Recent reviews by Firehair12000

Hypnospace does what it set out to do incredibly well, the moment you enter HypnOS if you were around and using computers and going online in that 90s era you'll find yourself feeling right at home... and also kind of missing this time of the internet in spots. Where you could just happily browse, not knowing what you might stumble upon.

You know it's good when you were wishing there were even more secrets and people to meet and pages to see. The game cleverly makes you browse around and really look and discover by making you an enforcer having to flag things you're told to flag. As you do you'll naturally find yourself piecing together this alternate world, like hearing about these random bands and wanting to see if you'll get to listen to any of their songs (and you often will!) or what will happen at Coolfest!

The game works great even without the nostalgia edge but playing it you will feel different waves of it hit you and what we've maybe lost. Everyone happy to talk and build pages to their niches, helping, building and figuring out the internet thing together. Like Aldrin who was scanning in his old music magazine reviews and well researched band biographies, and has me thinking how much of that is now lost already. Which is why without spoiling too much the end game delightfully plays into that.

An excellent play over a weekend kind of experience that'll stick with ya and I can't wait for their next project Dreamsettler, which seems similar but will be early '00s era.

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Also wanted to give a huge shoutout to the devs after cloud saves were found not to be working and them putting in the tricky work to get it all working again between pc and steam deck <3

A fantastically fun immersive sim type detective game, can't wait to see what future updates and mods bring to the game. I always find myself losing an evening when I play with the excellent atmospheric mood and fun to just explore the randomly generated city, slowly build up profiles on everyone. You will start to be able to piece together how the cases are generated - things like v-mails (emails) unfortunately are always the same for everyone which is a shame but I understand. Also you'll quickly notice that wow none of the killers wear gloves! The funner cases are ones were you get very little to go off of and genuinely feel clever for being able to track things down. Also the recently added cheats and liars was a great addition! A good shakeup from the other job types, funny finding a confessing love letter in the bin of the place the guy worked at.

Save your money!

Click this for a gameplay video with latest patch

Watch all of that and you'll quickly get the idea of why people aren't recommending you buy this game.


My more in depth written review/rambly history with the game

I had been waiting for this latest patch (which has almost been in the year in the making). To see if the developers had really taken on board the criticisms of the game and tried to tweak things to make a better PC flight sim experience. But it would seem not, the patch only added configurable joystick buttons and fixed a few bugs. Although some that had been reported are still in there.

Also to give a little history, I backed this game on Kickstarter for and have seen the game and given feedback to the devs from beta (which came out August 2013) to full Steam release.

The main problems?

1) One big core problem of the game, is that it is simply not fun to shoot other ships in the game. That's a pretty important thing people want out of a space flight sim. The dogfights are soulless, and stupidly easy, the laser cannon fire has this crazy auto aim tracking and the AI is barely there. As I say in my video, it seems that the gameplay was implemented quite late and never really looked at again. Surely the first step is to make sure the main gameplay loop is fun over and over.

2) The other problem of the game, and why it just feels so off and not quite for PC, well I'll explain in a second. An example of what I mean it being "off" : When it says "Enter your profile name" it loads up a virtual keyboard on the screen, and if you type it on your actual keyboard, you have to type it one letter at a time, if you try to type at a normal speed it can't register your key presses.

So why all these little quirks, lack of any real graphics options on PC etc? That is because it was also developed for the PS Vita at the same time. Although I haven't played the Vita version, once you know that about the development, things start to make a lot more sense. Instead of developing a separate but similar Vita game, this very much feels like what must be the Vita game, but poorly implemented for PC.

Now don't get me wrong, Vita to PC ports of stuff can work, for example Hotline Miami or Guacamelee are great examples of it being done right. Also I'm not one of those "I WANT TRACKIR OR NOT BUYING!" type of people before you think that. All I was expecting was to dust off my joystick and play a fun modern competent single-player campaign, in the style of X-Wing or Wing Commander series. Which is how the Kickstarter was essentially pushed on their campaign and why I backed it.

The developer silence and vacuum

People had asked this on a Reddit AMA and other places, that making this style of game for PC and Vita was a little odd, but the developers very much felt it could be a good fit for them and the smaller budget they were working with. And to assure us that the PC version wouldn't be crippled for the Vita version etc. Well....

When the backer beta came out, I emailed my feedback saying that it wasn't exactly great and I was shocked at just how much of a clumsy Vita style port it felt like and that PC backers probably were not going to think highly of that. I imagine some other people probably also said that during the backer beta period too. I forgot about it for a while in the hopes that when it got released on Steam as a full release, that the feedback would be taken on board and they would really sit down and take a long look to tweak the gameplay and make sure the PC version felt & played like a PC game with a joystick and such.

Well go to about a year later with the full release on Steam (April 2014) after a small time of it being on Steam as early access too. I downloaded it again and was very disheartened to find it was pretty much the same game, with some slightly better joystick control added and some bugs cleared up. But the core gameplay still as dull and not engaging, the laser fire still bending a crazy amount auto aim style.

The forum messages and Steam reviews were pretty much on the negative side mostly, some people trying to soften the blow when talking about their dissatisfaction. The developers sounded like they would try to fix more stuff about the game. A lot of "we're sorry, we're trying" "we have a patch coming next month!" from them, but the main developer who would reply on the Steam forums stopped for about 6 months, not a peep. Everyone assuming the game was dead after launch.

Then a month ago, the developers popped up on the Steam forums again, saying we have a patch coming! Out of the blue, I thought ok, it's been almost a year since the game came out on Steam. Maybe they've really taken the feedback onboard and this patch will really answer some criticisms customers who bought this game had and make the experience better. Here we are today, tying back to my first paragraph of this review. The patch added very little. And pushed me to write my first Steam review.

For the past year, they've been trying to get this game submitted to Sony to go on the PS3, along with making a new game too. This game was very much, released on Steam and then move on, forget about the people who bought it and their complaints. That is not a way to gain fans or treat people correctly.


Final Thoughts

I mentioned a vacuum in the title of the last section, I think this game could have been something if the developers listened more, got people in the alpha earlier on and not bothered with the Vita version (or not bother with a PC version depending). Focus on one platform, make it as great as you can and see where to go once it was out and what would be a good fit. We could have told you very early on the flight model and the gameplay loop of shooting ships was not fun at all. Instead it was very much a vacuum, the Kickstarter campaign got funded. Then nothing for ages but a small trailer, then suddenly the backer beta. By which point it was already too late to perhaps make things better it seemed.

This review might sound rather harsh, perhaps. I normally understand things from a developers point of view, but not when it comes to releasing a product you know is not good, then run and not listen to paying consumers. I kept giving them the benefit of the doubt, maybe this patch they'll have listened... ok no. Maybe this one? Nope. Ok one more chance to really get this thing feeling good. Here's the patch! Oh barely even tried.
I posted on the forums several times and made a few videos, pointing out parts of UI that were bad or clunky or just broken etc. And they're still there to this day. EG Cockpit view, if you blow up an enemy, it still shows on the target HUD. And other such things.
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So I shall stop rambling now, again watch the video I made and linked at the top if you're curious. Big thanks if you actually took the time to read all this! :) What should you spend your money on? Easy if you've never played it. X-WING ALLIANCE! People always say oh I loved X-Wing, or X-Wing vs Tie Fighter. A lot of people forget there was a 4th game called X-Wing Alliance. Which fortunately enough recently came out on gog.com all ready to download and play out of the box on Windows 7/8. Download the fantastic, easy to install HD texture pack here http://www.darksaber.xwaupgrade.com/craftspackucp.html and you'll be feeling like a badass pilot in no time. With a interesting story that bounces between helping your Family against a rival business and being a Rebel Alliance pilot. Voice acting and mission designs still hold up today as they did then, and seems to support most joysticks you throw at it. Not bad for a game that came out in 1999.