Went on and bought it. Parts I like, others.. well there’s a few bugs but nothing game breaking that I’ve seen.
Ok, I’m cheating, but sometimes the game almost encourages you to. It even said when I bought it, that there’s an option to cheat. So why not take it? I did try to play legit before, but seeing how I was near the end of the game and I kept on dying repeatably trying to assault a heavily-armored ship.. their fucking homing missiles seemed to know where I would show up.
So the story, I’m trying to make sense of it. On 2070, a project is launched to do something to harness the power of the Sun. Instead it backfires and causes the Sun to destroy all planets in our solar system in a cataclysmic solar wave (called the “Solar Event”), including Earth. What’s left are billions of asteroids. Since then, the major nations of Earth have made specific territories in space. 11 years after that solar event, is where the game takes place.
You’re part of a group of Mercenaries (aka Guns for Hire) known as Greenlight, which is funny since that’s the name of the service that got this game on Steam. You’re the good guys, of course. Russia, wants something very important that they will kill anyone to get it. The more you play, you finally know what they want, but don’t know why (I haven’t gotten to that point yet).
So you’re busy doing favors for others in your ship, clearing bandit and slaver camps, stealing refined Plutonium, killing key targets, hacking computer terminals.. typical Merc stuff. This is all so they will give you what you need. Aka, ‘scratch my back and I won’t put a dagger in yours’.
One thing about this, everyone you see is in a ship. So when you talk to someone, it looks like you’re talking to a ship. It’s almost like they are just AI bodies, yet they act alive (because you see the person in the ship when talking). Can they never get out of their ships? How do they eat? How do they use the bathroom?
Dunno. But you need Oxygen, so there is a living human in that ship.
I do like the fact I can go back to a place I’ve been to before to collect resources (like Ice for my ship’s engine to keep my fuel reserves in check) whenever I need to. The game encourages exploration.
Speaking of exploration, the game world is massive! It makes space truly endless. So the map that gets pulled up when you’re in your Mothership, you can click on any node to go to that sector; doesn’t have to be nodes related to the current mission. You can also go beyond the level borders (known as sectors) to fly to other levels manually. The freedom of being able to do that is… wow.
Only bad things, when playing legit, fuel becomes a problem, and Solar Flares can catch you offguard if you’re not careful, and with a lack of a compass, it’s not really a good idea to do so (you’d think this being the distant future, we’d have onboard compasses). Then again, what if they worked like in KSP? Since there is no cardinal direction in outer space.
Coordinates are in the game, yet you can’t even use those for navigation.
So on the bottom here, I’ll attach the bugs I’ve encountered;
– Dialog that’s been said before can be said again by accident. For example, in the Barth’s Moon sector, when you go there, the dialog about pirates and more of their friends might show up happens again, even though you’ve already passed that point in the game.
– The effects of Solar Flares can sometimes affect you when inside of an asteroid, giving you lethal doses of radiation. Also sometimes you might see the solar flare passing by when inside of a building.
– The Intergalactic Highway sector, the “cars” there, there’s a point in this highway where it goes through an asteroid, you can see them stuck inside it. Also for some reason, I can’t bore through “this type of asteroid” to free them.
– There’s two missions where Marcus says he’s going over here, yet you’ll see him following you (like the mission where he’s getting a damaged ship to load a mineral, yet he’s following you at the same time).
– Your friends can sometimes get stuck behind doorways. Bad AI pathing.
– Your friends tend to get in the way when backing out of a room for an attack, causing you to waste bullets. Again, bad AI pathing.
– Fighter enemies (small ships) seem to spin out of control when being attached, making them easy to kill targets. This only happens when you’re in a structure and the enemy is near you.
– The game may crash when alt-tabbing out and then going back in. There’s no way to have a Windowed Fullscreen mode, and the Windowed mode isn’t really helpful, as I can’t drag my mouse to Monitor 2.
Besides the flaws, I say this is worth the $20. I wonder what the ending is going to be like.