My review copy for this game was late, by over a week. Gaming Verdict’s own editor had to contact me and ask me what was wrong. There is a reason for that: during that time, following an initial couple of sessions with the game, I couldn’t bring myself to review it. Poor form for a reviewer, certainly. But deep down, I wondered: if I pretended hard enough that it didn’t exist – might it go away?
Sadly, it didn’t, and so here, belatedly, is my review.
Our hero, Seth Walker, is tasked with saving a ship from an invading force of these very generic interstellar enemies.
It’s a difficult game to review, largely because it is so nightmarishly dull to play. It’s actually not so bad as to make you cringe or even provoke the slightest emotional reaction, which is perhaps worse than a flat-out terrible game which could get people talking. I shall confess to you early on, dear reader, that I am not the world’s greatest fan of third-person space/dungeon crawlers and RPGs. But I know quality when I see it: Baldur’s Gate and Dungeon Siege had it; Total Annihilation (an RTS created by Gas Powered Games’ Chris Taylor) had it; this doesn’t.
But why not? “Dungeon Siege in Space!” just doesn’t seem to have worked, here: there is markedly less adventuring to be done and less in the way of surprises in terms of new environments (you’ll soon tire of the ship you’re supposed to be defending). And there are logical inconsistencies, too: where, in Dungeon Siege, the game was based around your character going through dungeons and forests, gaining experience for killing monsters up close and personally with melee weapons, it is far harder to suspend disbelief that our space-faring descendents will fight enemies in exactly the same manner, albeit with ‘energy’ swords (and ludicrous power-ups and very weak guns that seem to have regressed from the weapons soldiers use today).
There are upgrades available to you throughout the game as you gain experience by killing enemies, and these amount to the usual fare of increasing stats and improved and more powerful attacks and abilities.
