A payed set of community levels may sound suspicious, but trust me, it is definitely worth a buy. The levels are not called a campaign in-game for no reason, as there is actually some storyline to tie them together rather than just leaving them as a set of unconnected maps. Visually the style varies from a more eye-candyish to a more "boring industrial" one, but all the maps look great nevertheless. Which is more important, the topology is really brilliant and although a skilled player will never get really lost on any of the levels, navigating them is always of much fun on it's own. As every level is designed by a different author, the style and gameplay aspects vary greatly from level to level, which is very atmospheric for a game where the players visit various installations built by different companies for different purposes. Unfortunately, there isn't much voice-acting involved (in fact, only one level has voiced log entries), but I don't think it is actually any big of a problem. The named log entries are not really professionally voiced, though it actually is only good for them as the author really sounds like a confused station worker describing the unusual events he encountered, so his character actually feels like a real human rather than a movie or a game character. There are two minor problems with this DLC however (although none of them causes much trouble). The first one is a pretty massive difficulty jump at the very beginning, as the very first level (the one you begin with only two weapons and two missile types) features a real war against a horde of various drones and even a bossfight. After that the difficulty drops down and keeps slightly rising throughout the campaign (while you can keep it down by upgrading your ship and equipment), so should you choose a higher difficulty setting, the start may feel pretty rough, unlike the remaining missions. The second problem for me was a single, non-recurring, crash upon ending the secret level.
"This should be free"... no. This is not something you'd expect after the number of 1-star rates here, it is not a set of cosmetic items or anything that is usually added by mods yet is sold sometimes. And no, wallpapers are not what the "upgrade" is about, personally I guess they were put in just as a little help (logic: you buy this, therefore you like the game, therefore you may want to set a themed wallpaper, therefore why not give you a hand finding it?). What is actually worthy here is the artbook (again, why give it off for free - those who want it will buy it, and those who don't will live happily no matter if it is free or not) and (and mainly!) the music. The thing costs as much as a generic music CD (and not even an expensive one), the music is really good - and those two facts alone actually make it a fair deal. It is also nice to have the MP3 version to add some fun to the traffic jams (my car audio doesn't support FLAC so having it saves me the trouble converting). And should you still think it should be free, come to any music store, I can bet there will be many CDs you will simply be like "Who is going to pay a cent for this trash, ever?!". So, the Deluxe Upgrade is a fair deal. You may want it and buy it, you may skip it - but it still is a fair deal.
Everspace has some nice stories to tell and really good progression and crafting systems, but mostly the game is not about those. It is about dogfighting, where it combines the best of the 90th flight arcades' mechanics (space, air, underground or underwater - it doesn't matter). In this game, you fight everything from the little drones to large capital ships, and the large arsenal of very different weapons and devices makes it surprisingly addictive. The gameplay is pretty much straightforward - get from point A to point B (or die trying) through a chain of random locations, some of which are worth exploring for the hidden goods (and minor tasks like saving a transport ship, eliminating a criminal or retrieving a lost cargo), the other are worth escaping - yet trust me, you don't need anything else here as, again, what other excuse do you need to test your flying skills? To make things fair, many things like your "credits" (used to both trade and upgrade your ship) and abilities to craft specific weapons and other goods remain should you die so your next attempt will be somewhat easier. In short, if you both miss the flight arcades and want a game meant for you to finally have some simple fun without anything to annoy you, I'd recommend to give Everspace a try. From the technical side, the game is well optimized and maintains high framerates on pretty modest systems. p.s. To me, the music definitely deserved the FLAC version.
