Nexus: The Jupiter Incident

My favourite things about this game are definitely the presentation and music. Even though it's pretty old, it still looks gorgeous and it's really the little details that set it apart. Stuff like the shaky cam whenever you zoom on the burning engines or explosions, tiny thrusters firing on the side of the ships when they turn, the kinetic feeling of ships having to gradually reduce their velocity or the way they gracefully manouver during combat, etc. etc. It all looks and feels really nice and the ambient music only enhances the visuals. Nevertheless, I have to admit that I never got past the stealth mission since it was pretty confusing and I kept getting detected despite closely following the nav points. It was really frustrating and pretty much ruined an otherwise enjoyabe game for me.

This is a first impression after playing the game for about 30-60min. Never played it before. I don't know the last time a game drew me in like this. Oh, the atmosphere. Oh, the storytelling. Like Homeworld this game is perfectly composed to tell an atmospheric story in the vast emptiness of space. Sound design, graphics and mechnics work all together to really give you the feeling of loneliness and threat of being in deep space, like seldomly a space-game does. The immersion is there from the Beginning and there's not even suspension of disbelief by some clumsily fit in tutorial. The game effortlessly weaves telling you how it works into the storytelling. The UI looks nice and is intuitive. And the graphics are stunning - and do i have to remind you this game is 18! years old? They made the absolute best out of what they had and it still looks amazing today (those engine exhausts!) If you like Homeworld or the Expanse, this is a must-buy!

I wanted to like it but just can't bring myself to recommend it. Pros: +Nice variety of missions +Nice soundtrack +beautiful graphics +Interesting campaign Cons: -Bad interface/tooltips: equipment won't show its data while installing it into your ships, only during missions. You won't know what it does until you want to use it (unless you learned it beforehand). -slow, and I mean SLOW gameplay: you will be able to comfortably cook a good meal during the time it takes your ships to reach a reasonably distant target, maybe even shop for ingredients sometimes -buggy controls: at times, I ordered ships to move to a position and went out of the room, only to find them spinning slowly in the place they had been when I left, sometimes they REVERSED directions instead; sometimes I ordered ships to assume siege formation just for them to spin around each other perpetually -very specific layout of equipment is often needed and no way to know it beforehand-it may occur that you remove a weapon because there is absolutely no sign for needing it in a specific mission, just for it to be the essential weapon required to fulfil this mission. Other games may help the player by granting you required equipment during the mission by specialized units-not this one. Please reload the mission briefing, reequip your ships, restart the mission and try again. All in all I found Nexus to be a frustrating experience which I pretty much ragequit 1,2 missions before the ending due to the intensity of its stacked up failures I just didn't want to bear any longer. 2 Stars for the effort, none for the execution

Despite being a convincing fleet control game, the game just throws so frustrating missions at you every now and then that I cannot recommend it to just anyone. Some missions require VERY specific setups and tactics and learning them is just an awful process of failures and frustration, taking away a lot of the fun in the game.

So, I actually have this on DVD from when it first released. I played it a few times, never finishing as I seem to get distracted easily. The interesting part is the graphics are very nice. Maneuvering a ship in space is time consuming but really what would you expect moving a huge ship say in an asteroid belt. Seeing this released on GoG has inclined me to reinstall the game from my discs on a much better graphics card and system and see if I can actually get through to the end, if there is one. Somebody wrote it's for a specific type of player and I can attest that you need some patience to play this game as it takes more time to do some things than usual. But overall I would say it has its place in the genre as engagable and playable several times.