The basic gameplay idea is great: Explore a huge universe which is procedurally generated, gather resources, upgrade and expand your ship and crew, land on planets and kill aliens etc. - you know the drill. To keep it interesting with the resources you gather you get the chance of an alien infestation on the ship which you then have to fight. So far so good. But here comes the problem: You have no way to tell where on your ship infections have established nor does your crew fight it on it's own. So it is your job to frequently crawl through all corners an listen for the alien crackling. And that gets old really quickly. Another problem is, that the infection can destroy parts of your ship. If this happens to be your ressource storage or your biotank you are screwed. The first you need to build more ammunition, the other you need to heal yourself. If you die you jump to control another crew member but if they are all dead you are screwed again. On top, this game does not tell you anything. Are there any broken energy modules? Nope, not gonna tell ya! Is there any alien motion detected on the ship? Nope, not gonna tell ya! What do I need to build to automate ammo production? Heck if I know! The map would have been a great place for all that info, but nope! And your crew is just incompetent. They shoot like a blind man after a stroke. You can assign them to automate things, i.e. in the refinery. But they barely do accelerate anything. As soon as you do it yourself it only takes a few seconds where they take minutes. It is so frustrating! All in all not worth any more of my time. More polishing could have done wonders but I think the devs have stopped working on this one.
When I first saw a trailer some years ago I was blown away by the optics. Since I am a member of the original Pixel Generation by sense of nostalgia was immediatly triggered. And what can I say? The most important part of any game holds up as well: The gameplay. It is fast paced and action laden while the controls are tight and responsive. Occasionally one looses orientation in that effects fireworks. But only for moments. The different mechs and tanks really play differently and require different play stiles adding variety. Fully destructable environments give you a sense of how powerful your weapons are when you take a look over the devastation after a won fight. This feedback should satisfy even a less nostalgia driven player. You just can't really find anything comparable in modern games. My only gripe is the lack of a proper story. You basically work off a list of single player missions only connected with some lore in form of text. TL;DR I recommend this game highly. Lots of action, great controls and a great visual spectacle.
