RockPaperShotgun give TLD a Killer Review! (So Far)


RossBondReturns

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On 11/1/2017 at 4:45 PM, AZHockeyNut said:

The comments were a crack up. Loads of impatient teens who have not really played the game (judging by their saying inaccurate things like no skills system, no books etc)  

 

ahaha yea! People are just not used to good videogames without tons of elements. One of the reasons why Videoball failed. Thanks god here we have pretty 3D graphics that push people to buy and then those that like it can enjoy the fun :)

- It still needs more content.

lmao the game is already so huge I've played two hundred hours and still missing spots :-( Don't add any new "content" I want to play other things :P

Those that like don't starve and such are amazing, those games are so bad after playing 30 minutes I rage uninstalled them.

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I actually think the review misses the mark on a lot of stuff (it falsely claims the late game is super compelling, NOPE)*, but the comments are just pure gold.

*Not going to go into it here as it's been talked to death/not the place for it, but I will say this: for all the flaws of this game the fact that people bother to stick around to complain about them shows the core of this game is very solid even if there are some problems. For example this is the ONLY GAME I have seen to handle weather 'properly'; weather in this game is not just cosmetic/mostly irrelevant like it is in basically every other game.

I've always been amused by people complaining endlessly about Early Access and the comment section in that article is no exception.

The way I always treat EA is I look at gameplay footage on youtube and if I like the game 'as is' I'll buy it. If there are updates after this point, well that is just pure gravy. I've bought into plenty of EA games (most still aren't 'finished') and I don't really regret any of my purchases because of this policy as even if they are never 'done', I've already had enough fun to justify the money I spent and any enjoyment I get from coming back to those games in future updates is purely a free bonus. I don't understand why people think there needs to be some arbitrary 'finish line' for games or why they think every game should be playable 24/7/356 and still stay fun. I would RATHER keep getting free updates then have the game be 'finished' tbh if you really want to look at it from a selfish PoV. And if the game is terrible then why bother buying in at all? The mistake people tend to make with EA is buying a bad game with some concept they like hoping it gets better (it usually won't; adding more content or features doesn't fix crappy core gameplay). Instead if you buy good games to begin with, all the 'problems' with EA basically don't exist because even if the game is abandoned, well you still have a decent product on your hands and you didn't waste your money.

Most of these games are 5-20 dollars. I don't know how someone can play a 5-20 dollar game for over 100 hours and then complain they were 'ripped off' because it's not released 'after X years in EA'. The best EA games (like this one) are better then half the 'released' games you will find out there and only keep improving over time.

Also amuses me when people call games like 7 Days to Die/Subnautica 'survival games'. Seriously? 'Surviving' in those games is trivial, esp 7 days to die. You can literally just live in a little box/hole forever and just come out every few days to collect a bit of food. I mean I'd go more in depth as to how funny that statement is (there are so many ways to completely break that game's 'survival' aspect including the zombies that are supposed to be the main attraction with almost no effort) but yeah... That doesn't mean they are terrible games (they have fun aspects and I enjoy them for other reasons) but calling them 'survival games' is a real stretch. Tacking a food/water/temperature meter onto a game and then having it be utterly trivial to satisfy these needs doesn't make something a 'survival game' (but even in those types of games people commonly complain about having to eat too much ect which actually boggles my mind considering it's so trivial to begin with). TLD is one of the only 'survival' games where survival is actually a challenge in any way, and ironically it's the most complained about part of the game. 'What do you mean I have to eat a lot? What do you mean I can actually realistically die of starvation/dehydration/freezing even if I am not a raw beginner with no clue at all? What do you mean there is perma death and I can't just respawn an infinite number of times therefore completely rendering all the survival mechanics utterly moot regardless of how they might be tuned?' Almost all of these 'survival' games should be renamed 'building games' because that is exactly what they are. Again that isn't some jab at them: they can still be very fun to play, but lumping them in with TLD is laughable and the fun parts of a game like that are totally different then the fun parts of TLD. 

Honestly the whole 'survival' genre really is a silly label. 80% of the games with that label don't deserve it and ironically this is what makes TLD interesting; it is basically the only legitimately challenging 'survival' game out there. There are some other games that are similar but they lack high end difficulty modes and are much easier to 'solve'; Don't Starve is a great example of this as it actually tries to make the survival aspects relevant but still falls FAR FAR FAR short of what TLD does on Interloper or even the much easier Stalker mode.

Perhaps ironic to hear this from me, since I often complain that Interloper is generally a little easy/about starvation/all kinds of things about this game, but to be blunt I complain about it because this is the only game that even comes close to getting it right; ie I could actually see it being 'perfect' with a little more work. Other games don't even try/come close at all so there is zero point even talking about it.

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