Hydroneer (2020)

In it's present state, the game is worse than my pun and it might take just as long and be as challenging to improve it.

This is a very nice looking game and it's performance isn't too bad but there are some issues and technical problems. For one thing the game does have physics issues that remind me of the terrible issues which have plagued bethesda games. This is a very bad bad thing when there is no inventory system (something the game touts)

I men, not even bethesda was that foolish.

the no-inventory system is a nice and simple minimal concept (you even keep your money in a pile of coins which you have to bring with you to town.) You can stack your stuff on a cart. and then pull your cart into town to sell off the stuff you dig up. however this doesnt really scale in any way that i can assess, and worse, doesnt work well with the control system and interface.

Granted, if the underlying physics issues and glitches that loom within this game COULD be fixed, you'd still have to fix the interface issue which boils down to the janky way in which you hold down "E" to thrust an object out in front of you hoping to land it on a cart, or drop something in a bucket. It's annoying and doesn't work more than half the time and it's made worse by the physics system. A fix could be to using right mouse button to enter into a free Axis sliding mode of any item you are holding down by pressing the "E" key. that would at least help you target things a bit easier (and faster)

But even in the end this game just isn't really much fun. It's a buggish, boring empty worse and after a few hours you pretty much see where it's all going and can only expect more of the same, I was willing to overlook the very slow and cumbersome grind that comes from panning for gold (in the most weird and convoluted way) but reading some guides and watching videos of how you automate things I just couldn't justify myself in spending more time with it and stopped playing.

I was quite disappointed as the game did look different. A nice looking world and soundtrack just don't redeem it.