Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £26.99
Where To Get It: Steam

There’s a fine line between challenging, and dickish design in Future Racing. And it depends upon a lot of factors, including handling, how responsive the controls are in the first place, track design, enemy AI… It’s a long list.

Sometimes, I scare myself. To be perfectly fair, the track helped scare me.

RedOut, I’m happy to say, definitely seems to be hitting the sweet spot for me where I’m earning my Gold medals, but not struggling for them. And good gosh, it feels good. It especially starts to feel good once you’ve got a feel for each vehicle. In fact, as the screenshot above shows, once you truly get a feel for a craft, it can get scary.

So, let’s get the bad out the way first… This is only just Future Racing newbie friendly. And I say that because, once it hits about the middle of the Class 2 events, the gloves really start to come off, and there are some bits of unclear track design. Looking at you, Abruzzo and your Tube of 50% Racer Survival Rate. Overall, though, despite speed filters, EMPs fuzzing up your view, all sorts of effects that serve to both pump up the adrenalin and make racing anything from the middle of Class 2 one long, extended cry of “OHHHHHSHIIIIIIIII-”, it’s fun, the difficulty curve isn’t too bad, and the AI rubberbands just enough that you can beat them with some moderate screwups, but you’re probably never going to lap them, and a major crash is going to set you back at least a couple of places… More usually 5 or 6.

Still, that aside, there is a lot to be said that’s positive about RedOut. The visual design is sumptuous, with high variation in the tracks (From Cairo’s deserts, to Alaska’s ice-floes, to Abruzzo’s forests), the craft (From the Sulha’s almost Pod-Racer like design, to the alien curves of the Asera, to the scrappy Jet-Junkers of Conqueror Technologies), and a UI that doesn’t distract from what you really should be paying attention to, the track. The tracks are, for the most part, highly readable (With the exception of a few tunnels like in Abruzzo), and the sound is equally variable and classy. Sometimes, there’s pumping beats, others, guitar riffs galore, and it’s very clear when someone’s nudged you, you’re scraping a wall, your turbo has fully charged, you’re using your turbo… It’s well planned, and I applaud it. I equally applaud the fact that 34 Big Things have gone for relatively low poly models for the craft, as… Well, it fits!

A good example of the gorgeous landscapes… You will mostly only see when you aren’t paying *attention*

Now, while the game does have multiplayer, alas, it doesn’t seem to be terribly busy, so it’s very much a case of “Host your own when friends are around”, but the Campaign… Does interesting things. You can see it trying to engage you, and get you to experiment. Fly with this ship for two races, it will occasionally say, and we’ll give you money. Win a race with this one, with this loadout, and we’ll give you that powerup. Don’t change craft just yet, because you’ll lose out on the sweet thing. It’s seductive, and, as a method of engagement with a campaign that’s basically “Earn money, unlock ships and things”, it works… I keep accepting the contracts, because hey, a little extra never hurt, free powerups when unlocking them normally costs 4 grand never hurt, and all I have to do is… Try a different style of racing.

Because yes, each racer has a different style. The Asera is twitchy, turning rapidly, accelerating quickly, but relying more on its mobility than its top speed… Or even shields. The Sulha craft, by comparison, are also not very well shielded, but are decidedly drifty, and extremely fast. That first screenshot was a Class III Sulha with its speed boosted as far as I humanly could. I exploded an average of once a lap… And still beat Gold time. Because when I used full boost on a long straight… It wasn’t a long straight anymore, it was a brief prelude to another corner. Not even recharging shields would have saved me for long, because the shields recharge when you’re not hitting things.

It’s surprisingly hard to get a good screenshot, because it isn’t screwing around, motion wise…

As such, I have yet to truly win an Arena match (A race, but you don’t get respawns, so when you explode or miss the track? Game over, baby!) with a Sulha racer. Speaking of, events also have a fair bit of variety, with Races of various types (No Powerups, normal Race, Last Man Standing, and Arena), Time Trials and Speed Trials, Score Survivals, and… “Boss” Races. No, not as in “There is a boss racer, like in Quantum Rush Champions or Wipeout Fusion”, as in “Hey, did you know these tracks in an area are actually linked? Now race the whole thing.”

It is very rare that I’m enthusiastically for a game, much less in the Future Racing genre, which is very much my bailiwick… But RedOut is well crafted, well balanced, with a good difficulty curve, only one or two tracks I actively dislike (34 Big Things, please make Tubes more clear… Thank you), and design that shows some real love and attention.

G’wan, give us a goooo…. Try us outtt!

The Mad Welshman smiled as he ran his hands over his new Koeniggswerth Yggdrasil. Then he grinned as his mechanics started hauling in the improved turbines. Ohhh yes. This was going to be good.

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Source: Early Access Purchase
Price: £22.99 (£29.99 for extra lovely stuff, including the first three Master of Orion games, an art book, and the TERRAN KHANATE [Evil Humans])
Where To Get It: Steam, GOG
Other Reviews: Early Access

I’m going to start this review with what will most likely be an unpopular opinion about the older Master of Orion games: They’re dated. Yes, you heard me, I, a fellow 4X player, just told you he thinks one of many games that laid the groundwork for the space 4X genre is dated. Maybe not as good as you remember it. Still good. Still one of the games that laid the groundwork. And I hold this opinion for two reasons.

It isn’t *too* likely you’ll have this many ships in one fight. But god-damn, it makes for a lovely intro!

Firstly, I’ve played enough of it, and recently enough, to know. Secondly, because comparisons are inevitable, and it seems some comparisons are being played up… And others down. Let’s start with what seems to be played down. Let’s start with how much attention has been paid to the feel of how grand Space Opera should be, and how it tries very hard to be more accessible this time around.

Just a brief look at the IMDB page for this game leaves no doubt that vocal talent was a focus of the game. Michael Dorn narrates, leaders and advisors alike are played by such luminaries as John Kassir (The Cryptkeeper), John De Lancie (Q, among many others), Mark Hamill (Do I even need to say?), Nika Futterman (Asaji Ventress, among others), Kari Wahlgren (The english voice of the Fate series’ Saber), Kat Cressida (Dee Dee from Dexter’s Lab), and Sumalee Montano (Arcee [Transformers] and Katana [Beware The Batman], among other voice roles), and each one seems to be giving their all. Similarly, the music and art direction (David Govett on music, and a talented art team including Bill Willingham… Yes, Fables Bill Willingham) show a deep love of the genre, with gorgeous landscapes, solid, characterful animations, and music that, my first time hearing it, I’m not ashamed to say I happy-cried. So the game is undeniably beautiful, both in sound and visuals. The UI, similarly, is well designed, simple, mostly self explanatory, with few interactions required to get to any one feature, only rare occasions where a tooltip will obscure a thing, and, of course, visual consistency. Similarly, there’s a lot of good writing in there, showing each race both as it is seen, and as it sees itself.

GNN… Bringing you the clickbait for the New Diaspora!

Accessibility wise, on top of the UI, everything is visually distinct, and the game is highly customisable in terms of difficulty and length. Don’t want to spend 10 hours on a game? You can up the tempo. Finding a full medium galaxy too tense in the early game? Knock down the number of opponents, make the galaxy bigger, tone down the difficulty… The choices are there, and they definitely have an effect. Myself, I don’t tend to do well in a crowded universe, so I knock the opponents down to 3 rather than 5, although I tend to prefer a medium universe. As in previous Master of Orion games, you can also create your own race, in much the same fashion as Master of Orion 2. And the tooltips are genuinely helpful, and the advisor interruptions are by no means unwelcome in the clear information they give. These are two factors that open this game up to newer players, and I think that should quite rightly be praised.

Now… I mentioned some things have been played up, and all of them have the same, dubious core idea: That Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars (To use its full title for the first time this review… Most folks I know refer to it as MoO2016) is somehow more simplistic or easier than the older games. As someone who has now, since release, been bumrushed several times by races absolutely itching for space, who have obviously been concentrating on the shipbuilding end of things (That, or redlining their taxes), I would quite heartily disagree. In MoO2, I could quite happily spend 60 turns, or even 100, just slowly building up, sometimes without meeting anybody at all. In a Medium galaxy, populated by 5 other races, on Normal difficulty? The early game gets surprisingly tense, and I’ve often had to shift gears quite quickly. Knock the players down a bit, and it calms down a bit. Knock the difficulty down a notch, and similarly, it calms down a notch. As to simplicity? It’s a somewhat refined version of MoO2’s rules. Not a huge amount of changes, not a huge amount of additions or subtractions. Mostly, it’s been refinements, and y’know what? I’m okay with that.

An early game buildup…

Finally, there’s the combat system. I don’t mind it either way, as it retains elements of the older, turn based system that MoOs 1 and 2 had (Complete with ship customisation elements), and the rock-paper-scissors of Energy/Missile/Mass Drivers remains, but with the real time strategy elements allowing skillful micro to outplay a superior enemy, or, if you so choose, being able to sit back and watch the combat resolve itself automatically… But more cinematically than just hitting Auto-Resolve itself.

Now… Overall, I’ve been positive, and if you’ve read my work before, you’d know I will always try and balance things out, even if I’m not always successful in doing so. Master of Orion is not without its problems. For example, selection of craft can get finicky at times, as it sometimes seems to want to drag craft as an interaction rather than the old “click select, click [if you want to select a specific ship], click move.” The AI’s primary interaction before you establish embassies is to be extremely aggressive toward everyone else, and production, in Classic pacing, feels a bit of a slog. I’m not going to accuse the AI of cheating with its builds, but I am going to say that their emphasis mostly appears to be on the Conquer side of the Paths to Victory rather than others, especially in the early game. As with many 4X games, once you get to the end game, you will probably be able to pick and choose which of the six paths to victory you go for, rather than having to choose. Those are a select few criticisms.

Overall, though, MoO2016 seems a good introduction to the Space 4X genre, and a well crafted one in the artistic sense to boot. Also, I can confirm that the art book expands a little on the lore of the galaxy, and has a fair amount of cool concept art. 😉

…Followed by an early game beatdown from some extremely irascible Russian Space Bears. I will never mock the Bulrathi again.

The Mad Welshman is now idly wondering whether anyone can do a similarly good job with other strategic games set in space such as Ascendancy, Millennium, or, just maybe, Emperor of the Fading Suns.

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Source: Review Copy
Price: £10.99
Where To Get It: Steam

Defect: SDK (Standing for Ship Destruction Kit) is a game where, despite knowing it’s partly my fault, I can’t help but get frustrated. And it’s down to a lot of things.

Firstly, there’s the UI. Now, good UI design is hard, because while we often talk about how many interactions (Clicks or keypresses), it takes to do a thing, that’s only one factor. There’s also another pair of factors that doesn’t always get talked about with the design there: Time and attention. So, for educational purposes, I’m linking this rough note of the main game UI for Defect.

This isn’t that linked UI pic, but this does illustrate how big things can get. These are *nowhere* near the biggest things in the game.

That’s potentially a lot of things for what the game is, which is a mission based, effectively score attack arcade shooter with construction elements and unlockable upgrades. Bars go down, numbers go up, and, by even the end of the tutorial, fire is going to be coming at you from many directions, and many sizes of ships. I mentioned in the Early Access review that, at least in the early game, you are not big. But other things definitely are. Pay attention to them, and the smaller ships become somewhat hard to intuitively evade. Pay attention to the smaller ships, and you probably won’t even see the frigate that murdered your ass from what you perceive to be several screens away.

That’s a fair bit to keep an eye on over what often turns out to be a short space of time, and that’s frustrating.

Similarly, the game’s balance very much relies, not only on the mission objectives, but one to two core pieces of equipment, including: The Core. This blows up, you blow up. But this makes other decisions extremely tough, and it only takes the second core component, the cockpit, to see why. Just crew, on your first core, can take a tenth of your energy for… A small fighter at a time where you’re probably wanting something bigger, or a quarter of your energy for… Just over twice the crew. This is, by the way, before you start putting in the things that require both crew and power, which include the engines, weapons, armour, and… Wings. No, I’m not joking, each wing you put on your ship requires a crewmember to man it. Out of, at the end of the tutorial, an absolute maximum of… 25. It slowly gets better as the game progresses, but the key word there is slowly. Most of the time, you’re going to be making heavy compromises. Something tanky and shooty, but slow as heck and steers like a cow. Something quick, but with very few weapons and next to no armour. That first one will fail you quite a few of the missions from the second tier (Most of which involve speed or agility), while the second… May well run into another limiting factor, and the key behind the game’s name.

With this new core, I can… Spend 200 extra scrap for 30 extra power. Which I’d need to spend extra scrap to use. Grrr.

Defect (v.) – Abandon one’s country or cause in favour of an opposing one. Aka what your crew do after every. Single. Mission. It’s meant to be a running gag, but it wears extremely thin once you build a small, nippy ship for, say, doing a mission involving a trench run on the weakpoint of a planet smashing laser platform, only to then have to destroy the ship you built last mission, which has lots more armour, and about four more weapons. At least two of which are semi-guided missiles, and likely a turret that tracks a hell of a lot better than I do when I have the damn things.

Now, in balance, I will say that the visual style of Defect is damn fine. I love the artwork. I somewhat like the ambient music and the creepy drama of the title theme. The sound design is good, and the customisation is mostly well explained. Nothing like seeing a lovingly rendered Crewman Ziggy stab you in the back, or listening to the fwwwwwoooosh of your thrusters (Or, in the case of some later ones, the RRRFWSHWRRRRWRRSH.) The basic controls, similarly, are pretty simple: WASD for tank-control style movement, mouse for pretty much everything else. Bam.

But, in a very real sense, Defect is built on conflicts of design and compromise, and, while I’m certain at least part of it is that I’m not great at arcade twin sticks, another part of it is that yes, the game conflicts with itself at times. I’m sure there’s an ideal path through the game, one that allows you to build progressively better ships, going through the missions, and managing to destroy your traitorous crew each time with few problems. I’m equally sure that people are enjoying it more than I am, exploring the requirements of each mission with gusto, creating tricked out ships that shouldn’t work, but do.

Alas, I am not one of those folks.

One of my many flawed attempts at building a ship. Try and spot the main flaws here.

The Mad Welshman fogged up his faceplate with a gusty sigh. He was somewhat used to treachery, but normally he was on the other end of it. Oh well, he thought, nothing to do but wait for the rescue craft.

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Source: Review Copy
Price: £34.99
Where To Get It: Steam

This game has been somewhat of a thorn in my side, reviewing wise. Because I’ve wanted to give it a fair shake. But it’s time to admit that The Technomancer and I just don’t get along. This isn’t to say that there aren’t elements of good design in there, but there are quite a few things that make this game Not For Me. So take this review with a larger than usual grain of salt.

It starts with a plot. Water is scarce on Mars, so there are gangs and mutants and corporations of varying evilness, and you are a member of one of those Special organisations who…

Okay, let me stop for a minute and bring up one of the tooltips. This is emblematic of why I’m not so keen on the Technomancer.

What a load of Old Dome. 🙁

Electric, electric, electric… I feel like Billy Connolly at an opera. “I FUCKIN’ GEEET ITTT!” But of course, this is before the game has even started properly. Once it does, I’m in character generation, and I am Zachariah. I am always Zachariah. Zachariah can be dark of skin or pale, of many faces, but it’s always… Zachariah.

This, too, I understand. Sometimes, you want to write a plot with a very specific protag, and that’s Okay. It works for the Witcher. It works for Bayonetta. It’s worked for a lot of games. I even understand why he’s always voiced by the same person… Because VO is expensive. I’m down with that.

There’s a sense of uncanny valley about some of the voices compared to the animations.

I’m less down with the fact that, half an hour in, I have yet to leave the tutorial mission, I have made precisely one dialogue choice, and I have, so far, been the only person of colour (In character, anyway. In real life I have been described as “The Whitest of White Folks”) I have seen. It’s somewhat hard to tell in the tutorial mission, because everyone is wearing some kind of wrap or bucket or other concealing clothing (There’s a reason for that. Turns out, the sun on Mars turns people into Mutants. No, I don’t know either.) The world I’ve been pacing through, similarly, has been one note. It tells a story, but it’s a story I know because this is how this kind of story goes. Resource scarcity (Water, specifically) has led to a decline in population, and so lots of buildings out there are ruined. Also, Mars is not exactly known for the variety in its landscapes, as such.

Of course, this isn’t stated as such in the tutorial mission, beyond the reasoning behind the moral choice in this game (Kill for more resources, but leave the world lessened by it, or don’t kill, but deal nonlethally with things, despite the possibility that many of these people are themselves going to kill and Drain Serum, because you’re Good Like That.)

I’m mostly talking about the tutorial mission, by the way, because it’s emblematic, much like that splash screen. And the ending of the tutorial… Oh no, Technomancers are actually mutants (Who are second class citizens at best as it is), and their little hazing ritual base has been invaded by bugs from below, so…

“Hudson, er… Zachariah!”
“Is this gonna be another Bug Hunt, Sir?”

…The moment I saw the End of Tutorial boss, I just sighed. Yep, it was a big bug. Yep, it had boodles of hit points, and an obvious, fleshy weakpoint. Yes, you could animation lock it. It’s… Predictable. It’s similarly predictable that it ends each “phase” by covering it’s weakpoint, trying to kill you with collision damage (often succeeding), and summoning its lil’ sandhopper brethren. Worst of all, I’d known this from the moment I saw a big circular arena and bugs. So… Good signposting, I guess?

And it doesn’t really get better. Combat nearly always involves multiple enemies, because if it was a single enemy, then you would attack a few times, dodge out of its attack, and repeat until it fell down… As such, it becomes a slog. The story involves the very same Big Secret you’re meant to keep getting out there, and now you’re the Rebels to the Martian Empire…

…It makes me so very tired. I wanted to give it a fair shake. But the game, to me, resists being played. And that’s often the worst thing for me to try and review.

The Mad Welshman also has powers. Train-tying hands. Train-tying train-time prediction. Train-tying mad cackling… The list is highly varied, you know!

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Source: Early Access Purchase, Way Back When
Price: £11.99 (£35.99 for a four pack, £3.99 for the soundtrack)
Where To Get It: Steam

Well, hot damn. Not only has it been a previous interwubs incarnation that I last reviewed Starbound, it’s changed. And I mean “From the last stable update” changed. So well done, Chucklefish, for keepin’ such changes as “The plot is now there, and somewhat important” and “Oh my sodden underthings, I don’t have to tramp halfway across the system to see a bloody Stargate?”

TENTACLES DESTROY EARTH: In other news, look at this cute space puppy!

I already kinda liked Starbound, and came back to it at various points during Early Access, from the early “UGH, CAVEMAN TIER” whiny days, to the days when you vaguely had things to do and all the biomes were in, to when quests happened and bosses made a vague sort of sense… To this. It’s been a three year journey, let’s check out how things have gone with a brand spanking new character, the lady Hylotl Hachiro (Yes, it’s a boy’s name, shut up and stop judging, asshole! Hachiro does what she wants, and she’ll science you if you disagree!)

Hachiro started her in-game life on a high note… Graduating from Protectorate University, to be part of the peacekeepers of a shiny age of intergalactic harmony. Which is then immediately screwed up by tentacles that destroy Earth. Go figure. Hachiro manages to escape, but finds herself on a lost world, with a pet to feed, herself to feed, and a StarGate Teleporter of some kind right where she lands. She then moved into a ruin nearby, set up her various crafting tables, a campfire, and (eventually) a bed, dug down to the core before she even had iron armour, and did two obstacle courses. Now she can dash and double jump.

Oooh, that’s a big momma, alright! Thankfully, I have a gun, and patience. It has neither.

Compare this to the previous update’s “Bobbert”, the Glitch, who escaped without any prologue, dug down to the core after many travails, upgrading to Iron armour so he could fix his engines so he could schlep to the edge of the system to get a quest. Which he needed the iron armour for. As you can see, we’re off to an improved start. But, as the update giveth, it also taketh away. Unlike Bobbert, Hachiro has yet to give an assassin a cake, can’t cook proper food yet, needs more and different things for even iron armour and weapons, and Survival mode now means “You drop most of your inventory when you die.”

Which is definitely a reason to play cautious. For example, places I have dropped all my shit:

• Halfway across the planet from where I beam down.
• Halfway across the planet from where I beam down, next to a Big Monster.
• Near the core of the planet, in a pool of lava.
• Halfway across the planet, deep underground, next to twelve bats.
• Halfway across the planet, deep underground, at the bottom of a deep, steep sided pit.
  

  This was actually the *least* problematic of my many equipment recovery missions…

So, I like the changes. I like the story. I love the friendly tooltips. But I’m probably not playing Survival again unless it’s with friends. I just get too frustrated at losing most of my stuff, and dying several times as I trek halfway across a planet to find it. Also of note is that the mod scene, having developed over the three or so years of development, is alive and well, so the experience can be heftily customised via the Steam workshop. The soundtrack is great, the visuals are finely honed (I have little to no colourblindness problems here, always a good sign!), and…

Basically, there’s a heckuva lot of game here, a little grindy in places (As survival exploration games can be), but it’s got charm, it’s got story, it’s got a lot of cool things, and I would recommend it quite highly.

Of course, since it’s been in Early Access for most of its development cycle, I have the strong suspicion most of the people reading this already know that. But it’s nice to see a game come out of Early Access this strong.

The Mad Welshman set his matter manipulator to “Underground channel” and grinned. Oh, he’d show that lava what’s wha…

…And then the bat behind him knocked him into the lava.

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