So, I was really looking forward to this game. I love astronomy, so I figured it would be right up my alley. When I put the game in, the patch required was 21GB. Even though it took me about a month to download (I live in the boonies where the fastest internet is not much better than dialup) I was willing to wait, because after all, it's a game about space stuff, which I love.

The patch finally finished downloading, I fired the game up, and went into the tutorial missions, which seemed like a good idea since I was a new player, and this might be a somewhat complex game if it's really a space sim. The first tutorial was about basic flight stuff, very easy. Then I went into the second tutorial (landing inside a space station) and...that's it. I was never able to land. As instructed, I put down my landing gear, I aligned my ship so that it was facing away from the entrance, I took the ship down onto the center of the landing pad and BOING! I bounced right off. That's weird. Maybe I missed doing something in the left console? No, there's nothing else in there. Is my landing gear down? Yes. Am I aligned the right way? Yes. Am I at the right landing pad? Yeah, it's pretty hard to miss with the big orange box around it. Bounce, bounce, bounce. I kept looking around for something that I was missing, but the objectives were very clear and simple. I just couldn't land no matter what I did. I shut the game off after about 20 minutes of trying. I value my time, and there are a lot of other games that I could be having fun with instead of getting frustrated.

Here's a free tip for any of you present or future game developers: If players are getting stuck in your tutorial, you're absolutely terrible at your job. I am not someone who needs much hand-holding in video games. I generally figure things out very quickly, often skipping the tutorial and just diving right in.