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I just finished it and was a bit underwhelmed. There is an amazing game there ruined by a lot of tangents with subpar game design. It was like they were not confident enough in their core gameplay and just kept adding mediocre noise instead of streamlining the main appeal. I just wanted to dive and run a restaurant and the game kept forcing me to do other things. Very frustrating.
The mini games can be a part of it. When they work they’re intuitive, quick, and immersive. But sometimes the mini games aren’t well thought out and/or not intuitive. The real problem for me is that I was 40 hours into the game and it’s not only introducing new elements but the tutorials long, uninteresting, and constant. The game just doesn’t have time to breathe.
I would say if you’re on the fence you’ll probably like it. Like I said, there IS an amazing game there. Just go in with lower expectations and you’ll have a good time.
Edit: it’s just frustrating because if the devs put the time spent on all the side elements into the core gameplay, then this game could have been something really special. As is, there are plenty of interesting things to do and cool, emergent moments smothered in a bunch of sub par game design and warioware.
Edit2: I’m definitely venting, too. The game looks incredible and there are also a ton of spoilers that you or others might find to be great moments.
7.5 is a high score, even if not the best game they have ever played. A low score would be something well below average (average being 5 in this case).
Definitely not questioning your opinion and review of the game (i quite enjoyed it but that’s my opinion). However, i do not believe that most people would see 7.5/10 and think “that’s a high score.”
One variable here is medium bias. Different mediums of entertainment have different “average” scores. It seems (i think) like things that take more time to enjoy (video games, TV) have higher baseline scores that are considered average than say a movie. (As an example, metacritic has different score tiers for movies than it does for video games, for their video games, anything 60-79% or 6.0-7.9/10 is mixed or average, but this score is 40-59% for movies).
I would further say that, across the board, a score of 5/10 would almost certainly be considered well below average for a game (or even a restaurant for that matter). I would be willing to bet that average for a video game would fall into the 7-7.5 range for most people. There are probably other biases at play as well, many of which i believe are impacting the scores in the first place (for example, the way people rate movies may be even more critical, and then perhaps there are so many highly rated games that it brings up the average there).
Something that i know i consider is that video games can absorb 10s, 100s, and even 1000s of hours of time, and i wouldn’t want to sink that kind of commitment into a 5/10 game, which probably got such a score due to a combination of bugs, bad story, and poor mechanics. Plus, the lowest ever rated games are 1-2/10, and you’ll be hard pressed to find any game rated below that (which further drives up the average).
I know that If i saw a game with aggregate reviews of even 7.5, i would think it had major problems and may not be worth my time investment. 7.5 is almost certainly not a “high” score, though i can appreciate you being very deliberately mathematical with your scoring.
I agree, and it’s a terrible thing that has happened. Basically the result is that all reviews are either 4 or 5 stars if at all positive, and 1 star if anything went wrong, making the whole system useless.
In context, it can be assumed that the original comment wasn’t negative about the game while giving it 7.5/10, so I don’t think they meant it as a low score
I was just scrolling through my most played on Steam and the closest one to average that I can think of is probably . It’s basically a space colony building simulator. This is the kind of game that you boot up once every 3-4 years, play through a whole colony, and then uninstall and forget about. Not bad by any means, but I wouldn’t say it’s very exceptional either. While it has some challenge scenarios and different planets with their own characteristics, the game boils down to the exact same formula once you get a self-sufficient base started, and therefore replayability is really not there. However, it has entertained me for over 100 hours in the past 8 years, so do with that information what you will.
Out of curiosity, why the low score if it’s one of the few games you finished?
I just finished it and was a bit underwhelmed. There is an amazing game there ruined by a lot of tangents with subpar game design. It was like they were not confident enough in their core gameplay and just kept adding mediocre noise instead of streamlining the main appeal. I just wanted to dive and run a restaurant and the game kept forcing me to do other things. Very frustrating.
Thanks for your review. The trailer shows many mini games. Are they the noise you are referring to?
The mini games can be a part of it. When they work they’re intuitive, quick, and immersive. But sometimes the mini games aren’t well thought out and/or not intuitive. The real problem for me is that I was 40 hours into the game and it’s not only introducing new elements but the tutorials long, uninteresting, and constant. The game just doesn’t have time to breathe.
I would say if you’re on the fence you’ll probably like it. Like I said, there IS an amazing game there. Just go in with lower expectations and you’ll have a good time.
Edit: it’s just frustrating because if the devs put the time spent on all the side elements into the core gameplay, then this game could have been something really special. As is, there are plenty of interesting things to do and cool, emergent moments smothered in a bunch of sub par game design and warioware.
Edit2: I’m definitely venting, too. The game looks incredible and there are also a ton of spoilers that you or others might find to be great moments.
7.5 is a high score, even if not the best game they have ever played. A low score would be something well below average (average being 5 in this case).
Definitely not questioning your opinion and review of the game (i quite enjoyed it but that’s my opinion). However, i do not believe that most people would see 7.5/10 and think “that’s a high score.”
One variable here is medium bias. Different mediums of entertainment have different “average” scores. It seems (i think) like things that take more time to enjoy (video games, TV) have higher baseline scores that are considered average than say a movie. (As an example, metacritic has different score tiers for movies than it does for video games, for their video games, anything 60-79% or 6.0-7.9/10 is mixed or average, but this score is 40-59% for movies).
I would further say that, across the board, a score of 5/10 would almost certainly be considered well below average for a game (or even a restaurant for that matter). I would be willing to bet that average for a video game would fall into the 7-7.5 range for most people. There are probably other biases at play as well, many of which i believe are impacting the scores in the first place (for example, the way people rate movies may be even more critical, and then perhaps there are so many highly rated games that it brings up the average there).
Something that i know i consider is that video games can absorb 10s, 100s, and even 1000s of hours of time, and i wouldn’t want to sink that kind of commitment into a 5/10 game, which probably got such a score due to a combination of bugs, bad story, and poor mechanics. Plus, the lowest ever rated games are 1-2/10, and you’ll be hard pressed to find any game rated below that (which further drives up the average).
I know that If i saw a game with aggregate reviews of even 7.5, i would think it had major problems and may not be worth my time investment. 7.5 is almost certainly not a “high” score, though i can appreciate you being very deliberately mathematical with your scoring.
I agree, and it’s a terrible thing that has happened. Basically the result is that all reviews are either 4 or 5 stars if at all positive, and 1 star if anything went wrong, making the whole system useless.
In context, it can be assumed that the original comment wasn’t negative about the game while giving it 7.5/10, so I don’t think they meant it as a low score
Out of curiosity, what game would you say is a 5/10?
I was just scrolling through my most played on Steam and the closest one to average that I can think of is probably
. It’s basically a space colony building simulator. This is the kind of game that you boot up once every 3-4 years, play through a whole colony, and then uninstall and forget about. Not bad by any means, but I wouldn’t say it’s very exceptional either. While it has some challenge scenarios and different planets with their own characteristics, the game boils down to the exact same formula once you get a self-sufficient base started, and therefore replayability is really not there. However, it has entertained me for over 100 hours in the past 8 years, so do with that information what you will.
A perfect 5 or 6 out of 10.
I don’t necessarily disagree that 7.5/10 is not a very low score in general but given it’s one of the few games they’ve finished, it stood out to me.