If I give this game 5 Stars, it is not because it is perfect, but because it is perfectly enjoyable. It certainly has it's flaws, but none of them make You really curse the day You bought it. No, most time, You'll have your joy, plenty of it and that's what matters. However one should become aware of what kind of game one is playing here. Otherwise one might judge it, by what it's not. It is not another Fallout, although there are as many similarities, that one can say, if You like the one game, You will most certainly like the other. However expectation might ruin your day. What I love and value about this game is ... - The multiple different stories and the choices You have. Sometimes the dialog logic might be questionable, but most times they have some good wit. - The fallout 1+2 like Fights with a good range of weapons. - It works on Linux like a charm. - It works on a not to modern Laptop without a noticable Graphics card like a charm. - Lot's of content to play. - The 3D modeled world, which looks nice, but does not try to boast. - At the time of me playing the game, I didn't encounter any bugs! This is remarkable! - The devs still care for the game and it's community. There are some things I don't like so much. They don't hinder me to value this game, but they may take some joy. Most noticable is, that ammo is a rare thing. Whilst this may spice the survival at the start and the early midst of the game, it becomes ridiculus later, when You become a rich brat, but must still change weapons according to the threat level of your enemy, just to save ammunition and are constantly running to every seller you know, just to by a few rounds of ammo. Also I miss the sense of loneliness and loss I felt in Fallout 1+2 and the graphics design is a bit less emotion stirring. (But again, don't compare those titles to much.) The AI of compagnions and enemies is also quite limited, not to say bad - the fights are still fun anyways. I enjoyed the game till the very end!
I really like the setting of this game, the lone surviving Starbase, struggeling between alien powers. Could have really been a great experience. The execution has its moments. A simple rescoure management, good humor, also it's nice, that gameplay isn't too hard. So one can have some fun. But everything is getting tedious very soon. Ship combat is always the same. Besides a simple logic, which is based on the effects each attack has on the target and the combination of attacks to exploit these effects, there are not much other strategic elements. Ground combat is even worse and it can be quite unbalanced. Also exploits of effects rarely happen in ground combat, because effects aren't mixed as good as in space here. But alright, this isn't where most of the gameplay happens anyway. Nearly every other aspect of the game is underdeveloped or not existing and thus not very interesting: Diplomacy, rescource management, building an empire and power struggle. If this was implemented well, the game would have some spice, alas it isn't. Research is quite alright, though it could be improved. So playing the game is always the same. Send ships to the rescource locations and build them up (until everything is build up), fight against bigger and bigger ships and get bigger and bigger ships. Besides that, one encounters a few bugs (nothing game breaking, except, if you're a linux user like me and don't have LANG=C set per default). And struggles with some Interface issues, which can be nearly as annoying as bugs. (To be fair: In some aspects the interface is done quite well.) For example one oftens wants to find out what and where a specific officer is working at the moment. There is no easy way to do that, one has to go through every possible working place or keep every officers occupation in mind.
... unfortunatly the installation is not working (without some real self-initative). Others already wrote about it, so no need to repeat it. Otherwise I love this game, but now for very obvious reasons i'm unfortunatly not in the mood to spread the fire.
I just love this racing game. It may not be perfect, but it is perfect for having a little break, stress relief, just fun. The physics are quite nicely implemented. The races consist of a lot of crashing and boxing your way through the track and opponents. Cars will slowly degenerate and change their stability during each race and thats fun, too. Parts are flying of them and through the air, sometimes even the driver, if You are not carefully enough. Use your opponents as cushions, destroy the surrunding, find funny shortcuts through buildings and crates. Gain nitro whilst crashing and crushing. And so on ... The racing isn't too hard. Even if you play it casually, You will advance slowly through your "career". But it is also not too easy. You will have to race each track several times, before winning. But sometimes You're just lucky, You box away your components or gain useful seconds on a shortcut. The game is fun, not punishing. There are also lots of tracks. 30 or 40 or something like that. And although there are only four different kinds of tracks (Wood/Race/Winter/Construction site), these have enough interesting and more and more challenging variants. Also there are plenty of different cars and upgrades. It's fun to change the car from time to time. There are some details, which could be better. Some obstacles are easily destroyed when crashing into them (and that even gets You some extra money ;) ), others are indestructible and crashing into them will cause your driver to fly ... . These are difficult to distinguish for a beginner. Also it would be nice, if cars would be completly destructible, so one is able to kill the oponents, but that would also make the game much harder, so maybe not such a good Idea? Ok, I don't really know, what kind of bad things I should say about this game. It's fun, it's great.
It's a racing game, but it's just not fun. The physics are very simple, acceleration, deceleration, bumping against walls to decelerate just more, but nothing else. It feels like accelerating a coin over a board without friction, but with a maximum speed. Each time You hit the borders, the coin will be slowed a lot. I couldn't play much of it, since I got bored, so I can't say, if it is very difficult. The first arcade race I could win immediately without much effort. The speed practice on the other hand was hard to win. The one and only interesting Idea about the game is, that there is a speed, a defence and an attack mode of the racer. This could have introduced some nice tactical elements. But I couldn't get to a point, where this was actually relevant.
I had some fun playing this game, but mostly it was a tedious adventure. How so? Well from my experience with the previous titles, I expected a mixture of RPG-Strategy with an atmospheric storytelling adventure. But I was rather disappointed. The fights I had so far, after playing about 10 missions, were rather boring. To much luck was involved and the fights were either a bit to difficult to win, or much to easy. And if they were difficult, this was not so much solved by a good strategy (which would be nice), rather than by saving and loading and having luck. I feel, that this was different in the preceding to titles. I could say more about it, but that's it essentially. Also You have the choice to avoid most fights. Some runs may go completely without fighting, except if You really choose to. This is theoretically a nice trait, but it removes the strategy element from the game, or makes it optional. And since I naturally like to avoid fights, it takes some fun out of it for me. But anyways, as described, fights are mostly boring. The adventure element on the other hand isn't so good either. The main story, up to the point I played the game, is rather boring (my opinion!). There are some details about it and I could point at each and say why it bores me. But how to sum it up? Maybe like this: It's a story consisting of many small details, which are all rather boring by themselves and don't really add up to something bigger than it's parts.
Driving a Pod-Racer is much fun. There are tons of different racers and many interesting tracks. The physics are innovative, though not to complex. The game itself is fun to play, it's not to easy, but it's definitly not a difficult game. It's for having a good time, for having fun, not to punish You. So don't expect to get to your limits, expect to have just the right amount of challenge to have a nice time :) ! I may have given it only four stars, if I was very picky. Could have been coming a star wars story with it, that would have been even more fun. Could have had some more challenge or more tracks. But to hell with it, I had fun, it's totally worth it and I like it!
This game is looking really nice at the beginning. Some interesting character classes to choose from, each has its own mechanics and although at first it seems complicated to learn them, it's not that bad, just try them and the rest is learning by doing. There are however some things which could have been elaborated. How many crawlers do I need, do I need to recruit them? And so on. But it's easy to learn and the remaining questions may be answered by using a search engine of your choice. Though mechanics are somewhat complex and interesting and yet the game can be played casually. There are not really any unforbidding choices, everything can be compensated sooner or later, which I also like. So You can have your fun! So why the bad mark? Because apart from the main storyline, all dungeons are generic, randomly generated, the items also. You level up and so will the dungeons and items and monsters. But there is not really anything new or extraordinary interesting. If you played for example Baldurs Gate and found a +2 Sword, this has quite a value and you will be quite happy about this find. In StarCrawlers You will find many items with many properties constantly changing and it gets tedious to compare them. Making progress will become boring, because everything which is progressing is just the level of the monsters and items. Of course You may just play the main storyline. Then the game will probably be quite hard and nevertheless not to interesting either, because in the end, most things are kind of generic, even though the dungeons and monsters change a bit. I started the game and had some hours of fun, but then I lost interest. If You don't mind completing the game, then I definitly recommend buying it on sale. But don't buy it, if You like to have variation or a good story (the story is ok, but rather thin). There are some interesting choices to make (storywise), but since replayability value is low, unfortunatly most of them will never be discovered.
