This is a REALLY hard one for me to say no to.
[h1]The Good[/h1]
The idea of completely free and open modular building of vehicles is AMAZING. I love that you can do literally whatever you want (and fail miserably, lol). There's some absolutely insane things people have made. Even if you're just playing the game normally, it's still tons of fun being able to build. I love when games have the ability to be creative within them (it's rarer than you think).
The crafting is done in a unique way, and I did enjoy some of the crafting elements.
The problem is... that's about all that's good about it. The core concept of modular building is fantastic, but the game is held back by basically everything else.
[h1]The World[/h1]
The world itself is basically constant extreme hills. Even the easiest locations are super hilly and bumpy, always, everywhere. The hill are unrealistic, and I don't really care about realism, but it ends up being incredibly frustrating to traverse the terrain. There is a flat biome, but they're very rare, and small. Basically the whole world is frustrating to travel through. You can't just put the pedal to the metal and zoom through, because it's constant steep hills. Even when the largest wheels, on a massive vehicle, it's still an absolute pain to drive anywhere. Considering this is most of what you do in the game (travel from A to B), for it to be this frustrating totally ruins the experience.
Yes, you can fly (once you're near the endgame), but even then, the hover vehicle is essentially still land bound, so the hills are STILL a huge problem.
[h1]Controls[/h1]
The controls are SOOOOOO bad. I can see what they're doing, because the controls are kind of straightforward, but WOW is it painful. Car controls aren't too bad, but it's also backwards when you're going backwards (the opposite of what every other game is like, so it will feel bad). The helicopter controls are recognized as being so incredibly bad, that there's no point in ever making a helicopter, at all, because it's unplayable. The flight controls are understandable and straightforward, but again, it's so unpleasant to do, that I don't even want to touch the planes. The hover controls are decent, but then the vehicle will respond horribly in some situations.
Really, the problem is, the vehicles themselves can be built in so many ways (which is great!) that you have to work very hard having the right pieces, and the right balance, so that the vehicle will respond to you properly. For example, very small hover crafts are so light, that if you just try to turn a bit, it will to more than a full 360 at a tap of the turn button, so it's basically unplayable, because the controls are so touchy. Same with the planes; the blackbird you get through the story is obviously built well (it's a model the devs made for the story), and yet, it's so incredibly touchy, that I can barely even manage to fly it through a single course.
I can't even attempt the helicopter, the planes are infuriating, then the cars and hover have to put up with the intense hills, which makes all traversal an absolute pain, and I'm just not enjoying the game at all because of this.
[h1]Combat[/h1]
This is obviously where the game attempts to shine, because this should be the most enjoyable part. However, the weapons are so straightforward, and the aiming so badly done, that it's just another terrible experience.
The game auto aims. You CANNOT aim yourself. You can turn your vehicle obviously, and most of your weapons require pointing your vehicle in the right direction, but then once you're facing your enemy, the game auto aims. The aiming is directed to where the enemy currently is, and basically all bullets are VERY slow. This means... you miss constantly. In some battles, I can position myself properly, where I can launch volleys before the enemy engages, and take them right out. But, if the enemy does engage, then any movement at all causes almost all weapons to miss constantly. I end up only hitting the enemy about 1% of the time. It's infuriating (which is kind of how this game plays in general).
[h1]In-Game Information[/h1]
This is the type of game where information is necessary. I need to know the hitpoints of the blocks, how much damage the bullets will do, how often it shoots, how far bullets travel, how fast these wheels go, the turning ability, how much power does this require, how much energy does this battery store? There's TONS of information you need in order to make good judgments. Here's the thing I don't understand at all, and seems like an absolutely idiotic move by the devs... the game gives you ZERO information. I mean literally zero. Everything I just said, the game does NOT tell you. You'll get a new weapon, and not know whether it's better or worse than your current one. You can try to figure that out by using them in battle, but again, you miss constantly, so it's hard to gauge whether something is better or worse.
There is a wiki, and it has a little bit of info, but it's very severely underdone, and doesn't have a lot of info. Also, considering you're working with dozens of blocks at once, imagine having to go to dozens of websites, just to check a few numbers for each. That's going to be a massive pain. There should absoultely be ingame information, and there's nothing.
I feel like I'm missing something, and someone will say "oh just click this" and it will all make sense. But as far as I can see, nope, it's just the devs being brain dead in this regard, and not giving players any information at all.
[h1]Quests[/h1]
This is the core gameplay loop. You do quests to get access to new stuff, and then you gather materials to make that stuff, and build your vehicles. Then you go out to do more quests.
There's two massive problems with this. Firstly, like I said, travelling is an absolute pain, because of the constant severe hills, and terrible controls. The quests are all multiple kilometers apart, so the majority of what you end up doing in this game is travelling, and travelling is not enjoyable (imagine a vehicle game where using the vehicles isn't fun. They botched this.) Secondly, the quests are sometimes fun, but usually, it's either incredibly simple, like blow up this very small and underpowered enemy (which is essentially pressing space bar one time), or, they're infuriating, like crafting something when you don't have the materials yet, or driving the horrible small hover car you can barely control through the rings.
[h1]Achievements[/h1]
Not everyone cares, but for the achievement hunters out there, this one might be a pain. As I've said, the game itself is frustrating to play, add to that the fact that there's a really grindy achievement, and you have a really unpleasant experience.
The worst achievement in the game is that you have to max out your points for each faction. In order to do this, you have to do many many quests for each faction. This means you'll have to travel A LOT, and do the tasks. There are some fun quests, but generally, you're going to be fighting against the stupid hills everywhere, or fighting against the terrible controls, for long periods of time, grinding through the quests to get points to max the factions.
[h1]Overall[/h1]
It's actually incredibly sad to me, because the modular building and freedom is amazing. They have an awesome product on their hands here, but they've made it so infuriating and frustrating to use the vehicles, that it's not even enjoyable most of the time. That's the whole point of the game! Using the vehicles should be fun and satisfying, and shouldn't feel like I'm constantly fighting against the game just to use what I built.
The sad thing is, the grindy achievement is essentially just playing the game... and I don't want to do it, because it's not fun. So, playing the core gameplay isn't fun? That's obviously a problem.
