lazy.


P.S. On a possibly whiny personal note, the loading screen tips/facts are virtually all B.S. They tell you trucks bring all these cargoes like you're supposed to be impressed when they are carrying things which should go by rail, but we shut down cargo rail as a handout to auto and oil companies. They claim trucks aren't involved in many collisions when they are in far more per vehicle mile traveled than passenger cars. etc etc. I know I shouldn't let myself be bothered by such trivialities but propaganda grates.

All of my progress was lost the first time I exited.

This super lo-fi puzzle game is super legit. If you play only one game like this, you'll be like me. But it's great, and I am not really into puzzle games.

Backer here. This game is about half as long as I would have liked and technically incompetent. Just clicking on things can be a challenge, and that's how the game is played. The graphics are bad and the animations are worse. It would have been better with raster graphics like the games of old.

$15 is not too bad, but I paid at least that much to back the game and all I got for it was a lot of delay...

Sometimes it just forgets to take input from the controller.

The devs break and fix this game frequently while testing new functionality for the engine for their new game. In the process it gets indisputably better, but it can be frustrating watching the process fail.