Surviving Mars Review (Cumulus)
I have only played this game for 3 days and I already have 46 hours of play time. That is how attractive and how much potential this game has. I am really into this kind of sci-fi space scenario games: explore into the infinite universe, discover the mysteries... or to put it simply, experience a great adventure that is different from our mundane daily life. It is the same reason why I enjoy Stallaris, which I have put hundreds of hours into.
However, after as short as 40 hours, I am already bored with the game. It's the same problem that many other comments have mentioned. Once I started to expand my colony, the logistics become a total mess. What I want is the big picture of leading a group of elite colonist, point them to the right direction of building the foundation of human civilization on Mars. However, after some hours to expand my colony, here I find myself dealing with the trivial tasks of trying to assign each colonists to the right workplace and residence, or manually telling a drone to get a last bit of resource to be delivered to a construction site of a crucial facility or that bit of material may just travel around the world and eventually disappear somewhere I don't know, leaving the crucial facility unbuilt. Not to mentioned the inconvenient train system from martian express DLC that has so much restrictions to lay down and operate. I guess the biggest problem with this game is that IT DOESN'T GOES THE WAY YOU WANT! The resources, the drones, colonists, and basically the underlying game mechanics and logistics itself. Just like things in real life. THEY DON'T GO THE WAY YOU WANT! The result is that when I solve these difficulties, I don't get the feeling of achievement of overcoming a challenge, but more a tiredness that I have been through a troublesome and meaningless work.
I never commented under a game on Steam before, but this time I write this relatively long comment for this game because I feel pity for it. This game has such potential and could have been a great game, but the bad design of logistics and some other issues like bugs ruin it.