I've grabbed a few random things during this year's holiday Steam sale. But only one I really feel deserves discussion
I'm not sure how I stumbled across this game, but it piqued my interest. I didn't immediately buy it. It's been out since October, so I decided to dig up some reviews and Let's Plays of it
Everyone seems to agree. If you ever wanted to play a Firefly game, this is probably as close as you're going to get (outside of the doomed MMO that will likely never come to light)
On the surface it's your standard space sim Freelancer clone with pretty graphics. An open galaxy with factions, space stations, random things to find and discover, trade routes for you to buy low and sell high, bounties, smuggling, mercenary work, pirate work; it's all up to you what you do in the world. Tons of ships to buy, and tons of ways to upgrade them
All set to a western frontier theme, a lot of the music even sounds reminiscent of Firefly
It also seems capable of running on a cardboard box. People in the discussions board were testing its lower limits, and someone said they ran it on an integrated intel 3000 laptop. Which ... it's a laptop, yeah. I run on a laptop but with a mid-range AMD that's slowly getting outdated. But that's not only weak, but also a few years older than even mine. So most people would be able to play it if you have to turn everything off. I do, and it's still very pretty. I guess somehow the guys twisted the Torchlight engine (you know, that cartoony Diablo clone?) into a massive space sim
It even has a fairly interesting (so far) story campaign that you can jump into and ignore at your leisure. Well spoken dialogue, animated characters, dialog trees for a bit of immersion. And while most of the people I watched loved the game due to it not having the depth of some of the best space sims, this one relies on being fun
Naval combat. Outside of being compared to Firefly, everyone also says that if you were to make a separate game out of the ship battles in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, and put it in space, this is it. Broadside cannon fire dog fights in space. It just feels awesome and satisfying
Plus IGN even liked the game. And I know they've been trying to change their reputation lately, but they are still known for being dudebro graphics whores who only like Call of Duty, so even now, when they like something this far off the radar, and the specs this game runs on, it's probably worth noting
It's not going to be for everyone, but I know there's some Firefly fans here, and possibly some people interested in space sim that are intimidated by a lot of the depth in the better ones. This one's easy to jump into, it has controller compatibility, and it is eventually even coming to consoles. And like everyone else. I've been loving it. Just bought a brand new rusty old space ship and ready to hit the trade routes and discover the mystery behind the AI in a weird piece of tech I stumbled upon out in the fringes of space
Oh, and I guess it's all procedurally generated. So while each game would be similar, the layouts and stuff would be different each game. Story campaign would be the same. But you also don't have to touch that if you don't want to
I've checked this out on numerous occasions but for some reason it never grabbed me to the extent that I really wanted to play it. Maybe it wasn't selling up "It's like Freelancer + Firefly" elements enough, because I love both of those things thank you very much Captain Tightpants.
