A little while back Star Citizen was hosting a massive event that introduced its newest ships. Most importantly, that event has a free play week included with it. In the past, I've not been able to even get the game to load. So, I've been waiting for one of their free week events to see if things have changed for the better.

It’s not my first time trying to look into this game further. With how much money Star Citizen has raised that is quite mind-blowing amounts. One can only hope this thing will be amazing. It’s however been forever and seems it will be forever more.

The last time I was able to even log into this game was a few years back. Back then all I could do during my free time was log in and walk around a rather laggy space station. I was not able to leave or do anything else. Naturally, with how many years it’s now been I was hoping it be at least better than that.

I have tried to join in during free weeks a couple of times over the years. However, since my first time, I was greeted with nothing but the game crashing or simply refusing to load. They had increased the system minimum to even launch the game and at those times the system I had was not going to live up to the task.

After I got a new computer this year, I’ve been waiting for this upcoming free week or so they give you. This time I was even able to leave the space station and get into space. Sadly, I never made it past the tutorial.

I almost did not think it was going to work. The download manager for this game just sucks at giving you information that is revilement. Instead, it makes you think you are only downloading at a total speed of like 4 kb/s when that is far from reality. Making you waste a lot of time stopping the download, rebooting, checking your connection, and so forth. Even with everything “working as intended” this game took about ten times longer than I was expecting it to download and install. That was the first of many red flags.

In my eyes, if a game can’t even provide a bug-free tutorial there is no point in checking out what else the game has to offer. That part of the game should be so overplayed that there is not a single thing wrong with it. Yet it was a disaster, and some very strange choices were made as well.

Like a lot of more modern-day games, the level of character customization is starting to get quite crazy. Other than many different hair options looking quite trash you can spend a little while changing things around.

Back in the day when this game started this level of character customization was not impossible and yet still in that time frame of being mine blowing. These days it’s nothing special. I was also not thrilled to see it was not an absolutely perfect experience. Which started to show this game was going to start to get bad quickly.

Since I have a Sapphire Pulse Radeon Rx 7800 XT 16 Gig graphics card, I cranked up the graphic settings quite a lot. While I still need to replace my current monitor for something a lot higher resolution. I was at least expecting my mind to be blown away by the graphics with how much money has been blown on this game in development so far.

I could tell things were going to be rough the moment the game loaded into the starting room for the tutorial. There are so many glaring issues with objects in this room that don’t even get me started. I even double-checked my graphic settings to make sure I saved them.

Perhaps the most shocking thing to me is just how turned down the level of detail (LOD) is on everything in this game. Unless your nose is more or less pressed against an object in this game. You are getting a lower resolution of that object to the point text on a bottle of kitchen and later on, food items in a store are blurry.

I even tried reducing my settings wondering if I was hitting some kind of limit on my graphic card in some way that I was not seeing in the perforce numbers being reported. Which was quite a disappointment for an area of the game that should have been polished to a fine point by now.

There was also another thing I hated. Star Citizen wants to reinvent the wheel. Instead of doing things the way they come naturally for a player or how they do it in other games. They were like NO!!! You are not just going to look at an object and press E. Instead, you need to hold down a key and then mouse over and select that item.

Frankly, it’s quite a stupid way to go about it. I could understand maybe in a ship’s cockpit when you need more fine control and selection of things. That would be the place for it. Having their selection system for everything is just downright annoying.

Also, for some strange reason, the game has decided you can either walk like you have lead boots on or run like a crackhead running from a space invasion. There is no middle ground. Crawl or run so fast it almost feels like you are about to lose control of the character.

It also became quite apparent with the way LOD was set I'd be going crazy with how things were constantly popping in and out of high detail to mid detail to low detail. There is zero reason I should be noticing LOD changes in the parts of the space station I explored. Unless optimization is so bad in this game a 16 GIG graphics card running with an insane NVMe is just not good enough.

I’m also going to admit now I hate how the in-game chat system looks. Sure, it looks sci-fi in a way. It was also filled with people going on and on about how broken and bad this game was. Which made me even more not wanting to see it pop up on my screen.

It also did not take long before I hit quite a glaring bug. I went to open the elevator and it was not there. Just space. This also would not be the last time I ran into an elevator glitch. I had one that took me to the wrong floor, I fell through one, and one somehow just “broke” down trapping me inside it. That was if I could even get the door to open on some of them.

Another thing a lot of space games suffer from is having complex controls. The keyboard layout for this game is insane. Even more so since they have lots of other high-tech things like head tracking which I have a feeling is not so great.

After wandering around for a bit, I had to go AFK for a short while. When I got back, I was discounted. That was not unexpected. What was is starting back over in the first room. Having to run back to where I was. The tutorial did not reset as I had any objections, I've already completed it. They just did not have actual save points in the darn things. Which would be quite a large issue later on when I ended up hitting even more bugs requiring me to relog to fix them.

Sure, there was lots of what should have been eye candy all over the place to look at. At one point I walked into a store. Notice just how fuzzy everything is? I had to walk right up to it to be able to read anything. I then spent even more time assuming I must have missed a setting to find out I had nothing left to turn up.

After some further walking around, I had to get onto a subway kind of system. While I did not get any glitching in the actual screenshots. As you are speeding along parts of the rail and even sides glitch into the train car itself. This happened every single time I needed to ride things out to the spaceport when I had to reload the game.

Let’s just say I had some issues with elevators yet again among some other stuff. I should have kept some kind of counter of how many times I had to relog or find a workaround for a bug I found in the tutorial.

This included a time when I had my ship delivered to hanger three. I went to hanger there and there was no ship to be seen. No shock when I went back out to try and reorder a ship to fly, I was not able to.

At least after much frustration I got on a ship. You would think with it being a free weekend they would want to blow your mind with some insane-looking ship. Instead, you get to fly out in something that looks like it got crushed in a recycling center and you got stuck with it.

At least the inside of this thing is kind of cool. It, however, is not living up to Starfield's level of interior. The whole thing kind of feels a bit soulless. I get a space game after all, but I think we should be beyond that point in games these days.

I then flew out at the speed of a snail. I went and followed the different checkpoints leading me out far enough that I could warp away. I’m going to assume it was my fault it took forever to fly through space even with boosters going to the first couple of checkpoints.

It was then finally time to use quantum travel and get to the next checkpoint. Finally, something with some speed to it. Instead of landing the ship at a space station, I ended up hitting something. What did I hit? No idea there was nothing in front of me.

I, however, became bugged and trapped in my pilot seat. Not want to start from the first room by logging out yet again. I sat around for about ten minutes spamming every key and clicking anywhere to get out of the chair since I could not use the control panel to fly the ship anymore.

Once I got out of the pilot's chair it would not let me back in. I could finally see how badly the ship was damaged and did not know if there was anything I could do to resolve my issue.

I still had some hope left that I could somehow get to the space station that I was right next to. I should have known better. After taking forever my character died and I started back in the first room. Not wanting to give up I tried making my way back.

I then after making it back into space had to AFK again. By the time I got back, I was disconnected yet again. I logged back in to see I was yet again in the first room. It was at that point I had enough. I logged off and did not log in even to try the game outside of the tutorial during the free week.

Final Thoughts

To say my experience was a disappointment is an understatement. This was horrific. All that money was spent all these years, all those people with “talent” working on this game. They can’t even deliver a work tutorial.

I was hoping the free time would leave me wanting to buy the game at some point. If nothing else gives me the impression that one day this is going to be a game, I'll be playing a lot. Instead, I’m just thankful Starfield is out, and I got to enjoy that game a lot.

I won’t be holding my breath for Star Citizen. A real shame I was hoping it be the next big space game I'd check in on from time to time in development and that I would be thrilled about anything I could find out about the game before it gets fully realized. Instead, I don’t even want to see the Star Citizen name.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Star Citizen.