A Unique Gaming Experience
Running a giant factory on an alien planet might not sound like the most exciting idea, but the console version of Satisfactory is one of the best video games of the year. It offers a unique blend of simulation and exploration that captivates players from the moment they start.
Corporate Jargon and Dystopian Themes
There’s something unsettling about the way some multinational corporations refer to their employees with alternative terms. Starbucks calling its workers ‘partners’ is almost forgivable next to Amazon referring to its staff as ‘Amazonians’, or Swedish online loan business Klarna’s mildly off-putting ‘Klarnauts’. These attempts at creating a sense of camaraderie often have a dystopian effect, especially when the company’s primary goal is generating shareholder value at any cost.
FICSIT Inc. and the Role of the Pioneer
Satisfactory’s faceless corporate entity, FICSIT Inc., has a slogan that reads “Short term solutions to long term problems.” They call you, their employee, a ‘pioneer’, which is at least slightly fitting because they’ve sent you across the galaxy to a distant, seemingly uninhabited planet. Your job there is to mine it for resources, ruthlessly extracting everything you can from its ecosystem.
Gameplay and Co-op Features
Although it works in up to four-player co-op, in single-player the only back-up that FICSIT provides is ADA, your default AI assistant. Her tech-neutral female voice delivers sarcastic, GLaDOS-style bon mots as you gradually extend your reach across the continent on which your malfunctioning drop pod crash landed. Like a 4K Minecraft, your first faltering attempts at resource gathering involve scooping up bushes and loose wood, and chipping away at mineral deposits with a handheld chisel, all from a first person perspective.
Building the Hub and Researching Innovations
An early priority is the construction of your hub, which contains storage chests, along with a workbench that lets you craft useful materials from the raw resources you collect. You’ll also need to build a mini laboratory to start researching items across a set of tech trees, leading to all sorts of useful innovations, from explosives to expanded inventory and tool slots to modes of transport.
Discoveries on Massage-2(A-B)b
Your time on the poetically named planet Massage-2(A-B)b is filled with discoveries. The first of which is that while there are easily accessible chunks of iron, copper, coal, and more on the surface, you can also locate buried seams of each mineral. Placing an auto-miner on one of those offers an effectively limitless supply, provided it has electrical power and a storage unit to collect its output.
Power Sources and Resource Management
Initially, that power is supplied by biomass burners, into which you shovel grass clippings, wood, and dead animals, but they’re consumed quickly, so you’ll regularly find your mining operations lying dormant when you return after protracted exploration. To fix that problem, you can use your workbench to compact nature’s detritus into solid biomass logs, which last longer and take up less inventory space.
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