You must run if you want to survive
The Story: A Planet That Hates You
Welcome to Icarus, once humanity's hope, now a cosmic dumpster of failed terraforming. Why are we here? Exotic matter! It is valuable. It shall make us rich.
The story is simple: you fly down from the safe space station to the surface in your tiny capsule. You pick up the stuff at acute risk to your life, get beaten black and blue by the local wildlife, humbled by the weather, and finally make a hasty retreat before the atmosphere fries your armor. Deep lore or philosophical dialogues? Not here, my friend! Pure survival struggle, that's your daily life. You're no epic hero; you're an interstellar temp worker with a penchant for pain.
Gameplay: Work for busy hands:
You land naked as a newborn baby in wet bushes and must immediately send your brain into survival mode. Bash stones, chop trees, gobble berries, don't forget to breathe!
The game offers you gigantic tech trees. You start with primitive stone tools and painstakingly build a small wooden hut that gets blown away by the first gust of wind. But the feeling of progress in this game is quite overwhelming! Hours later, you suddenly stand there with a hyper-modern fortress, equipped with hunting rifles, electrical systems, and high-tech armor. When you roast a mutated alien wolf with an electric arrow, you feel the power! For diligent workers, craftsmen, and detail-oriented planners, this game is an absolute paradise on Earth, or rather, on Icarus.
What's not so good: The intergalactic field trip, DLC shenanigans, and update madness
But where there's a lot of light, there's also a hell of a lot of shadow with Icarus, and here we come to the things that really make my blood boil!! Icarus isn't just a survival game, it's a marathon simulator. Even if you've tamed a mount, you spend three to four real-time hours sometimes just walking blankly from A to B. You run for miles through the pampas, only to set up a stupid radar transmitter at the ends of the earth, and have to waddle all the way back. Your W key on your keyboard will cry out for mercy after a week of intensive play. This is coupled with mission design that is hard to surpass in its lack of originality. Scan flower A, kill bear B, then scan the exact same bear again at point C. You don't feel like a glorious pioneer, but like an extremely underpaid postman in space.
But the real final boss isn't waiting in the forest, but on your hard drive. What the developers are doing here with their update policy is an absolute disgrace. There's a patch every week. Sounds nice? It isn't, though, when it feels like the entire game is being re-downloaded and rewritten just to introduce a new standing lamp or a decorative seat cushion. You fire up Steam and first have to patch gigabyte monsters that clog your SSD and fill your PC with junk data.
And as if that weren't enough, DLC greed is also knocking at the door. The base game feels incomplete in many places. Do you want the really cool, alien biomes, the epic boss enemies, and the real science fiction feeling? Well, then open your wallet! Anyone who doesn't buy the expensive expansions like New Frontiers is doomed to trudge around the same old, recycled standard cards.
Reasons why you should buy it:
Addictive factor: You immediately fall into the „just one more stone to mine“ mode, and before you know it, a whole day has passed.
Graphical treat: If the graphics card doesn't melt beforehand, the planet looks outrageously good with its weather and lighting effects.
Perfect for co-op mode: Running away from polar bears and suffering is three times as much fun with friends. Schadenfreude is the best joy here.
Constant Support: You have to give the developers credit for not abandoning the game after its rocky release and for delivering content weekly (even if patching is hell).
Why you shouldn't buy it:
Extreme Idling Anyone who doesn't have the patience for hours of meditative walking will reach their mental limits here.
Repetitive Clone Missions If you know one task, you know them all. Variety has long since left for another galaxy.
The Hard Drive Terror The weekly giant updates hog your internet connection and clog your hard drive at a snail's pace.
Outrageous DLC policy: The really exciting content and cool biomes are hidden behind a thick paywall. The wallet really doesn't like that.
Technical glitches Unfortunately, frame drops on large bases, floating textures, and bugs that corrupt your save file right before the end of a mission are still par for the course.
Conclusion: A tough nut to crack, but tasty nonetheless:
At the end of the day, Icarus is like a toxic relationship: the game tortures you, it wastes your precious time, it drives you mad, but damn it, you still log back in the next evening. Despite the grueling treks, the outrageous DLC policy, and the weekly update terror on your hard drive, the game has an addictive core that's hard to resist. Anyone with an extremely high tolerance for frustration, who enjoys grinding, and who brings a huge SSD and a fat wallet for the expansions will sink hundreds of hours into it. Everyone else should tie on their virtual hiking boots and send a prayer for their W key to heaven before buying.
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