Pakicetus Redux

"Pakicetus Redux" is just another student project dumped onto the Steam store, one of thousands. It's from University of Idaho in somewhere in the USA. Student projects might look better than amateur shovelware, but they aren't real games. This is just a glorified homework assignment. It lacks the depth and value you get from professionally developed product because it was made for a grade, not for players. Schools, colleges and universities shouldn't be using Steam to show off student projects. It might be fine for the school's marketing, but it clutters the Steam store with pollution... we have to sort past all these short student tech demos just so we can find real, full games from professional developers. This is a case of a game dev college putting its own interests before the interests of gamers. The students made what sounds like a pseudo-educational game, but is really just an arcade style third person vehicle shooter (that has nothing to do with everyone's favourite prehistoric mammal, the titular pakicetus). I'm frankly disappointed to not see a single pakicetus in the game. There's a little collection and stuff but this is mostly just third person vehicle shooting. With wonky controls you can't fix. And of course as a student project it's unfinished and abandoned because the students got their grades and walked away. Since the controls can't be customized, this makes the game inaccessible for a wide range of gamers, including those who are left-handed, have physical impairments, or use international keyboard layouts. Developers have a responsibility to ensure gamers can customise their experience with the game. This looks a lot like it was designed for consoles, but released on Steam instead by mistake. While this is on PC, it has all the hallmarks and deficiencies of a console game, from the clunkier than needed control scheme to the less than cutting edge graphics. There's 10's of thousands of PC games on Steam, and PC gamers deserve only the best. This might not appeal to many gamers due to the lack of PC-centric design. It's unclear why this never made it to the video game console appliances it seems to have been designed for. The graphics in this game are passable, but could be better. And while it's vital for any game to have impressive visuals (gaming is a visual medium, after all), there's more to a game than just the graphics. To be worth a gamers time, the game must match top tier visuals with top tier gameplay, and that's not happening here. You're forced to sign a highly questionable yet legally unenforceable End User License Agreement... for such a relatively low effort, low quality product, this comes across more as a delusion of grandeur than anything else. This agreement includes questionable requirements that may attempt to revoke consumer law protections that gamers expect to have, which is also highly problematic. Developers must learn they are here to serve gamers, not control them. I had my cat walk over the keyboard while the EULA was displaying, which fixed that problem for me. Let's talk about price and the value this represents for us gamers. It would be unethical for students to try charge money for their homework assignments, so you don't have to pay any money for this. But you'd still have to spend your time downloading this, and "time is money", as they say. There's the other problem, too... as a student project, this wasn't made for gamers. There's no requirement for them to polish and balance the game properly, all they need is something to show the faculty so they can get their grade and move on. Let's once more ask... why is that good for gamers? It's obviously not delivering a solid product. Yet here it is, on the store page, and here you are, reading my review for a student demo that's going to waste your time. While genuine amateur developers who made real products get ignored because they have to compete with this stuff. In some ways, this deluge of student projects on Steam is harmful to everyone. A peak of [b]5 concurrent players[/b] (according to SteamDB) for a "free" game is a disastrous public reception. Out of 130 million potential players here on Steam, almost nobody was interested. Even though this is "free". That level of rejection speaks a lot for the quality of the game. Since this is more of a student tech demo than a full, genuinely made game for gamers, and offers no Steam features, like a +1 to your game count, I can't recommend downloading this over a full, professionally made game, of which there are thousands here on Steam.