So, I was gifted a copy of the game by a friend of mine. He wanted to prove to me that it was better than it was at launch. It might look and feel like a different game for many, but right now it's still a shallow grindfest. And it runs terribly. Granted, I don't have the most powerful system (i5 3570k running at 1920 x 1080), but it's installed on an SSD, running on a Radeon R9 390 and on medium and high settings with all the suggested tweaks that I can find online, I am lucky to get just over 30fps in most areas. I don't struggle with any other games, most of them being played on high or even ultra settings at the same res. Transitioning from space to a planet results in terrible stuttering, and even flying over a planet surface results in terrible stuttering. I've tried all the suggested tweaks and have had some success, but the game is very poorly optimised from what I've experienced. Others have very similar issues. Despite all the complicated stuff that's supposedly going on in the background, there are some silly simple things that are a bit immersion-breaking as well. Like why the heck can I walk through boulders on the surface of planets? Your feet go right through as if they're not there. They're just a blank shell. The tutorial at the beginning of the game is also absolute rubbish. I died a few times just trying to figure out what the hell to do. My first "30" minutes in the game went like this:
- Fire the game up.
- Wait 5 minutes to load in because it's loading shaders.
- Finally loaded in, spent maybe 5 minutes running around trying to stop myself from dying because I was on a toxic planet and my suit needed materials to top it up. I then spent most of this time trying to figure out just how the heck to locate the materials and mine them.
- I ended up choking to death because my suit failed.
- That was a total of less than 10 minutes in the game, the first half of that spent actually loading the damn game up.
Restart
- Wait another 2 minutes to load shaders. Game froze and then crashed on loading shaders (might be because I alt-tabbed through boredom).
- Reload the game through Steam.
- Waited out the over 2 minutes of shader loading yet again.
- I then got in, had a better idea of how to gather what I needed, but then got killed by a sentinel because it decided it didn't want me to mine materials on the planet. Well, three sentinels because I destroyed one that was attacking me for mining, and then more came. How convenient.
Again, I wasn't happy that I had died yet again, so I restarted. The game took a minute to load in, but by this time I'd actually lost the will to play it so I quit. Steam showed I'd spent over 30 minutes playing, but in reality it was actually just over 10 minutes. Great stuff!
It's also an absolute joke that loading into the game causes the "Loading Shaders" message to come up every damn time, and it takes at least a few minutes to get through that. Since the latest update, I am also getting 5 - 7fps on this loading screen whilst it's loading shaders, so something has been broken. And why does almost every graphical option change result in a required restart? Most games alter this stuff on the fly. I shouldn't have to restart if I change the FPS slider, or enable or disable vsync, or shadows, or textures, etc. And also when changing from fullscreen to bordered window, because this causes the window to move off the screen uncentred, which is just stupid.
The huge list of fixes recently posted can be viewed as both a good and bad thing. It's good that they're fixing issues, but it's bad that they've got so many issues to fix, and there's been no mention yet on any performance fixes. I appreciate that this update is a big one, but the list of issues is huge. Didn't they bother testing the game before releasing this update?
Subnautica is a cheaper game and does a better job at everything that this game tries to do. Inventory management is better, base building is far more intuitive and works better, exploration is better, and it runs better with similar aesthetics. I can appreciate that some think that this game is good to chill out to, but everytime I try I just can't chill out in it. It runs terribly, the inventory management sucks when you first start, trying to figure out how to upgrade broken bits on your multitool is difficult and you also don't even know why upgrading it will make it better because it doesn't tell you why, just that you need to. I found a drop pod with an exosuit upgrade, but had no idea what any of the materials even were, and the game doesn't really tell you what you need to know so effectively I've discovered a potential upgrade that's utterly useless and will be forgotten about because I'll probably never find it again after I've managed to figure out what the materials even are. I was hoping it would be easy because I'm finding the constant need to free up space rather tedious. I managed to find some whispering eggs that I discovered get you an item worth loads of money when you gather them, but ended up losing a bunch of them because they despawned before I could use the janky controls to clear out inventory space. And I also figured out that you can harvest these things safely by standing on one of the eggs. Another bug to add to the list!
I'm really trying hard to like the game, but for me I feel that even though this update has been a step in the right direction for some, coming to it from never having played it previously and knowing all the original issues, it hasn't impressed me much at all. Maybe in a few more months it'll be better, but honestly, how much more time do we give this game?
