Sunday, October 23, 2016

Soothing explosions in Evochron Mercenary

Evochron Mercenary

The Basics: Open-Universe Space Flight Simulator

Previous Time Spent: 10 minutes
Expectation of learning Curve: high
Why I bought this: Escape Velocity Shaped Itch in my heart



First Impressions: Evochron is a very good looking game for how old it is (2010) and how little disk space it takes up.  Space looks great, and there are promising looking planets, and a great pilot selection interface that reminds me of tie-fighter. In the beginning, you are tasked with selecting a name, and a general role for your pilot, between mercenary, trader/miner, combat pilot and racer. In my 3 hours of play, I tried out the mercenary, combat pilot and trader/miner roles, and found myself liking the miner/trader the most. Other first impressions: space seemed appropriately big (while not as crazy as Elite Dangerous), and there seems to be a well-thought out world of individual factions. 

My 3 hours: I spent my first hour with Evochron Mercenary setting up my first character, a mercenary pilot by the name of Blaze (named after the asshole/constant love interest from Burning Love). I like to imagine that like the Onion article from a few years back, Blaze is some kind of grizzled future mercenary, and obviously vapes inside the pressurized cabin of his little starter space-craft. 

Highlights of hour one included generally figuring out how to control my vessel (and it handles pretty well with the mouse and keyboard), approaching a planetary surface and then blowing up while trying to leave, going into hyperspace and blowing up. I continued the theme of explosions when I took on a contract to blow up asteroids for a company, this time inflicting the explosions on inanimate space-rocks.  

In hour 2, I attempted to figure out how to leave the star system, and found that my initial craft, while capable of traveling great distances within seconds, wasn't capable of interstellar travel. So, I started working to earn the space-bucks necessary to buy a more capable drive-system for my craft. Before I could get far with this, I was faced with the emergency of running out of fuel, necessitating a trip to a space-station, which I ended up drifting around the interior of, due to my confusion with the controls.

 I managed to avoid blowing up, and continued asteroid mining. This was a bit of a grind, but between the soothing music and the eventual goal of traveling further, I quite enjoyed it. The cost of fuel is high enough that earning profits was kind of slow, but I appreciate not being coddled. The last thing I did in hour 3 was randomly attack a fellow miner in order to check out how ship to ship combat actually works. I was surprised to find that when I attacked this hapless vessel, a bunch of space-cops jumped into the battle on my side, leading to a really sad and one-sided victory. Still thrilling to fly around firing lasers into the void though. 

In hour 3, I spent more time tooling around space and tried out a couple other roles. First off, I approached a blue-green planet that looked like Earth with a ring-system around it. I entered a close orbit, and carefully flew into the atmosphere, checking out breathtaking vistas of seas and the rings themselves. Beautiful, but the planet approach necessitates caution (due to heat), so I eventually got bored and blew myself up by accelerating too quickly. 
It was after this explosion that I decided to check out flying as a combat pilot and a miner/trader. The combat flight was a little bit beyond my skill level, and after getting blown up a couple times, I tried out the miner/trader vessel. That was when I really started having fun with the game, and imagining myself accumulating the space-dubloons to really make something of myself. It was there in the third hour that I figured out more about fuel-management and ways to consistently make a profit (and avoid blowing myself up). 


My Highlight:  Realizing that my jump-drive/short range FTL eats up less fuel (or maybe basically none) than my afterburner, and figuring out how to make serious profits on contracts. Either that or coming close enough to a planetary surface to see plant-life, etc. 

My Verdict:  Evochron is a satisfying way to scratch the sort of itch that Escape Velocity did for me when I was younger. It requires some patience, so I can't say I'd always be in the mood for it, but I'm very pleased that I spent $4-7 on it some 5 years ago. I'd recommend it if you're looking for a less demanding (on your system), slightly calmer and less-simulationist version of Elite-Dangerous. 

Next post will be on October 23rd, where I'll be reviewing Fez

Sunday, October 9, 2016

Trying to find the end of Endless Space...

Endless Space

The Basics: Turn Based 4x Space Strategy Game

Previous Time Spent: 15 minutes
Expectation of learning Curve: medium
Why I bought this: Super-cheap steam sale, reviews, art style


First Impressions: Endless Space has lovely art and interestingly thought out factions full of intelligent beings of different mindsets and abilities. I found myself lingering over the various sliders that come with starting a game, including galaxy size, relative connectivity of star-systems, and the age of the galaxy. I was also taken aback by the differences in the groups, and found myself settling on "The Cravers," a group of cyborg-insects, which bore a strong similarity to the Borg, and seemed like an interesting start. Everything looked cool, and the first few turns seemed to provide interesting choices and goals.  

My 3 hours: I spent my first hour with Endless Space trying to learn, following through in-game tutorials to make sure that I understood the systems involved in the game. I played as the Cravers for my first hour, and spent some time tooling about the galaxy and focusing on trying to colonize other worlds. I had set up the galaxy so that spreading out was fairly challenging, and my ambitions of spreading like cyber-locusts and darkening the skies of the entire Galaxy were ended when a heroic space pirate set up a blockade around my home system, effectively preventing construction and further growth. With that, I scrapped my first game, and first hour within the game. Overall, I found myself liking the feel of the game, and finding the basic systems well-described, but frustrated by a lack of external benchmarks for my performance. 


In hour 2, I excitedly restarted the game, this time taking on the role of some kind of birdlike warrior race (think Goose-Klingons or something), and I ended up in a less doomed starting position, but ultimately not getting very far. This came down to the barren galaxy I had chosen  to set up, and what seemed to be a relatively non-transparent system for colonizing. There are a variety of technologies needed for colonizing non-earthlike planets, and I focused too much energy on learning how to colonize fairly exotic planets, instead of covering the basics. This led to the area around me getting taken over by more pragmatic aliens, and a lot of lessons learned.

In hour 3, I restarted once again, this time as a species of friendly space Amoebas. My goal here was a focus on mostly peaceful expansion throughout the cosmos. I knew the systems far better, and was this time able to concentrate on gaining the ability to colonize actually useful nearby worlds, creating a small foothold in my galactic neighborhood. I also experienced some mild conflict with my neighbors here, without ever escalating into a declared war. 

This allowed me to see the way the game handled combat, which I quite liked. When a battle is about to commence, you as the player don't get to control your fleets directly. Instead, you have something like a deck of tactical cards, built up by your technology and other special abilities, and play one card per combat phase, which generally dictates what your assembled fleet will do. There's a bit of a rock paper scissors match to this, with some cards effectively countering eachother at various phases. I'd like to see this in more detail in the later stages of this game, with higher technology and fleet sizes, but for the scale I saw it in, it was great fun.
My Highlight:  Testing out if an opponent would be willing to declare war after I chose to destroy one of their scout vessels that had been trespassing far into my territory and threatening an area I was eyeing for colonization. I got to feel some legitimate fear as I entered combat, crushing their ships, and waiting for a diplomatic response. Realizing that my foes were too smart to be baited into war by one hostile act was exciting to see. 

My Verdict:  Endless Space is a game with a lot of character, and some great writing. But, ultimately, I don't see myself returning to it in the near future, as once I had the basic systems down, I more or less felt like I was clicking through turns, waiting for things to happen. I think if I had more time on my hands, my verdict might be very different, but for now, it's not for me. 

Next post will be on October 23rd, where I'll be reviewing Evochron Mercenary