Pros: - Departs from the standard sci-fi feel of spacey music to give you something more rustic that really sells the more dirty, Firefly-like, piratey setting - The concept of naval style combat is a pleasant diversion from the more forward firing fighter style combat that's prevalent in the genre - Voice acting is good and covers pretty much all interactions - Ship designs are nice and diverse Cons: - The story is just lame. It does little more than sending you to a few different systems and blow something up. There are incredibly few stages to the whole story and each part feels really insubstantial. - Broadsides end up not being all that important. Every ship comes with turrets as well and even though they are only firing at half power when you are manning the broadsides, they still tend to outperform the broadsides in DPS. Granted the broadsides do pack a punch and you absolutely need them for any of the tougher enemies but it dilutes the combat style. - Combat difficulty spikes around halfway through and then plummets as you reach the biggest ships. - The progression from to more powerful ships and (more importantly) equipment is a very slow grind because you'll always be stuck doing "mild" or "very mild" missions until you're basically done with the game. This drags out the playtime beyond pleasant levels - The upgrades you get from the main quest are laughably inconsequential. When starting out I expected an artefact hunt and upgrade tree like in Dark Star One but you only get a handful of meh improvements. - The world is significantly smaller than Freelancer or Dark Star One. I a weird way this game feels too long and not long enough at the same time. There's fun to be had especially thanks to the superb battle music. But it doesn't reach the greatness of more iconic spaceship shooters.
Whoever said that Xenonauts was what XCOM:Enemy Unknown should have been was either lying or has some deeply perverted concepts of what makes a game good. I find Xenonauts nearly unplayable. The game is severely lacking in tooltips or other explanations. Stuff constantly gets in your way and if three guys at point blank range can't even hit a puny alien once then they can get lost. I'm only giving this game more than the minimum because I feel it geniunely tried to bring some cool ideas (back) to the XCOM formula. But it has missed the memo that added complexity needs to come with added polish. I'm exteremely glad I got this game "for free" through the GOG sale. I'd be pissed if I'd actually paid money for it.
Infested Planet is essentially a small scale RTS/T game. Think Rico's Roughnecks from Starship Troopers. By default you only control 5 soldiers (but you can hire more) and have to accomplish various missions against ever evolving huge hordes of aliens. Usually you have to exerminated all the alien nests on the map but there are variations on that like also having to protect an AI unit at the same time or being pressed for time. Other missions require you to survive as long as possible or just capture as many points withing a given time. One of my favorite missions was a kind of Dota three lane battle late in the campaign. Every time you conquer a nest two things happen: you get more BP (build points?) and the aliens get a new mutation. Adapting to these mutations can be quite tricky sometimes but I've found that a certain mix of troops is sufficient for most of the missions most of the times. There are definitely some mutation combos that are harder to beat and it's likely that someone more proficient than me could win against those too by switching his strategy. You can invest your BPs into giving your troops different weapons than their wimpy starting rifles, building stationary turrets, healing pods or base improvement that give you things like helicopter airstrikes. The great thing is that you can change your mind at any time. You can tear down a structure or return a weapon an get all the BPs back. That makes you incredibly flexible and the game much more fun. The story is a bit lackluster and cheesy but I still highly recommend this game. An impressive debut feature for this single developer!
