Personal Review:
First off, this game is still in Alpha stages, its one of Steam's Greenlight projects. So keep that in mind please
So I played this for about 2 hours last night.
I'm not 100% sure of it.
It could be fun, but the main focus of it is more building and then raiding your neighbors for supplies. Guns, Rockets, and Turrets are easy as hell to make, where as Reactors and other components are pretty complex. Sure this is actually true to life, but I more so enjoy the building aspect of things.
IDK, part of me regrets purchasing this.
Part of me really enjoys the free flying aspect and being able to make massive mining ships and space stations, but the problem is whats the purpose, whats the end result?
Once you have a reactor, you never have to worry about dying to loss of energy (Food)
You don't have to worry about air at all in fact.
The largest worry there is, other than other players coming and shooting you in the face, or sitting at range destroying everything you built in the last few hours, is Metorites.
Holy fucking god
I was sitting there, mining for some uranium to make another reactor, and BAM explosions all around me.
Quick video, because the meteors will destroy your shit
Right now there is nothing you can do to protect yourself, other than Stack multiple layers of armor, or hollow out an asteroid and build inside of it.
I have no idea if they plan on putting in some sort of point defense system to target asteroids, or even to put in some sort of shield. (Minecraft has all these in Tekkit and FTB for the mod packs with Meteor strikes, so I can imagine that Space Engineers will do something similar)
I think my biggest problem so far with the game is that once I had a reactor, I stopped being scared of what I could and couldn't do.
When I died, and I did a few times on purpose, and to accident, you arrive on another ship, which you can immediately salvage for free armor, cockpit, thrusters, landing gear, Reactor, and occasionally a gravity generator.......
So basically, if you kill yourself a few dozen times right at the start, you never have to worry about dying again...... (unless some asshole raider comes along, shoots you, and then swipes your shit)
The game is in Alpha though, so I expect most of this to be worked out in the end, but right now, I sort of regret spending my sons birthday present to me on this.
Thoughts on Multiplayer:
Much like Minecraft though, I think this game would be amazing if there were community projects and people working on a server not hellbent on shooting up everything they see.
Thoughts on Controls:
way to much going on here, there is a button for literally everything. Which typically I would be okay with, except, when you are mining in an asteroid, you have to hit "T" to actually pick up what you are mining, and there isn't a setting to just auto loot... which annoys the absolute piss out of me.
Closing Thoughts:
Looking at the various creations out there, I think this game could be badassed, but right now, I just don't know.
I need to look at what it takes to have a private server, I believe they are free, but I have no idea where they are hosted.
Playing on a public server was pointless, It was worse than Day Z to be honest. I mined for about an hour or so, with some dude flying by in his little spaceship, watching me, and never talking. Once I had a reactor, and a decent platform up, he and his friends brought a ship around and started salvaging all I had done, I started yelling, and one of them shot me.
I respawned, flew in, and it happened again, and they salvaged my respawn ship.....
I stopped playing on that server after that.
I started jacking around on a single player game, and looking at the various builds folks have out there.
Link to a google image search:
Some of my favorites so far: