We all know the jokes. Over 400 million dollars in funding. Ten years of devlopment. In game ships that cost hundreds of dollars. The game that will never come out. The tech demo that never was. If you've been on the internet and following gaming news, you've undoubtedly heard of it before. You've problaby laughed, logged it as an example of the worst of the gaming comunity, and moved on with your life. You knew it wasn't worth paying attention to.
But what if you were wrong? What if it wasn't a joke? What if all that time and funding was actually starting to go somewhere? What if all that ambition and devlopment acutally paid off?
Becasue that very well may be the case. With a population much, much bigger than you probably expect, while you were busy laughing at it, it was building a thriving population that is growing every day. With a daily play base of almost 500 thousand, Star Citizen has turned itself from a meme into very large, dedicated comunity. One that, as I found out from dipping my toes into the water, is a very warm and welcoming place.
Don't get me wrong. Its still very much a work in progress. There will be bugs. There will be unexpected behavior from the game engine. The AI needs a lot of improvments. But when the game works, its a one-of-a-kind experince. Seemless transition and intermixing of space, atmospheric, and planet side dogfight, ground vehicals, and on foot moments make it feel like a truly physical world. Not to mention the entire world follows that model. Everything is physicalized. If you're riding an elvator, its not just a loading screen, that's a real evelvator taking you physicall to a different physical location. Not to mention the ever growing faction and reputation system and the ever expanding list of dynamic events.
But what makes the game truly stand out isn't the enginge itself. Its a little thing called Emergant Gameplay. Unlike more tradtional MMOs, your typical gameplay won't have a lot of daily quests and instanced dungeons. Its less structred. Your gameplay evolves naturally as you explore the game. Be it answering another play's SOS call from their crashed ship, temaing up with your buddies to hunt down a group of player killers, or simply hopping in your exploraition ship and seeing what sights the 'verse has to offer.
Would I reccomend it? That's a hard question. It takes a certian kind of fan. Its learning curve is near virticle, even worse than games like Elite Dangerous. There's no tutorial to speak of. There will be bugs, and crashes, and new gameplay features being added tends to change the game in unexpected ways. The introduction of medical gameplay and persistant injuries being a good example. But if roughing it out through the hiccups, and the risk of getting your cargo stolen or your ship disabled on a distant moon don't discourage you, it may be worth a look. Just make sure to find a friend or two. Space is cold and lonely, and like most games, a lot better with friends.
If you choose to check out the game, use our referal code STAR-JDNJ-V4CR to get an extra 5000 credits at the start of the game. It can help a lot.