I signed up for the free trial period of Star Citizen. I wanted to get some first impressions and I was amazed when I go the invite mail. I have this game on my list since quite a while, it’s still in development but I am always happy if I can take a look during the development phase. The download was about 30GB big, and it took quite some time to download and update the game, but I also don’t have ultra fast internet. I couldn’t wait longer when it was finished, I had a friend on the phone and told him that I want to check out Star Citizen in the next minutes. He was a bit mad at me that I didn’t told him about the sign up period, but you don’t think about everything, especially not during the busy Christmas days. But he understood, not without demanding that I should tell him my first impressions.

As with most games in development, you will of course find bugs and glitches right away. It was funny when I wanted to walk through a closed-door, and magically slipped through it. So, the first thing that happened, I was trapped in a floor, but after jumping against the door for ten minutes I could get to the accessible main area again. Later I featured out that a restart would have been faster, and that there is a “suicide mode” that is helpful if your character glitches like that. I don’t care about these bugs when the game is still in development, it’s actually quite funny sometimes to find glitches.

I then started to explore the game world. And to be honest, my second impression was that the graphic of the game is so beautiful, it’s true joy to see an actual PC game that is not a cross-platform game at the moment. I took some first screenshots, and shared them with a friend via WhatsApp who loved the screenshots too. My blog has been about photography and PC gaming since a long time, and I always wondered if there are people out there who are interested in both of the hobbies. If so, I can tell you, that Star Citizen is a paradise for in-game photographers. I don’t just take photos in real life, games like this one make you push the screenshot button of your screen capture tool as if it would be the shutter button of a real camera. The game environment is extremely beautiful and so detailed!

After I explored the world a bit, I wanted to test the first person multiplayer shooter that was linked in the main menu, that was fun but a real lag party. I don’t know, it’s either not optimized yet or my system is not strong enough for the mode. I could check that out but I was too lazy and didn’t have my FPS counter enabled, I might benchmark my system later. Then I tried another mode where I could control my spaceship, but I found that quite difficult with just a keyboard and the mouse. I think I will have to plug my PC controller in, but a joystick would be much better I think. So, sorry that I can’t tell you much more about the modes. Generally I am also more interested in the game world, I’d like to explore different places, but I think there is not a lot yet to see.

I think I will continue to follow this game, it looks very interesting. When they release it, I could imagine to play a merchant in this game. I don’t want to complain, but at the moment the game is more something for the eye, I think it still lacks a lot of features but this is normal for a game in development. I am pretty curious how the end product will look like, I will follow this closely.