The Long Journey Home

The game looks good. I have no Gamepad, so I use Keyboard and Mouse and with this the lander controll and landing is pure frustration. The game has onöy one save game, better copy it or the journey is often over after the first try to land on a planet. This game has a long way to go before it is worth the 45$

If only they went with different style of planetary exploration (ex. Megatraveller style - top down; all your team, random events you can solve differently depending on your crew composition ), if only they used interesting exploration events - maybe with nice text based descriptions and illustrations and choices of different actions depending on your crew/ship equipment. If only aliens didn't get tired after speaking more than three sentences. If only solar system view wasn't so zoomed up and minimap so small, that you couldn't see your trajectory in any meaningful distance and had to rely on guesswork (they even could add optional 'planning' mode then, to plan your trajectory, the thrust and brake, to pull smooth trans-orbital maneuver - that would be so satisfying). If only....... I am honestly disappointed in this game. That's probably why my score is 2 and not 3. This game is probably average but it's so bad to see the foundation of good game buried by terrible design decisions. And it really needed just so little change to be great.

If you are the kind of person who enjoys smacking yourself in the balls repeatedly with a ping-pong paddle, then this is the game for you. But if you are someone who likes their games to be entertaining and rewarding, then you might want to steer clear of this one. The physics are atrociously difficult to master. Even navigating into orbit around a planet is a chore, and don't get me started on navigating the lander. Relying heavily on simple thrust physics, the steering mechanics should be easy enough, on paper, but in reality the ship and your landers are all over the place. This just does not work! This is nothing but frustration, gnashing of teeth and a waste of your time. Don't get me wrong, it's ok to have a bit of a learning curve and degree of challenge can be good in a game, but this... this is just ridiculous! It looks really pretty but don't be fooled. The game being pretty is no comfort when the game physics are so hard to master you just want to toss your monitor through the window after a while.

I'm totally oblivious what i'm supposed to do. Can't even land the spacecraft in the tutorial. The autopilot function does nothing. This is so annoying i lost my patience for it.

Even the most maneuverable space craft are cludgy and slow - the entire game feels like space isn't empty but actually filled with thickest treacle. It just doesn't work conceptually either because the human race has advanced where space travel and system jumps are the norm yet the sub-light engines have the horsepower of an early Ford motor car. In a game where the overwhelming majority of the game play is in space this game is therefore a failure (even at £7 when I bought it).