[quote][b][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_flip]Warning: Asset Flip![/url][/b]
"Sunset Drive 1986" is one of literally thousands of creatively bankrupt asset flips/kitbashes infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere.[/quote]
This garbage Unreal asset flip is some stolen game assets (notably the Delorean model) dropped on a basic ultra simple driving template, and slathered with a synthwave theme, because the "developer" of this saw that RewindApp were very successful with doing this exact same kind of asset flip. As an actual game, this is trash, you just look at the scenery and steer left or right... it's hard to even call this a game, but that's the thing... this is a fake game, just a cash grab, the developer was trying to get YOUR money for someone else's game assets here.
It failed, but the historical data is there, this was a paid asset flip.
So, "Sunset Drive 1986" is partially or completely made up of stock assets, "borrowed" from asset stores and free asset websites. Little, if anything in this game is the creation of the "developer".
While there's no up front price for this asset flip, the other problem with asset flips is that when developers aren't capable of doing their job and creating high quality assets, it's also true they can't do any of the rest of the job of a game developer either. That's definitely true for "Sunset Drive 1986", and this kind of asset flipping never results in games that have quality or value for PC gamers.
The developers abandoned this 5 years and 3 months ago. It will never be completed. This unfinished game is just polluting Steam and making it harder for gamers to find genuinely, completely made games.
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.
This game is fairly dated at 5 years old... and even back then it looked old and busted compared to contemporary, professionally made 3D games of the same period. It looked bad then, it looks worse now.
Now on to pricing and value for gamers.
There's no initial download price, but the developer was charging $5 USD for this.
Price barriers, especially on low quality products, can be a direct cause of failure. It seems like a nice gesture for the game to have no up-front cost anymore, but it also tells us that the game wasn't good enough to succeed as a paid product. This is also a bit of a slap in the face to anyone who showed enough questionable judgement to pay money for this... nobody got refunded.
You can always judge a product by how popular it is with the general public. Steam has over 130 million unique gamers, and over 40 million unique logons every day from dedicated PC gamers. But this only ever had a peak user count of a dozen or so people... that's very poor public reception. Gamers rejected this, most likely due to the reasons I supply in this review.
It's important to note that, despite this being such a low quality product, there's a number of positive reviews that all appeared immediately after the game launched, from suspiciously inactive Steam accounts that have reviewed almost no other games apart from this. Take the review score of this game with a grain of salt.
Bearing in mind that free games don't add +1 to your game collector count, should you bother adding this to your library and downloading it?
Nope. There's no up front cost here, but I still feel like I got ripped off, and I didn't even spend any money. That's how bad this is.
[quote][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Response![/url][/quote]The developer has weighed in to inform everyone they didn't read the [url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Usage Rules[/url] for Steam "partners", or they deliberately ignored the part where Valve says:
[quote]Though it may be tempting, not every review needs to be responded to. A developer response will frequently draw more attention than the original statement, potentially turning a small issue into a much larger community discussion. It's also not a good idea to use this feature to refute customer opinions. Your direct attention can be seen as validation or a defensive attempt to silence your customers.[/quote]
The first thing the developer wants everyone to know is that they are "The Main Character". You, as a gamer, don't matter. They breach Valve guidelines for developers just to complain about a fully accurate and informative review (with facts their ego doesn't like). It's evident from their attitude that they never created this product with gamers in mind. They did so to stroke their own ego. When developers, especially failed ones who would never be able to get a professional job in the industry, put themselves before gamers, we end up with garbage products like this. That explains how this trash ended up on Steam, but it doesn't excuse it. At least we finally got to meet The Main Character, and nobody else matters.
The developer makes the rather serious claim that my review is inaccurate/contains information which isn't factually evident. But this simply isn't true... the facts of my review can easily be verified with just a glance at this godawfully crap product.
We know that if there was any glaring inaccuracy in my review the developer would have jumped on it and pointed it out right away... but they can't even cite one single example. Because [i]they know my review is accurate[/i]. They just don't like being presented with the facts.
Indeed, the developer supports, without understanding the huge moral bankruptcy he's declaring, the absolutely correct claim that this is an ASSET FLIP. The developer plagiarised assets from actual, real game developers and put his name on them, hoping to fool and mislead gamers into thinking he was the creator. Worse, the developer conducted this highly unethical plagiarism FOR PROFIT. He wanted so bad to scam you out of YOUR MONEY for the work of other asset creators. This is absolutely disgusting. Worse, the "developer" of this garbage cash grab doesn't even think his horrific actions are crimes against the integrity of the gaming industry.
If the developer had done the same things he did plagiarising the work of others, putting his name on the work of others for profit and with deliberate intent to mislead, in the arenas of filmmaking, literature or academia, not only would they be kicked out from and banned from the industry, but they would likely be spending time in court. This guy does the same thing in gaming and expects people to give him money for his plagiarism. Disgusting attitde.
The developer refunded NOBODY who bought his game prior to him making it free, but pretends this is generousity. You can see more lies and toxicity from this fake posturing from a scammer.
The developer admits they didn't hire a team of talented staff to produce the game and tried to do the whole thing on their own, instead. This is a lot like boarding an airplane, and halfway through the flight, having the pilot come out and serve peanuts. It's going to end in disaster. It requires a team of competent people to do a complex job properly, and that's not what has happened here... another explanation for the poor quality of this game.
Nothing in the developers pointless breach of Valve guidelines changes any of the objective facts of my review. My review stands unaltered. I cannot recommend this asset flip, as confirmed by the developer to be an act of brazen, for-profit plagiarism, to anyone.
