Recent reviews by Stockdoodle

Shoot...why did I craft this memory again?

If ever there was a game that required a wiki and a spreadsheet, this is it. It's got "one more turn" energy without actual turns.

This game is what I always come back to when playing VR games. The right songs on higher difficulties w/ the orb speed increase can give you a pretty good cardio workout. It's the first time in my life I've had to force myself to stop doing cardio instead of giving myself permission to quit early.
I will say the DLC songs are much more fun than the ones that come unlocked with the base game. The Caravan Palace pack is just amazingly well done. Adrenaline Pack gives the best workout, though.
If you bought Audio Trip and felt like it wasn't fast enough and kinda dull, give this a try. I played Audio Trip after this and was really disappointed.

This game scratches a bunch of itches for me. Do yourself a favor and avoid looking for guides on how to play. Pay attention, read everything, experiment. The game has more layers than is immediately apparent.

Lore is good. Gunplay is very good. Community is good despite the amount of hate they put out over everything wrong with the game.

Not great for the casual player.

Every time I approach a galaxy from hyperspace, every. single. time, I expect to swirl around and get sucked into it. I've waited 20 years for this game. If you have too, you should buy it right away.

There's more to this game than meets the eye. 9/10, if you wonder if something is possible, it is.

Unapologetic, fun, and challenging. Snatch this up when it's on sale. It's about 8 hours of game play, but it's ridiculously fun.

I'll start by saying that I am having an amazing time with this game.

That said, it's definitely a niche offering. I used to play a heavily modded Minecraft (let's start by not pretending the game isn't influenced by Minecraft), but there was always the issue of mods not working well together. Different machines needing different sources of power, for example. Then everything would break when there was an upgrade. It was a hassle. FCE provides the experience I was looking for w/o that hassle. It's more akin to a 3d Factorio than Minecraft.

There are negatives, of course. FCE has the nickname toilcraft for a reason. There's a lot of manual labor involved in ramping up automation. Resources are generated slowly, and you'll spend the first several hours waiting for ore to smelt into bars, even AFTER you know what you're doing. You start with one ore smelter, and there is a lot to do before you can even build a second. I find the slower pace relaxing, but I'm old. YMMV. I like the fact that I can carry on a conversation with my wife & watch TV w/ her while playing.

There IS a rapid resources mode now that makes this somewhat less of an issue, but you'll still be doing a lot of running around manually smelting stuff for hours to get things going.

The world is also really bleak and depressing. That's by design, but after a while it gets to you. A bit of biome diversity would have been nice. I haven't tested it, but it also doesn't seem to have Minecraft's nigh-endless size. It's big enough, though.

Summary: If you're a Factorio player who would rather work in a 3d environment, you should check this game out. If I prefered 2d overhead to 3d, I'd be playing Factorio instead of this.

Walk right for story. Jump and solve minor puzzles along the way. Your time is better spent reading a short story if that's what you're in the mood for.