I’ve never claimed to not be an arrogant man; in fact in the grand scheme of things I may be one of the most arrogant people in the entire story of time. Even then I find myself humbled by Star Citizen.
How could one ever conceive that after ten prolonged and extremely stupid years of delays, broken promises, lack of transparency, roadmaps for roadmaps, selling $3000 JPEGs and presumably staffing entire rooms full of people paid to watch cat videos on YouTube all day long that the game would not only be released, but would be worth every single picosecond of waiting and feature such incredible depth, complexity, scale and polish that every single game previously thought of as “good” would look like Ride to Hell: Retribution in comparison.
Star Citizen is a genre defying opus that combines elements of first person shooter, space flight simulators, work simulation, real time strategy, turn based strategy, role playing games, edutainment, horror, comedy, typing tutors, eroge, and escape the room flash games and one would think that such a game would be incoherent and confusing but somehow the team at CIG managed to create a seamless experience beyond what was thought possible. I began the game as a recruit shooting at aliens in a space station and thirty or so hours later I was preparing dinner for a tribe of scantily-clad alien catgirls and I couldn’t tell you where any gameplay change occurred in the inter
One of Star Citizen’s most eye-catching aspects is its surprisingly in-depth story in its single-player element, because while I usually don’t associate these sort of vestigial single-player campaigns with good stories, Star Citizen goes above and beyond in this aspect. Set in a war-torn quadrant of the Andromeda galaxy in the year 69420, you play as Ratio Tile, heir of the prestigious Tile family of Wisconsin, who joins the Allied Space Force and embarks in a journey of self-discovery that takes him to the farthest reaches of space. And while I don’t want to spoil, there is an extremely tense dialogue battle against the queen of the alien catgirls where if you win she takes off her dress and the game proceeds to show a 10 minute full penetration scene.
It’s hard to list my favorite parts of Star Citizen, as there’s just so much to choose from: between the sword that cuts things using the power of time itself, the armadillo races, the detailed interiors of Space McDonald’s or the very generous amont of extremely explicit kinky alien sex scenes, it’s just such a perfect gumbo of features and gameplay modes that each one feels equally important to this cavalcade of divertissement. But I’ll have to point out the achievements.
They’re not for trivial bullshit; oh god no, Star Citizen makes you work your ass off for your precious unlocked boxes. There’s the achievement for beating the single-player campaign while under the effects of DMT, the achievement for beating Jonny Greenwood in a real-life guitar duel, the achievement for placing your firstborn child before Chris Roberts and decapitating it with a kukri, but the hardest achievement is the achievement for turning the PC off, going outside and having a nice stroll, meeting your soulmate, traveling around the world with them, having three beautiful redheaded children and dying content knowing that you lived a fulfilling life where you didn’t spend ten fucking years of your life, let alone any your money, into waiting for a game made by a possibly narcissistic man who was fired from every single publisher he had and has such a history of scope creep, astounding mismanagement and overpromising and generally makes Peter Molyneux look positively grounded in reality in comparison; which is a huge challenge because if one of your children turns out brunette then you have to off your family with a shotgun and start over.
The only real criticism I have of Star Citizen is that it has a file size of 41 terabytes, but I’d expect nothing less of a game that has had such a long development cycle and is literally the most expensive game to ever develop. And good thing too, I mean, strictly hypothetically speaking, for the sake of an argument, let’s say that the people of CIG hadn’t spent all their time and money focused on making a supergame beyond what was thought possible of games as an art form and instead had just largely throwing shit at the wall not being directed by competent management; good thing this didn’t happen, because this would raise unfortunate implications. It would mean that not only are management skills not required for being a respected figure in the games industry, but that there are not only investors, who I expect to think of themselves as serious people, but laymen who will willfully contribute into what is essentially throwing their money into a dumpster fire; and when confronted with the reality of how game development works when you either don’t have a vision or such a grandiose one it’s impossible to actually fucking implement, they would react violently to their wake up call because they’re so deep in the sunk cost fallacy their sunk costs could afford a house in Bel-Air.
And when the inevitable comes and they underdeliver on their promises, should the game ever actually see the light of day, and then they get sued their pants off then said people, who would, in this hypothetical case, be either willfully ignorant or extremely thick, would cause a not at all small ruckus claiming “that’s awful”. No, that is not fucking “awful”, if you collected enough money from investors and selling JPEGs of non-existent ships to extremely rich yet stupid people and in the end you have nothing to show for it and get sued, then that isn’t tragic, that’s how the world works! And you, hypothetical person, are so fucking stupid your tiny pea-sized brain is better suited for being breaded and deep-fried than for any actual thinking!
But I’m glad I don’t live in a world where such hypothetical scenarios exist. Now, if you excuse me, I promised John F. Kennedy we would go catch flying fish in the stratosphere.
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