I checked this out during the current free period, and boy, it seems glitchy AF, but
wow... I love the ships. The world and the ships are pretty much exactly what I am looking for. I
love in-game signs and screens that show useful information you can interact with. I've like in game touch-screen computers since I first used them in Doom 3. The ship mechanics are complex, but not
too complex, more like sim-lite, like a mechwarrior game. And the big ships that you can walk around in are just stunning. Some friends and I tried out the Valkyrie and the Constellation. Watching the Constellation land and then deploy the cargo lift was stunning.
Some of my favorite highlights:
- I rescued a crewmate from a space walk gone awry by moving in close with the Constellation, lowering the smaller airlock lift, getting him and, and raising the lift.
- I rescued a second crewmate who was running out of oxygen by detaching the auxiliary fighter craft from the Constellation and using it to go and get him, and get him inside the cockpit so I could stay outside in my undamaged suit and wait for a pickup.
- On a hostile atmosphere world, a crewmate became incapacitated. I didn't have any healing items, but he said he had about 90 minutes of "time till death" timer, so I tried to drag him back to the ship, but kept dropping him. On the third time I tried to drag him again, I accidentally took of his helmet. He commented that his "time till death" had suddenly dropped to about 40 seconds. I couldn't figure out how to put his helmet back on, and I couldn't seem to drop it either. Another crewmate came over and started dragging him quickly back to the ship. Just when we were almost there, he dropped him, and our incapacitated crewmate seemed to smack his head on the bottom of the cargo ramp, and was dead.
- I tried to use the ships comm system to hail the spaceport at New Babbage, but accidently turned the power off. At the time I didn't know you could just press "I" to turn it back on: I was frantically mousing over the controls trying to find out how to turn the power on, all while plummeting towards the surface.
- After dying, I took a smaller ship back from New Babbage to meet the rest of the crew (who were still in the Constellation) on the delivery pickup planet. I made it there first. Standing there watching as the giant Constellation approached, slowed, descended for smooth landing, and then lowered the cargo elevator to have an Ursa rover drive off, was a magnificent site. I can't recall playing another game that has done something like that.
There was a bunch of other hilarity that happened all night, wind flipping ships end over end, crashing into the space station while trying to dock because I forgot to turn off cruise control, and others.
Anyway, very glitchy game with bad performance, I can't say I
recommend this game, but it sure was a heck of a fun time and I can't wait to log back in :D
