Sector 598 is one of dozens of low effort retro-pixel SRPG Studio asset/construction kit flips spamming the Steam catalog, made with the SRPG Studio video game construction kit. SRPG Studio is even worse than RPG Maker. Like all SRPG Studio "games", this is essentially a bunch of low quality assets (notably most of the assets here seem to be custom instead of just copy + pasted SRPG Studio stock assets... but they're still very low quality) coupled with deplorably bad game design (turns out when developers don't know how to develop games and use construction kits instead, they also can't really manage the other jobs a game developer must do to succeed).
As with all SRPG Studio games, the poor quality engine displays badly in fullscreen and doesn't have full HD support or any graphics tweaking options, making this unacceptable for any dedicated modern PC gamer. The point can be made that the intention of SRPG Studio is to make demos and small games to pass around friends, and shouldn't be used for "professional" game development.
Like most SRPG Studio shovelware, the game features extremely low quality 2D retro pixel art (original or not), looks awful, and has even worse gameplay. SRPG Studio is an absolutely terrible construction kit, and never results in games of any reasonable quality or value to gamers.
There's a cyberpunk/combat focus to this, but the graphics and gameplay are so absolutely awful it's just impossible to get into any of it.
From a technical perspective, mostly because of the limitations of SRPG Studio, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result.
There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.
The game only displays in 4:3 pillarboxed aspect ratio. It's possible they developed this using an old CRT they found in a dumpster, or this game has been specifically designed for people gaming on PC's from 1995... either way, this isn't really acceptable in the modern era of PC gaming.
The implementation here is of such poor quality, the developer couldn't work out how to make the game display in fullscreen, it only runs in a window.
The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the game all-time peak player count was only ONE player. That's right, only one person ever played this at a time. When I played this for the purposes of reviewing it, I equalled the peak player count for the game. OUCH. The only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.
So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?
Sector 598 has the gamer gouging price of $10 USD, for which you could easily get any number of older AAA games. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend.
For comparison, the $10 asking price for this game could get you games like "Mass Effect Trilogy Pack", "Hearts of Iron IV" or "Mirror's Edge". No pixelcrap is worth $10. If developers want to get paid the same kind of money as real game developers who know how to do graphics properly, they need to learn how to do graphics properly.
[quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/b]
Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.[/quote]
