Star Control®: Origins

I loved the old school Star Control on the Megadrive and was eager to try this out. It plays in a very, VERY, similar way to star control 2 with all the exploring planet hopping and RPG style diplomacy with ye olde top down 2D ship to ship battles. Pretty decent graphics wise, a little cartoony but I didn't mind. Sadly it just gets a little repetitive, especially since I played Star Control 2 to death and back. I was hoping for something a little different. Well put together but ultimately a little dry and tedious, sadly the original games still rule the roost.

I played SC1 and 2 on a Tandy, and this is a wonderful successor. Origins is a great follow-up and alternative universe prequel to SC2 and pokes a bit of fun at the not-that-bad SC3. Ignore whatever you heard about this, the original creators are never coming out with a game despite what they claim. Too much Skylanders money in their pockets to ever bother revisiting this property. If they actually release the game they claimed they were working on while trying to sue Stardock, I will print off the code for Origins and eat it. Suck it, Paul and Fred. Stardock did a great job, it's a fun galaxy explorer with some RPG and adventure elements. It is relaxing to explore a planet searching for resources, and the sense of humour that made the originals more fun than Master of Orion is still intact. Good story, fun single player, and the best part, two-player spaceship battles, is better than ever! Grab a friend and another controller and blow stuff up. I liked the addition of powerups to make the battles more interesting. CONS: No VUX.

So I bought this because I had just beaten The Ur-Quan Masters(again) and it didn't quite scratch my Star Control itch enough. I'll tell you that if you're expecting some kind of clone of SCII, you will be disappointed. It was also extremely easy. That said, I enjoyed the story, and it actually was exactly what I needed at the time. The game is only loosely set in the SC universe. They keep alluding to "something" killing off all the sentients. We can assume that this is the Kor-Ah. That's awesome, but I haven't seen anything that explains why there's all these aliens near Earth that aren't there in the very next game... So yeah, there's some disconnect between SC:O and SCII. That said, I gave the game four stars because I really did enjoy the game on its own merits. It had several giggle-worthy moments, a fun and diverse cast of species, and the combat was really fun. For the price that I paid, I feel that I got a good value. If you are looking for a space opera RPG, here you go. This will do until Children of Infinity comes out.

Loved the original 3 games, love this one. Just fun meeting all the new species and figuring out what in the world is going on in the galaxy. very fun game

I just finished the main storyline. Gameplay is mostly exploration, space dogfights like Asteroids (really Spacewar) and clumsy lander driving on planets. To explore fly your ship manually around the planets in a star system or use autopilot to fly between systems -just be mindful of fuel. You already know the location of every system, you just don't know what's out there. Picking a system within reach, going there and coming back with lots of resources, a decimated fleet and running on fumes is fun! Ship sensors which pinpoint interesting planets are a must. Once you reach a planet you'll drop your lander and drive around, automatically picking resources. Planets are smallish 3D spheres -there's some variety, but it's a grind. Unlike space flight, lander driving is clumsy. Just be selective on which planets you land, drop in, take the most valuable materials and leave. Upgrades will take most of the grind away. Space combat is fun but you have to practice. A ship upgrade can fight for you but you will need to take over for the very few "boss fights". Trying different ships against your opponents is the best part of the game. You can use keyboard and mouse or a gamepad, preferably a PS4 one for precision. You can play solo matches against the computer too. The very early game has lots of grind, but upgrades quickly take most of it away. Fleeing combat to preserve you fleet is OK, but make sure you have a fast ship. Or you can surrender and restart a match. The writing for your human officer is mediocre, but the rest is OK, I laughed a few times. Voice acting is cool, but interactions are brief. The forgettable plot exists just to drive the game forward. I have the minimum required system but with much more RAM -the game takes minutes to load but once loaded gameplay is smooth. Things I didn't try: modding, which is officially supported, and multiplayer combat, which includes local matches using two gamepads.