Nexus: The Jupiter Incident

I bought this from Game a few months after it first came out, and holy christ this is my favourite space based game ever (with the possible exception of Homeworld 1). Why? You command a small fleet of star ships, and you have full control over their movement, weapons and so on. If you want a ship to divide its fire between multiple ships, go ahead. If you only want it to fire specific weapons, fine. Graphically, this game has aged exceptionally well, and if you like to think your way through a good strategy campaign, this is well worth your time. Not to mention how easy it is to make mods for this game (I recommend one of the Battlestar Gallactica or Star Trek mods). Don't get me wrong, however, this game has its problems. The stealth missions (yes, this is a space game with stealth missions) can get really annoying if you're not sure of exactly how to go about them, and on higher difficulty levels, some of the fleet battles can get frustrating. Also, the multiplayer can only be played via LAN (or Hamachi or similar), because the company that made this game has since gone under because of how badly this game first sold. Pity, really, because this game deserved far better sales than it got at the time. Even the levels in which you only get one ship make you feels like you're the captain of your ship, rather than the pilot or the gunner; a feeling lacking from many games in which you command a capital ship, while when you get command of a fleet, you can either use basic commands, or you can give very specific weapon and movement orders to any and all ships within that fleet.

after 20 years of release still a brilliant Homeworld contender with decent graphics, good surround sound and a engaging campaign. I wish the kickstarter-campaign for part 2 had succeded.

A very enjoyable tactical space sim, however I always wondered what could have been. You see, this game started life as Imperial Galactica 3 but it was eventually renamed Galaxy Andromeda and promptly shelved. http://ie.pc.ign.com/articles/432/432912p1.html Later it was resurrected as Nexus, and just before release they added the subtitle. http://uk.gamespot.com/news/galaxy-andromeda-reborn-as-nexus-6084072 I was heavily evolved in the IG3/Andromeda/Nexus community forums while the game was being developed and tried out a few of the betas. Doubtless the delays (the game was supposed to be released in 2001) and messing about affected the final game and I wonder if the original vision was achieved.

Other reviews are pretty good at describing this game, so I'll be brief. - The campaign is about 20 hours long (at least for me, someone who already beat this game like 8 years ago) on medium difficulty. I had not played multiplayer. - The game has widescreen support, I had no problems playing at 1080p, but UI was already pretty small and hard to read. I'm pretty sure it's almost non-existent on 1440p or 4K, so beware. - The game has an annoying bug that happens in some missions, where if you destroy enemy ships in certain orders your game will crash. The solution was to change the order and find the "right" one, or if that didn't help, revert to an earlier save. Keep it in mind - save your game often.

The game is rising so many mixed feeling that I cannot simply hammer 4-5 starts like many other happy commentators. I'm actually surprised by a large number of positive comments. Anyway, back to the game. The story is ok-ish although close to the end it gets outright idiotic. The last mission (if you are lucky to get there) is simply a nonsense and boring, just a waste of time. It is almost as if producers run out of steam and had no idea how to finish of the game... . Moving on. Navigation is ABYSMAL. You may be a fanboy of this game but cannot, simply cannot negate that any sensible way to set way points is just rubbished by the used mechanics. On top of that come crashes. Many crashes... . The game is so bugged that you need much resolve to get till the end. Luckily there is a large sadomasochistic fan-base for this game that by trial and error found ways to avoid most of the crashes; still be prepared to do many replays and don't count on patches. Last negative point, I promise. It is very hard to control which weapons and when are deployed. If your ship has many of them it is also very very likely that of one type only 2-3 will be used. It is most likely caused by the insufficient energy or something but there is no way (I could nit figure it out) to tell when the problem appears. At the end there is so much micromanagement that it robs the minuscule amount of fun you ma still have... . Now the bright sides of the game. Yes, there are some but not many so don't get your hopes too high. Graphics and scenery is nice (explosions of energy bombs are far too bright and you will be constantly blinded by them). Music is also quite pleasant. Concerning the game's mechanics, I found the ability to attack subsystems really nice (like in homewolrd 2 but you can completely disable subsystems). This is also the second way to drop enemy's shields (aside from hammering with energy shells). You may adjust your strategies accordingly and gives you some nice flexibility. Concluding. It is very specific game for very patient or bored players. If you fit in one of the two categories just go for it.