The Riftbreaker

直接残酷拉满，战斗，爽！建设，爽！工厂自动化，爽！ 你的下一款外星杀虫游戏又何必是HD2？ Seeing exotic new life forms~

Early on, the player character talks about how humans need to learn to live in harmony on this new world. This made me think there would be a coexistence gameplay path, where instead of just blowing up everything in sight I could research tech to slowly understand and reach equilibrium with these fascinating flora and fauna, create regenerative resource systems, and so on. Several hours later it was clear I'd inferred everything so very, very wrong. The protagonist's early words were just empty writing, no connection to game design or narrative ethos whatsoever. This game is exactly and only about mindlessly shooting and killing everything you see, then covering their corpses with ugly metal buildings to make more guns to make more corpses. There is no alternate path no matter what tech you research. Wish I'd figured this out within the first two hours so I could've returned it. At least the controls are smooth and the music is decent, so if turning a pristine world into a massive industrial strip mine for interstellar capitalism is your thing, you're gonna love this ♥♥♥♥. Bonus points if you enjoy drowning your dystopian metal cities in boundless corpse fields of native flora and fauna that had the temerity to defend their habitats. A more honest title would be "Planetary Strip Mine: Mass Extinction Protocol" but instead it's called "Riftbreaker" for some reason.

The base building gets too tedious when you realize you have to redo your borders over and over. You're encouraged to build walls, but a line of defense that you spent 10 mins setting up will probably get used for 1 min, after which your border changes and you need to build new walls that are further out again. You need to build buildings whose sole purpose it to increase your tower capacity so if you were efficient about it, spreading towers out around all of your outposts makes no sense, when they'll be more effective concentrated on just that one that is getting attacked. You find yourself in an infinite loop of building, deconstructing, and re-building the same stuff again but in a different location ad nauseum. At some point, you'd rather not build any walls or defenses at all (since you'll be more productive exploring instead) and just let the critters destroy some buildings, which you'll be able to rebuild back after cleaning up the enemies yourself.

I could recommend the game somewhat but the fun is on a timer. It just gets very repetitive. The fact that you can build something and transfer resources automatically allows for play where you always risk very little and you don't have to be very involved in fighting which definitely is what the game wants you to do. I think this game is in the same category with They Are Billions - but here having a lot of everything is easy and just works. More than limited by resources for expansion, you are artificially limited by the speed of research. I would assume that it gets harder later but what does it mean in context? It just means there will be more enemies, harder enemies etc. but the fighting is not much fun.

[b]게임 적합성 평가 보고서[/b] 제 356 호 ▶가격 [5.6/10] (이 게임은 얼마나 값어치는 하는가?) 32,000원 (일단 DLC는 필수로 살 필요 없어서 가격에서 제외) ▶장단점 [15/30] (내가 게임을 통해 얻을 수 있는게 무엇인가?) ▷장점 - 조작이 딱히 불편하다 싶은 건 없음. - 창작마당 지원함. - 디펜스인데 멀티되고 뱀서처럼 하면 되니깐 나름 재미는 있음 (난 디펜스 게임 좋아함). - 핫키 커스터마이징 가능. 근데 마우스 위주로 조작해도 할만함. ▷단점 - 기본 게임 룰 없으면 무조건 하다가 막힘. 싱글로 좀 연습하다가 실전 멀티로 넘어가는걸 추천함. - 은근히 발적화 심함. 개체수 많아지면 적들이 본진이 아닌 프레임를 조지기 때문에 주의해야 함. - 창작마당 모드 설치 시 메인화면에서 렉걸림. 이 부분이 나름 신선한 똥겜. - 고이지 않아서 그럴지도 모르겠는데 서바이벌 모드는 무조건 정신없이 빠르게 플레이 해야해서 그런지 불쾌함. 차라리 캠페인 모드로 천천히 즐기면 재밌음. ▶신선도 [18/20] (돚거질을 한 비도덕적 게임이 아닌가?) - 스타? 뱀서? 팩토리오? 비슷해 보이긴 한데 해보면 다름. ▶개발사의 품위 [20/20] (개발사가 분조장에 유저와 기싸움을 즐기는가? 혹은 음흉한 일을 저질렀는가?) ▷유저와의 소통 - 딱히 문제는 없는 듯. ▷개발사의 잡음 - 없다. ▶평가자의 취향 [15/20] 그냥 친구가 살라고 하길래 같이 사서 했는데 은근 시간이 녹아 내리더라. 종합점수 [h3]73.6[/h3] 취향 맞으면 구매 해도 괜찮음.

This is AVATAR with a gready scatterbrained bimbo as a main character posing as a scientist. fun tower defence game with no balance and no way to change 1 line building inteface. 8/10 P.S. Ashley! LOOK... AT.. ME!!!!

VSync setting in the game seems broken -- no matter the screen mode (windowed, borderless window, fullscreen ) or VSync setting (on, off), I only ever get 72 FPS on my machine, with CPU and GPU being used ~30% and ~60% respectively. Also, ray tracing doesn't work anymore somehow ... and there's still no real solution, 1 year after they disabled it. Sadly, these are deal breakers for me. Lastly, just adding to the overall technical impression, the benchmarks cannot be closed via the big buttons on the screen, instead I have to Alt-Tab-X them.

Хорошая игра, забавная, особенно вместе с кем-то поиграть

10%-gameplay 90%-"Ashley!"

[b]The Riftbreaker — ★★★★⯨ 4.5 / 5[/b] A huge base-building action game where exploration, research, combat and production systems constantly feed into each other. It is an easy recommendation, even at full price, but some of its late-game systems are explained far worse than they deserve. [b]Overview[/b] [table] [tr] [th]Category[/th] [th]Rating[/th] [th]Category[/th] [th]Rating[/th] [/tr] [tr] [td]Gameplay / Mechanics[/td] [td]★★★★⯨ 4.5 / 5 Deep systems with strong action flow[/td] [td]Narrative / Atmosphere[/td] [td]★★★★☆ 4.0 / 5 Light story, excellent planetary atmosphere[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Content / Variety[/td] [td]★★★★★ 5.0 / 5 Huge campaign before DLCs even matter[/td] [td]Challenge / Balance[/td] [td]★★★★⯨ 4.5 / 5 Tough, fair, with optional brutal extremes[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Technical State[/td] [td]★★★★★ 5.0 / 5 No issues after 53 hours[/td] [td]Price / Value[/td] [td]★★★★★ 5.0 / 5 Full-price value without finishing it[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Completion / Grind[/td] [td]★★★⯨☆ 3.5 / 5 Many achievements, final grind still unclear[/td] [td]Overall[/td] [td]★★★★⯨ 4.5 / 5 Excellent despite opaque late-game systems[/td] [/tr] [/table] [b]What it is[/b] The Riftbreaker is part base builder, part action RPG, part tower defense and part resource-management puzzle. You explore an alien planet, build outposts, defend them against waves, collect resources, research new technology and slowly prepare the infrastructure for a massive rift portal. That sounds simple. It is not. The game keeps adding layers: power grids, ammunition supply, liquids, advanced production chains, weapon crafting, suit upgrades, huge research trees, creature scanning, plant cultivation, alien fauna, different biomes and increasingly specialized defensive options. After 53.4 hours I am still in the campaign, not even finished, and that is before really judging the DLCs or survival mode. [b]What works[/b] The strongest part is how well the systems connect. Base building is not just decoration. It feeds your research, your weapons, your defenses and your ability to expand. At the same time, you are not only watching turrets do the work. You are still out there fighting directly, upgrading your mech, scanning creatures and pushing into new territory. The Bioscanner is a surprisingly strong part of the game. Flora and fauna are not just background art. Scanning them unlocks information, resources and eventually new production options. That makes the planet feel more like a system you learn, not just a map you clear. The atmosphere is also far better than the basic story setup suggests. The plot is light: land on a planet, survive, build the rift portal. That is enough. The stronger part is the planet itself: rain, wind, storms, lightning, hostile wildlife, strange plants and constant radio chatter between the main character and the AI. The communication is useful, but also gives the game a clear tone without overexplaining everything. Challenge feels fair. I played close to the hardest settings for most of the time. The absolute highest difficulty can hit extremely hard, but since there is no achievement pressure to play that way and it likely makes more sense for co-op or extreme runs, I do not hold that against the game. The important part is that the main challenge still feels controllable. [b]What does not work as well[/b] The biggest weakness is not complexity. Complexity is the point. The problem is that several systems are explained too poorly once the game opens up. Production chains can become unclear. Cultivators plant things, but the game does not make it obvious enough what should be planted, why, and which building actually harvests it. Some plants are tied to biomes, some resources come through scanning, and some production logic only becomes clear after trial, error or looking it up. The same applies to towers. At some point you have a large pile of defensive options: watchtowers, rockets, artillery, plasma, lasers, lightning, acid, drones, portal bombs and several special variants. Many of them have a purpose, but the game does not always communicate their role cleanly. Portal bombs, for example, are great as limited counter-artillery support, not as a general tower line. Drone towers are more of a mobile support and breach-control tool, not a clear replacement for watchtowers or plasma. There is also repetition. You enter a new region, explore, secure resources, build infrastructure and defend it. But that is also the game. For me, the loop still works because every new area brings new pressure, new resources or new production questions. [b]Technical state[/b] No relevant issues so far. No crashes, no serious bugs, no performance problems worth mentioning after more than 50 hours. That matters in a game with this many moving parts. [b]Conclusion[/b] The Riftbreaker is dense, huge and mechanically satisfying. It gives you a strong reason to build, fight, research, scan, expand and rebuild better. The campaign alone already feels worth the price, and I am not even done with it. Its main flaw is the weak explanation of some late-game systems. The game has the depth, but not always the clarity. Still, that is a problem of guidance, not of core design. Strong recommendation. Full-price worthy.