| Title | Why we won't live happily ever after with Planetary Annihilation |
| Author | Tom Chick |
| Posted in | Game reviews |
| When | September 12, 2014 |
Remember what it used to be like in the days of the big publishers who forced developers to release games before they were ready? They did this because they didn't care about games, about fans, about the industry as a whole, about me, about you..
Read the full articleWow, I had no idea when I listened to the 3MA podcast that you disliked it *this* much. But staying far away from this game seems to be the best thing for my wallet, Tom, and I thank you for "taking the bullet"
Thank you for the review, though I feel calling Monday night combat polished is excessively generous
What? Monday Night Combat (and SMNC) are awesome!
Corrections:
"which is where Planetary Annihilation earns it[s] names"
"waiting for the transports to get where they're going[,] and then unloading of the transports"
Correction:
"...earns its name"
Nice read. At first I was thinking: "How can a game where you can use the moon as a weapon not be good?" Then I read the rest. A strategy game without a good manual is big faux pas... it's bad enough they don't print physical copies anymore, why hold out on that .pdf file?
Typo: "trail and error" -> trial
Rolling over a notification will display a miniature picture in picture, and clicking it will jump you to it.
In the bottom left you'll notice a match length indicator along with four buttons. The second most left one opens a picture in picture, which can be configured in multiple ways, effectively invalidating your arguments against the spherical maps.
How can it be a city builder when as you stated yourself you cannot turtle?
If an optimization patch fixed an issue, why mention it?
The always online is because they haven't polished local servers yet and is going away once they finish that.
If you talk about fans documenting a game, then why does your review blatantly scream "I DIDN'T READ ANYTHING ABOUT THE GAME AND DIDN'T LOOK UP ANYTHING TO SEE IF MY ISSUES WERE TRULY LEGITIMATE ISSUES".
Oh, you're just not willing to look up anything? Your own fault then for not having an experience as good as if you had bothered to look stuff up.
A lack of information does not merit a 1 star review. You have the internet. In less than a minute you could find the answer to anything. There's no excuse for ignorance just because Uber didn't include documentation.
Did you really do your research? The only reason why the game is released is because a company paid them money to release it.
Consider talking to some of the players who have played the game itself, most of them will disagree with you, especially the veteran players
You are very misinformed my good sir. You can open up Picture in a Picture and set it to mirror your main screen so you can see the entire planet all at once, while giving commands from both the PiP and the main screen. You have come to the decision some how that you can't turtle while also saying this is nothing more than a glorified city builder. There is a lot of aggressive penitential and there are those parries and ripostes that you talk about if you actually build offensive units and send the to attack. Most of the player base is still new however if you go to the forums there are some skilled players that you could verse and get a good experience out of. Also if you put the AI difficulty then you may get what you were looking for. If you click on the notification box then it takes right to where it happened and if you mouse over it, it opens up a PiP at the location. My biggest gripe with this review is that you constantly remind us that a publisher didn't do this, and then compare the game to other games with publishers. Starcraft and SupCom both had hundreds of million dollar budgets and had huge development times with massive teams working on them. PA had 2.2 million, 2 years and a small team of about 20 people. I just wanted to point this out and say that next time you do your research before unfairly ruining a games reputation.
Supcom's budget was $11 million. Starcraft 2's is undisclosed.
He didn't mention the AI anywhere in the review.
Everything else you said is accurate.
There is no notification for units under fire.
PIP doesn't help manage multiple planets.
It's not a city builder.
The optimization patch didn't help much.
Looking forward to seeing how the game turns out when "they finish that". They probably should have "finished" stuff before releasing it.
What should I have looked up? I ended up learning quite a lot about the game, almost all of it without Uber's help ingame.
Not only am I willing to look stuff up, I'd say it's pretty much mandatory for figuring out how to play, and particularly for arriving at some of the conclusions I came to.
The review covers more than the lack of information.
Actually, I intended it to be "earns its names", because it's a reference to both words in the title. I know, I know, probably just awkward instead of clever. I can't help it.
I'm afraid I can't promise you that a review I write will be an accurate reflection of the opinions of other players, veteran or otherwise.
Actually, the AI is quite good! Partly because it can more easily micro the situational awareness that will impede a human player. But I was pleased with the AI's ability to play the game. So Planetary Annihilation definitely has that going for it.
Yeah, I was a big fan of Uber's Monday Night Combat, too. It's actually one of the main reasons I was looking forward to Planetary Annihilation.
Yes there is. In fact many argue there are too many notifications for units under fire.
Uber just didnt pay 3MA any promotion fee. Firaxis sure did, i think you'll find, as all they do when discussing anything Firaxis is ass-licking and not much else.
Is that true? Did Uber actually got paid for screwing things up? How smart...
Uber always said that the game would be released when it's ready. They said it so many times to become their mantra. So is their mantra a lie?
But not to worry. Bugs and missing features, will come *soon*, word that basically is Uber's middle name.
I suggest you do *your* research, Vrishnak, Uber forum is filled up with misery, look up for the countless locked threads.
The reason why there is no documentation is that not even Uber knows what will be in the game when done, because up at this stage they released a product that's pretty much still in alpha. Quite far to be a completed product.
But that's exactly where the main issue is.
