Why we won't live happily ever after with Planetary Annihilation

"A company capable of making polished and complete games like Monday Night Combat"...
Ahaha. Oh god. Oh WOW. I'm STILL laughing.

I don't get the kind of notifications Stuart98 was explaining -- text and window -- when units come under fire. Hence the bit in my review. Instead I get them when I finish a vehicle factory that I was often watching getting built anyway. Gee, thanks, notifications!

Ok, so I'm going to reply to this review with a heavy hand. it is wrong in SO many places.
I know you may be thinking "you're only a guest, what do you know?". I'll tell you - I've been making content for this game for youtube - casting games/tournaments, even playing in a few, since Summer 2013 and I have seen the game come on a long way.
Enough about me, Why is this review 'WRONG'?
Well for a start the reviewer CLEARLY hasn't put enough time into exploring the game and its features.
- No minimap you say? Yes there damn well is - it's called 'Picture in Picture' - see that button in the bottom left that looks like 2 squares overlapping? There is your effective minimap.
- Alerts? You get them across the top of the screen that you can click on which will take you straight to the location of the alert.

Not to mention saying that this game is a stripped down version of SupCom? Uber did not receive the same budget/time or even the work force for this game - They got 2m from kickstarter and have an office of around 30 folks. GPG, excess of 20m for sup com (can't remember the figures off the top of my head) and had a big studio working on the game.

- To say you can't turtle is wrong as well - you can, just not to the same extent or in the same way as flat RTS maps.

- Orbital doesn't HAVE to be "Realistic" it has to "Function" and PA's orbital system functions absolutely fine for me. It does the job it needs to. Go play KSP if you want 'realistic' orbital physics.

- Launch is not the same as 1.0 or 'feature complete' release and to that end, should you have done your homework, you would know that Uber are going to continue to develop this game well past 'launch'. So for heavens sake, open your eyes, and at least do enough research to make your review even half credible.

It seems like you are angry with the game - did you write it when irate or did you let your rational mind take over before writing?

PIP helps me enormously with controlling multiple planets - need evidence, see my casts on my youtube channel - user/MEGAMarshallXP.
You can combine PIP with camera anchor controls which I do frequently and it works, it really does.
Yes when you start out with the game it is daunting, intimidating and hard to take in all at once, but that doesn't mean that given time and practice (like any other game) you will get better at the game. - Link to my earlier comment - perhaps you should spend some more time before venting frustration in a review?

Carlo, do not taint the water here because you are bitter with uber - it is your fault you were banned from the forums for poor conduct, not anyone else's.

(Figures for Sup Com funding are incorrect, actually about $11m)

"one of the hallmarks of Supreme Commander and Total Annihilation before
it was the way you could zoom out for an unprecedented comprehensive
overview of the battlefield"

I'm pretty sure Total Annihilation had no zoom whatsoever.

You fan boys are so funny. Can you deny that the game is being bugged and incomplete and short of an user manual?

That all matters. You can't.

Saying that I had a poor conduct is simply poor in itself. It's an attempt, again, to censor who disagree with you.

I'm confused why this review doesn't mention the AI or Galactic War when it's well known that most players will only ever play single player. The lack of any real care comes across when you write things like how you gain nothing from being on a globe, while failing to discuss the rather obvious change that a lack of map edges brings.

I can sympathise with the lack of a good tutorial, but considering the amount of RTSs you've played I can't believe for a second that you found it as hard to pick up the game as you make out, especially given the command icons are pretty much the same ones found in Total Annihilation (perhaps you load a unit using the... tool-tipped load command?). You sound more like you're angry about the lack of documentation and wrote from there. I can't even begin to wrap my mind around a review that says you can't turtle, then compares the game to a city builder and the lack of forced player interaction. What?

I mean, goodness, you manage to confuse art direction with graphical fidelity!

Tomchick, you have no idea what your talking about. ''Why make this game when you could instead just play Supreme Commander?'' is something you said, well gues what. Supreme commander ( or forged allience, whatever ) i played it a lot, on LAN and on the web. In literally every single SC game you try to play will desync. In plannetary annihilation you wont. This makes your entire revieuw worthless garbage since its the most important thing.

Also, i agree with many other people here, you didn't even try to make this revieuw properly. You have no idea about the game, because you didn't want to learn. You seem like a noob who got pubstomped and got angry over it. Also the problems you notice, arent actually problems, its just your lack of skill (why didn't you make a camera anchor or use PIP noob?). You got no idea how to play, and took all the wrong steps to improve. This revieuw only shows your incompetence as gamejournalist.

I certainly don't read this site to get Tom's interpretation of individual game's veteran players opinions on said game. I read it to get his opinion.

For me major problem of the game is how easy you can build defense, and how hard it is to crash it. Obvious bad design choices there - like "I fast-forward fly to the moon and build cheap and effective land-to-orbit guns everywhere, and what you will do now?'' Orbit-to-land units are expensive and inefficient so I am obviously control moon now, and you cant do anything with that. Wait till i build engines...

This idi- sorry, reviewer didn't even take time to play the game. Don't listen to his review. It's worthless.
His problem? He didn't take time to research and actually play the game. Or even try to learn it. I'm one of the better players in the game right now, and it is a hell of a lot better than SupCom. It requires more strategic thought, a higher level of attention to detail, and a little creativity.

But it also requires a little patience. This review gives PA no grace whatsoever, unlike many others involving other, lesser titles. If you can't at the very least get your facts straight, don't review games.

I would love to point out all the missing points and flawed arguments, but there are so many that Tom misses that I just can't post all of them.

--Mered4

Let me link you to ALL THE STUFF YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE YOURSELF.

pamatches.com
youtube.com/ZaphodX1
youtube.com/pamatches
https://www.youtube.com/user/M...

pastats.com
forums.uberent.com

There's probably more I missed.

You make me want to cry. No documentation? Have you ever heard of PaMatches? Patch notes? Forums?
The product has issues, yes. Are they gamebreaking? No. Are they significant? Not unless you are looking for the negative.

It's *complete.* They'll be releasing more as time goes on.

His opinion is not even well-informed in this instance - why the hell would you listen to that? The only thing I can figure is that he played 8-9 games, then wrote a few paragraphs about all the stuff he wasn't smart enough to figure out.

Well isn't that kind of the point? He shouldn't have had to do all that himself if the game were better made.

Use your aggressive feelings, boys! Let the hate flow through you. Haha, good, goooood! The hate is swelling in you now. Use it. Tom Chick can't stop you from posting. Strike him down with your words! Give in to your anger. Your hate has made you powerful.

It's so fun watching abused gamers justify the behavior of developers who take advantage of them. "YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT UBER SAYS TO ME WHEN YOU AREN'T AROUND!!!"

Let's try this: if your game relies on its players to write documentation half-written and appearing over a half dozen different sites, your game sucks.

Nobody's denying the game has bugs and is missing some features.