If you want a story book where you have zero influence and can not "skip" then this is for you. If you want an open word survival stalker/fallout kind of scenario then it is not for you. While the story and graphics are simply amazing everything else, from a game perspective, is lacking but two. The weapons are quite interesting as is the AI. That is the only gaming aspect this has going for it. I think too many people play 10 minutes of the game and rate it based on the graphics. Unfortunately I cant rate it on that alone. Without getting into details and screwing around with files constantly here are the negatives. 1)One save and one save only. I could go on for hours why this is just stupid. 2)Cant skip cut scenes etc so you are doomed to watch them perhaps dozens of times in hard areas. 3)If you cant get past it the then the story ends. Its like having a book that if you cant skip page 3 to 4 because 4 wont exist until you read 3. Most lame aspect of the game. 4)Cut scene deaths and disruption in the worst possible spots. 5)Must run as administrator for it to work properly. 6)Relegated to a path to follow everywhere. Not open world. This game falls epicly short in user empowerment. The number one rule of creating something such as a game. This is its biggest failure. I really wanted to like this game and I would have had it been written more like a game rather than a book in which you are forced at gun point to read it as the author wants and as a user you have zero choices. This last part is the number one rule in my book when rating a game and the only way this game could violate that rule further would to have been DRM and pulled encrypted configurations when on line and prevented even binary hacking. If I find a way around these failings Ill up the rating but considering the effort they put into handcuffing you and my time available Im more likely to request my money back.
Purchased this from another source when it first came out. I can no longer obtain it via that route and I spent 6 months trying to make it work under Mint, Ubuntu and Fedora. It never would run and I was treated unbelievably rude by the developers and their forums. I was continually told "it was only me" when in fact dozens of people on the same forum had the same problems. The result? A fix? Newp but rather voting down and being told you dont know what you are doing etc. I've been running Linux for over 20 years and even written kernel drivers. I know this review will be voted down precisely as it was on the last vendor forums. Facts are facts. Game is a rip off and lie at least on linux. Maybe its better now but they would have to pay me to even take the time to install it.
Worth $60? Not even close. The first 12 hours of game play and honestly the game is turning out to be nothing as described except in the most vague way. Is it procedural? Seems to be but the deviations I have seen vastly fall short and are little more attribute changes (color, slight shape change, sound, behavior, etc) and not in the category I would classify as a "different world. You could almost compare them to visiting different continents on Earth. There is the occasional "new" thing but they are rare and I suspect they are the very similar where they do occur. The in game HOWTO is one of the poorest I have seen in decades of playing games. It may as well be non-existent. The game play while interesting at first becomes laboriousness and little more than a "search for mounds of gold and mine for the next bigger ship so you can mine even more gold". The terrestrial controls are fairly decent but the flight simulation is horrendous. Everything from takes off randomly spewing you instantly into space flying backwards to being stuck flying upside down and sideways over the terrain. There is no terrestrial map and no way to create way points. There are in game way points but they seem to do little in the manner of providing a method to find your way back to them, the entire point of a way point. There is a space map but its nothing more than a system to system map. No in system map. How do you find the space station? Hope you face the right way and see an icon. So why 3 stars? The game is ok to play and some personalities will enjoy it but if you listen to the hype you are likely to request a refund. This gets me to 2 stars. The third is from the hope they are less hyping what they plan to add to the game. If they do as claimed and its NOT pay for DLCs the game could be a 3 or 4. I doubt any of this though and I think my three stars are generous. Skyrim was $60. If I use it as a gauge this game cant muster 1 star for the cost hence DLCs should be free.
I have only been playing perhaps 15 hours but Ill get the bad out of the way first then the good. I think the statements to wait until its on sale are spot on. This game is not worth 50 USD. I paid 59 USD for Skyrim on release and that game was polished and brain dead easy to pick up and play. This game is more like a 20-30 USD release. When I play this I cant help but think of Blade Runner. It feels just like that movie. The game has its issues and lacks polishing. It could have been 5 stars if it was polished or maybe 15-20 USD less. If you like this genre though I would strongly recommend this game. The bad: 1)Broken, non-existent or confusing tutorials. ie: I have millions of credits worth of silicon that must be on my freighter being flown around but when I try to sell it the system says my freighter "cannot transport this ware". 2)Default keyboard layout is a train wreck. If on kbd/mse you MUST change it to have effective play. 3)Constantly cant speak to npcs. Have to back off move around and find some magic way they suddenly can be targeted. Its really annoying spending 1-2 minutes just trying to speak with a vendor. On station environment overall feels "after-thoughtish". 4)Seemingly random entire stations will just start attacking you. Less than one hour into the game I had a station that I had been floating next to the last 5 minutes scream something out at me and next thing I know space was filled with gun fire and I imploded. 5)Game goes from challenging to epicly impossible in seconds in the stories, not talking missions. 6)REALLY scizo-stupid AI in your freight ship. I mean a potato could fly it better. Or maybe when it flies good its a person and when bad the potato is in charge? The good: 1)Amazing space graphics, just ok on station graphics. 2)Great stories. 3)In concept and largely implementation a great trade system. 4)Very diverse space areas and a lot of "ship options". 5)Great space combat. 6)Just an awesome sandbox.
The bad: -Hijacked individuals do not save with games and vanish upon travel. -Fullscreen dual head in linux is a pain if you want it on a different monitor. You have to switch modes, move to other desktop, switch back. The good: -Everything else. Great content, great graphics, great (though little) voice over, nice story lines, total 1980s blade runner feel, variable mechanics, easily hackable save games ( *grin* ), decent length run through for price, just a damn fun and involved game. Anyone that likes this sort of genre its a must have. So good in fact I will be purchasing this as a gift very shortly.
I bought COP before this and was very happy with the purchase. Actually the game play and story line in this is better though more buggy. I never once had COP crash but have had several in this game and some that require modifying the ITX files after extraction to fix. Other than that the game is just a BLAST to play. You will NOT be disappointed with this purchase.
