Zero Punctuation: Survival Special (Rust, Starbound, 7 Days to Die)

[Canadamus Prime]

Early Access is what they used to call Beta Testing, but instead of paying you to test their unfinished game, you have to pay them for the privilege of testing their unfinished game.

 

[IrisNetwork]

Nothing to say on Don't Starve? At least it doesn't have zombies in it. Just some wacked monsters from a Tim Burton movie.

I hadn't gotten into Starbound but I've had fun on Terraria with some mates. It seems a lot like 2D Minecraft but its got a bigger focus on dungeons, boss fights and metroidvania platforming. Also, its got jetpacks. Does Minecraft have jetpacks?

Survival games hadn't really gotten well with me. I guess it either ends up too easy or I end up in a routine of harvesting resources and almost dying.

Looks like everyone here's going about "Early Access". "Unfinished access" more like. I completely agree with Jim on it. Any released game should be judged as a finished game.

 

[C14N]

Why are you doing this to early access titles? You're giving them the same once over you use on finished titles, you even acknowledged that they were unfinished but then essentially ripped into a Beta product as if it was the final release. I'm not saying you should have taken it easy I'm saying you shouldn't have bothered doing these titles.

They had the balls to charge a finished price so he went ahead and judged them as such. I doubt he'll return to them either. Also it kind of made his job easier, as he said he didn't have to spend much time with any of them.

 

[Longhorn]

Is no one going to mention that frame where Yahtzee was dressed as a Klan member and lynching a pig?

 

[zeropike]

Yeah, wow. He hits all three games' problems square on the head. As usual of course.

And for added Rust fun try running a server in public listing, you will find nobody stays longer then 1-2 days reguardless if they are harassed or not, due to being at the top of the tech tree as he mentions.

 

[CelestDaer]

I don't really think you can ding Starbound for being 'Terraria in space', since it's by the same guys who made Terraria...

 

[Strazdas]

Adressing starbound, why do you need instructions to build anything really? I mean you complain that game was unfair because you didnt bother doing anything more than tutorial weapons? if your building a sattelite you better build some missile defences, duh.

7 Days to Die: Weapons are easy to find, but they are very much usless when it comes to survival, so no point in evne collecting them i found.

 

[blackrave]

Now I'm just counting down the days until zombies get replaced with aliens or some shit. Then we'll move back to elves and work our way towards zombies again. What a vicious cycle.

Via nazis, presumably...

How about mutant dolphin men? That's one that's never been tried. Dragon men? Trogdor? Witches? Gallivanting and show tune singing knights of blood lust? (I got a trillion of 'em.)

Post-magical-apocalypse survival game could be tons of fun, actually.
Instead of 2-5 types of zombies we can have variety off mythological beasts
Zombies, skeletons, werewolves, vampires, dragons, chimeras, krakens, etc.
Every enemy has vastly different AI behavior, abilities and loot.
Imagine the possibilities.

 

[Shjade]

While the difficulty in Starbound is a step up from Terraria (especially starting out) it's not that bad imo. Honestly I found Terraria to be pretty easy till hardmode unlocked so having more aggressive wildlife, dealing with hunger/cold, etc. to be a welcome change. And I don't really see it as the games fault he wasn't prepared for a fight, I'm pretty sure they give you a warning (albeit a vague one if I recall) and the whole point of the game is to take your time and explore. Yeah he was in a hurry for a deadline but like speed running Skyrim you're playing it wrong that way.

Actually I'd say underground Terraria was harder than Starbound's underground at present, largely due to the "tiers" of difficulty in Terraria. Sure monsters hit harder and take more damage to kill the deeper you get in Starbound, but they don't really get more challenging, at least not that I've seen. They just kinda take the same mechanics and make the numbers involved bigger. Not a huge deal.

I'm saying the difficulty curve of Starbound is wonky: you go from these surface/underground monsters that are manageable with minimal equipment to summoning a UFO that will straight up one-shot you if you're not in basically the best armor you can make pre-UFO destruction, and even then getting hit is going to wreck your face. You basically have to either cheese the thing or man-mode jump up and sword it out of the sky before it can kill you first. The game does not prepare you for that kind of a battle - as Yahtzee pointed out, the only equipment it overtly states you need is a bow.

A bow is not sufficient for dealing with the UFO without some serious terrain exploitation and a lot of patience.

Sidenote: telling someone "you're playing it wrong" when they're playing a game that is purposely designed to be open-ended, meaning open to be played pretty much how ever you want to play it, is hilarious. You may want to rethink that.

Last thing, regarding temperature, I wish it made a little more sense. I almost froze to death while I was inside a solid structure, but standing next to a torch - while outside, at night, in the rain - keeps me warm? What? No. Does not compute. A hand torch is not going to stay lit in the rain, much less provide any useful amount of heat, and I sincerely doubt the town full of NPCs were living in frigid homes.

 

[MrCalavera_v1legacy]

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Post-magical-apocalypse survival game could be tons of fun, actually.
Instead of 2-5 types of zombies we can have variety off mythological beasts
Zombies, skeletons, werewolves, vampires, dragons, chimeras, krakens, etc.
Every enemy has vastly different AI behavior, abilities and loot.
Imagine the possibilities.

So... Adventure Time: The Game? Yes, kickstart that shit.

 

[TheUnbeholden]

So you never upgraded your bow because the game never told you too? Knowing to get stronger weapons should being part of gaming 101 especially when the mission warns "be ready for anything."

Yeah thats the only part of the review that I don't get...

While the difficulty in Starbound is a step up from Terraria (especially starting out) it's not that bad imo. Honestly I found Terraria to be pretty easy till hardmode unlocked so having more aggressive wildlife, dealing with hunger/cold, etc. to be a welcome change. And I don't really see it as the games fault he wasn't prepared for a fight, I'm pretty sure they give you a warning (albeit a vague one if I recall) and the whole point of the game is to take your time and explore. Yeah he was in a hurry for a deadline but like speed running Skyrim you're playing it wrong that way.

Actually I'd say underground Terraria was harder than Starbound's underground at present, largely due to the "tiers" of difficulty in Terraria. Sure monsters hit harder and take more damage to kill the deeper you get in Starbound, but they don't really get more challenging, at least not that I've seen. They just kinda take the same mechanics and make the numbers involved bigger. Not a huge deal.

I'm saying the difficulty curve of Starbound is wonky: you go from these surface/underground monsters that are manageable with minimal equipment to summoning a UFO that will straight up one-shot you if you're not in basically the best armor you can make pre-UFO destruction, and even then getting hit is going to wreck your face. You basically have to either cheese the thing or man-mode jump up and sword it out of the sky before it can kill you first. The game does not prepare you for that kind of a battle - as Yahtzee pointed out, the only equipment it overtly states you need is a bow.

A bow is not sufficient for dealing with the UFO without some serious terrain exploitation and a lot of patience.

Sidenote: telling someone "you're playing it wrong" when they're playing a game that is purposely designed to be open-ended, meaning open to be played pretty much how ever you want to play it, is hilarious. You may want to rethink that.

Well thanks for explaining.

 

[Shjade]

Funny thing about the UFO: it goes down a lot faster if you can get yourself in a position to melee it rather than shoot it. Makes the fight a lot easier (since much of the difficulty comes from avoiding all the penguin spawns, of which there will obviously be more the longer the UFO is alive).

But yeah, the difficulty curve in Starbound as it is now is...ridiculous, to say the least.

Easy to if you melee!? If you attempt to melee it, it pull a Halo and rams into you, causing an insta kill. The main reason it kills you is the alien drops yes, but the main problem is in fact the insta killing ship who blows up your house because obviously you put the distress building on the roof of your home like any normal person would.

- Place Distress Beacon on the roof of a building that has easy access to said roof from the interior.
- Activate Beacon.
- Drop down into top floor of the building.
- Wait for UFO to slam into the roof.
- Jump up to the roof, slash at UFO until it moves out of range.
- Repeat steps 3-5.
- ???
- Profit.

 

[GuiltBlade]

Very simple GuiltBlade. They have asked for money. Therefore, it doesn't matter what amount the game is in development, it should be playable at an enjoyable level. Early Access or not, they have asked for money to alpha test. That is wrong. Even Minecraft which the entire system is based off was playable at an enjoyable level except at insanely early alpha releases.

Oh and the only guy from Redigit who made Terraria in the dev team for Starbound is the art guy, and Starbound has a different art style to Terraria.

Right but the process of open access is now, whether we like it or not, industry standard practice for smaller releases. You yourself acknoledged the state that Minecraft was originaly released in, for money.

All Yahtzee has done here is not shine a light on a new evil or wrong doing, or disavow a bad title that was ill-made. He's just produced a massive negative publicity piece on three games which even if they improved would have lost a portion of their audience.

Sure other people are going to go and buy it anyway, and this will have drawn many more people to look at the titles. But now they are all going to have both a negative image in the eyes of Yahtzee's fanbase and a bunch of angry trolls which take Yahtzee too seriously taking the opportunity to rag on them.

So I stand by what I said, this was bad for the titles and told us what we all ready knew 'beta product isn't good final product,' SHOKER! There are plenty of other things for Yahtzee to make fun of, even others in the survival genre to take the piss out of, this was a cheap and harmful look at peoples unfinished product that they are being encouraged to release early by both distributors and their fanbases.

 

[gamegod25]

While the difficulty in Starbound is a step up from Terraria (especially starting out) it's not that bad imo. Honestly I found Terraria to be pretty easy till hardmode unlocked so having more aggressive wildlife, dealing with hunger/cold, etc. to be a welcome change. And I don't really see it as the games fault he wasn't prepared for a fight, I'm pretty sure they give you a warning (albeit a vague one if I recall) and the whole point of the game is to take your time and explore. Yeah he was in a hurry for a deadline but like speed running Skyrim you're playing it wrong that way.

Actually I'd say underground Terraria was harder than Starbound's underground at present, largely due to the "tiers" of difficulty in Terraria. Sure monsters hit harder and take more damage to kill the deeper you get in Starbound, but they don't really get more challenging, at least not that I've seen. They just kinda take the same mechanics and make the numbers involved bigger. Not a huge deal.

I'm saying the difficulty curve of Starbound is wonky: you go from these surface/underground monsters that are manageable with minimal equipment to summoning a UFO that will straight up one-shot you if you're not in basically the best armor you can make pre-UFO destruction, and even then getting hit is going to wreck your face. You basically have to either cheese the thing or man-mode jump up and sword it out of the sky before it can kill you first. The game does not prepare you for that kind of a battle - as Yahtzee pointed out, the only equipment it overtly states you need is a bow.

A bow is not sufficient for dealing with the UFO without some serious terrain exploitation and a lot of patience.

Sidenote: telling someone "you're playing it wrong" when they're playing a game that is purposely designed to be open-ended, meaning open to be played pretty much how ever you want to play it, is hilarious. You may want to rethink that.

Last thing, regarding temperature, I wish it made a little more sense. I almost froze to death while I was inside a solid structure, but standing next to a torch - while outside, at night, in the rain - keeps me warm? What? No. Does not compute. A hand torch is not going to stay lit in the rain, much less provide any useful amount of heat, and I sincerely doubt the town full of NPCs were living in frigid homes.

Well I never said that it was perfect, it is still a work in progress after all. Just meant I like the added depth and realism warmth and hunger added. You are right about the torches and the NPC's but again it is still a game after all so you should suspend some disbelief. A structure may protect from wind and rain but without some heating source it's probably not going to be enough to keep warm.

And while there is certainly nothing stopping you from playing however you want, trying to speed run through it does miss the point of the game so to speak. Just doing the bare minimum required and trying to "finish" quickly in a game like this just seems foolish, the draw of the game is to explore and build not get to an end. That's just my opinion of course so feel free to disagree.

Anyway I enjoyed Terraria and loving Starbound even more. There is no doubt that it still needs work but then what game doesn't?

 

[C117]

Still haven't bought any Early-Access games. Call me oldfashioned, but I prefer to know that my game is actually complete before I pay money for it.