got it free in this halloween octobor offfer(by spending 15 US bucks on other games(on sale which I wanted) just saw an email and reflexively clicked on it and the game was mine. othewise I would have passed it up. this is totally worthless. the dialgoue is hideously cliche, the characters predictable and transparent as good ole fashion glass(like most modern movies, dramas and sit coms son tv) the guys, week, the girls need an attitude adjustment and the behavior the same ole same ole "formulatic" copy cat laziness in every show on TV since 2010! pathetic. the choices are a reflexive base of dialouge which has little-to-no influence on a total change in character at all, so realy... the player makes no choice beyond just another way of getting the same thing to happen. it is all scripted. unlike Batman whereas you must also make quick dialogeu 123 choice but at least the choices mattered. not here! it is just another movie script you aare not the player, you are doing basically whatr the director says no matter what choice you make, and it is basically the same outcome(with few exceptions).
this game blows everything made since around 2010 out of the water. it brings back the character of characters and is niether silly, nor pollitically correct(overtly) nor is it shy on the amazing graphics and sound. the voice acting is on par and the characters are something you can care about, even if they are bad, good or someplace in the middle. I haven't played it long enough to understand the plot or everyhting, only to the Berzerkers but if you get in the water enough for the undertied to hit you only once, you know the ocean, so to speak. It is a bit annoying in the subtexts about "holding your hand" but I hardly notice or read that anyway it comes up too fast and goes away, wish it were omitted by option. for instance if someone doesn't like you, not only are you given a "disapproval" text but a long and windy explaimation what you did wrong, other than this minor glitch the game is great, best I've played SINCE Gothic! Definitely a keeper and the sci-fi adds, rather than degrades the storyline, and gameplay(meaning reason for doing stuff for the world and folks) if you are a Berzerker you hate tech because of what happened to the world prior this appocolypse(relateablle motive) if you are a cleric, opposite and outlaws belive in doing what they damn well please. you can also go independent if you dont' like factions at all or religious or pollitical commitments, unnusual in a world of today this game was made in where as no one in the middle gets respect. Yes, at first you get a "Tour guide" but can be a bit disorienting until you know the lay of the land and he's a likeable sort. if you agree to his sidequest you will definitely get more than your feet wet and get that undertied I am talking about, if you continue to town, you will certainly get the lay of how well constructed the characters are and the actors do them well. moves and gameplay are also improved over gothic as you can dodge, and lung much as in Divinity II as well as special attacks.
first off, this game could be a great game. it has diverse stats, skills, and character backgrounds, I always love character backgrounds. if you pick a mercenary, for example you are going to have not only a better fighter who is worse at diplomacy but a character that starts in a different place and will be treated differently than, say, a Loremaster. the backstory is great, Fallen fictional Roman-like Empire. but here is the ugly, and I won't go into the bad, because the ugly is the bad the presentation is boring the dialogue, while good, is presented in a horribly fonted text that is way too small for peopple with less than steller vision to read and if you aren't going to have speaking at least make the dialogue big enough to read, I love reading as much as anyone, but c'mon! when you talk to someone you go from the "play" screen to a big boring brown void with some little tiny text printed on it in a draft type font. pathetic! I don't need voice overs, I am as much into reading as the next non-lazy willng to use his brain type person! but this is pathetic! I can't read this news print, the font is boring, it is much too small and the screen continnually and tediously switches from play screen to diagloue screen. boring! at least put a picture and a bigger prettier font! I'm not reading this for an hour! the controls they are AWEFUL camera(both modes) wonky no toggle switch yoiu must do the switch in "options" very stupid and backward character control, you must repeatedly click on the ground to get further than the edge of the screen. makers need to put a continual walk via holding the right mouse buttion I mean, even Utlima VII did that. c'mon! thanks for the carpel tunnel syndrome guys! I could love this game but cannot get into it becasue of horrible font, and abysmal controls. you got a great game, why not use some common sense and make it presentable! I feel like I am reading the New York Times and being bored, not living the Roman times!
interesting, save for the cliche acting, cliche characters and cliche dialogue. the actual story(as in back story and what might be called mid story, as in of the crew that came before) is interesting why I was willing to give it hard drive space and a bit of my time. maybe as a companion booklet to the main story, however, the central story protagonist's screaming, wining and cussing every time you did something wrong or the corny one liners that were not in the least funny got irritating enough to quit in the middle of the game and delete it. She reminds me of a tenant I once had who wanted to be the center of attention, yet disregarded other apartment dwellers rights, I evicted that tenant post-haste, as I will this game from my PC! The protagonist in this game, Hadley, was very immature. even for her age, as were all the crew, the disembodied spirit she always spoke too was also a whiner and a sociopathic moron. I also was tired of the lame morality preaching by the Hadley about how other people need to treat their family(like she would know better, despite being so young) also the black and white ethics the whining of supposedly experienced crew that showed less courage than the uppity smart mouthed upstart protagonist, sounds like a b-rate freebie rental movie to me, though you'd think experienced crew would be talking down to her, not the other way around. the story is read via PDA, and a few men in distress tied to a rail road track who die instantly, PDA, probably something like System Shock the tried and true plot(though this is a Russian game they do it even worse than Hollywood) the middle-aged males in higher power being weak and powerful and the lowly female youth upstart with no experience out witting everyone is getting pretty tired in storybooks, movies, TV and games, written over the last few years, quite frankly, and now it is plaguing computer games. and the "Hollywood acting" everyone raves about is just that. cliche. probably why I originally stopped watching TV and going to movies and playing games like Baldur's Gate, and Gothic series. to escape that. but this "game", is merely another Hollywood drama with interacting in an isomorphic helicopter view where you can't see enough nor get immersed, I prefer closer up, or zoom in ability also, lots of running around back tracking and annoying paraphrasing by the cliche main character. Stasis, the main game, consisted of a weak, helpless, over emotional male protag but that is not as annoying as this. every time you don't open a door Hadley swears or makes some weaker "fudgesickles" remark as if it is a big deal. I have no problem with swearing if the situation calls for it, as in your arm is getting bitten off by giant rats, the male, John and Hadley both did it for the right reasons too, but Hadley every time she stub your toe, or didn't get your quarter back from the soda machine! most of the dialogue and the unlikable characters, all of them including Hadley, belongs in a B- horror film on amazon's "freebie" stream, not in a serious horror game! yes it is free, but it detracts, not adds to the main adventure. and yes, as others have said it takes some portion of your time and IMO, your computer's speed as it is also loaded on your hard disk!
I, as another reviewer, saw the other title "Space Rogue" and was disappointed it was not the Classic Space Rogue(circa 1989) to those who say it is "boring" I guess you didn't play games in 1989, a shame really :(. I am glad someone on GoG suggested this game be added to the GoG roster! I am not basing this on nostalgia(totally) nor am I basing it on modern graphics(which are absurdly used in place of plot, game play and personality and even lack true ascetic style such as in Indie and the absurd "Rogue-like" which rely too much on absurd Teddy Bears with Russian accents(Maize), one-room apartment settings(The Guest) and painfully stupid experiments with cartoon characters "Outpost" "Darkest Dungeon" "FTL", ect, and not on fun. which does not relate here. This game is a gem, anyone who plays it, with more than a 15 minutes attention span, can get caught up in Space Rogue Classic! The game was made long before 3D graphics' shading, and nVidia physics cards. What they -did- have, was EGA and a lot of talent from the Origin sim makers, is second to none! The flight and docking scenes are very well done(not as much as Wing Commander but hey, what can ya do? it was pre-wing commander series!) the dialogue is not bad, is quirky(not just weird for the sake of being weird) and full of humor, such as the stereo-type "pirate" with eyepatch and fake "piraty" attitude who often frequents many bars across the far arm and other NPCs(and ultima V-like but a bit less so) the game is not of one genre as most are today, it blends spaceflight sim, combat, good humor dialog on the many starbases, and was a pioneer trader sim and also before Privateer it had the ability to upgrade your ship and your equipment. Primarily, the game focuses on a backstory(I won't go into here) and the abandonment of you to this derelict spaceship from your previous commissioned "Princess Blue" as one of her crewmen, to the freelance role in a crippled, but running "fix'me up" called "Jolly Roger" a Sunracer class.(the prologue is not a spoiler!) and yes the ship looks boring, even back in those days, I had thought, it is just a shuttle craft with a Star Trek-like view port for the cockpit, but it was the physics and management in battle, the equipment and the cargo that made this gem so great in 1989. if we still had only EGA at our disposal and nothing else, I would wager most of the "boooring" reviews would change their minds and give this gem classic at least a 4! I did play it in 1989(a Christmas present) but I do not base reviews on pure nostalgia, some older titles I find boring too, I base it on how fun it is to play. It is not as complicated as Star Flight, but, as Shay Addams Questbuster Magazine(1989) editorial reviewer had stated "If you want to be Han Solo for a while this is the closest thing you'll find to it."
The game is an example of passionless work. the physics aren't there, you are restricted to a linear flight and only allowed to turn left or right or increase/decrease speed. you cannot travel up and down as you would in space giving you a feeling of driving a car.(I think they wanted to make Dukes of Hazard but they should have made it a racing sim instead) If you have a good perspective of sensing space and depth that will not help you here. When you are near space stations docking is accomplished by merely traveling in a strait line near the docking area, really weird too, you do not need to navigate or straiten out your flight as in using up/down movements so it is weird and boring and no skill at all involved in space ship flight. in combat, you are also merely required to go right or left and adjust speed. I guess they had sea faring ship-to-ship battles in mind here(or maybe shotgun dude in passenger side of car-thank "Mexican Maphia" here, not space combat) as far as using side cannons and forward turrets, but this is space and this sort of thing does not work at all! It is, in fact, really lame and droll. I think the primary means of making this game was to put in a southwestern mid town theme and some southern rock music. it has no barring on any kind of space sim at all and is inferior to most every other Space Sim/Space Combat game out there. Thank Freelancer with only the X-axis, and a few flatly acted characters that are neither unique nor interesting. the usual "aunt handing the torch over to the young and yearning upstart" routine. you can southwesternize it without mutilating the whole point of the genre! Independence War 2 had a Soutwest theme and was quite good! But this is atrocious! And if you think your going to be Luke Skywalker or Han Solo, or even Walker Texas Ranger the space cowboy, forget it! unless you only listen to Lynard SKynard and know nothing about playing any games what-so-ever, you won't like this game at all!
First off, let me say, this is a casual game. It is fun and funny to play. the voices are done by three people and they do it very diversely in the characters. Homsar, the non-sensical "wise-man" is absolutely hilarious. Homestar Runner, the focalpoint of Strong Bad's mischief. and Strong Bad the over-zealous ten-year-old with steriods who doesn't wear a shirt but is covered from head to toe with boxing gear is the protagonist with a quarter between his ears and an attitude to make up the difference. If you like "Adult Swim" or "Space Ghost Coast-to-Coast" then you will love this humor. it is also much like Sam and Max, but with less atmosphere. the sky is always blue, the grass always green and it is drawn like a kid's picture on purpose, as that is part of the humor. even the Dangeresque 3 episode clearly defines it as being fake. it is supposed to be! That is the point of it!
A game where animals rule the world, or so it seems. You play a protagonist who is a fox named Biff who is charged(against his will) to find a certain artifact which can mean the difference between peace and war and controls the weather for farming and crops. This game is not for the people looking only for dark gloomy tales of blood and gore, though it does take place in a post-human era where we humans mysteriously left long ago for some reason or other. This is not a 'cutzie tale of bambie and thumper as one might expect, nor is it a dark and gritty tale if you want that, watch Watership Down, you won't get it here, rather, this is a tale of some serious nature without the gloom and doom though the plot spells this if you don't succeed. You are charged with two followers, one from the Elk Tribe of the forest the other from the Boar tribe who is the force of arms, I suppose for the realm. Though their is quite a lot of lighthearted humor(and good thing too) it is not a "child's" game, per se, though I suppose someone above the age of 10 might comprehend the outlining story pretty well. If you like games such as King's Quest, Legend of Kyrandia, or campfire folktales, you will LOVE this! It is like that and with great dialogue and excellent voice actors who portray the parts in the approprieat animal they are supposed to be, Fox, being a sort of tactful diplomat but very choosy and cautios in his words, Boars being blunt and somewhat dour and less of this, and the Elk being wise forest lords much as a seasoned ranger or paladin might sound. Ferrets being fast talking but curious and so forth. the animation is equally appropriate to the animal in question, fox and Elk and Rams hind legs moving foreward in the lower part and walk appropriate to this, not looking like men in silly ridiculous costumes like so many cartoons and other games do(including Ultima VII-IX great games, but sadly in this case, this is so) but in this games animals animate as animals do(of a given tribe that is). I highly recommend this game for a play through, great fun, great off beat dialogue very intriguing plot and some very challenging puzzles-the key of getting stuck actually, and quests! (mostly errands at first) However, all of this together will get you I a good mood fast!
I was reading some reviews on how this game was compared to Ultima VII and I looked at the screen shots and just said "this game looks stupid" and passed it up, then it went on sale for a buck or two(flash sales November) and I snatched it up, whats a buck anyway! I play it and realize that it takes place in a different type of place but it FELLS Ultima VII!! The dialogue, the characters being some of class and ones you like and the humor is pretty good, not unlike the in jokes of classic TV being put into weird characters as the Laurel and Hardy miners in Ultima VII or the "Hoe of Distruction" references from Ultima VII's Farmer Mack, different hoe, different farmers same thing, give it to the boy, clad him with a straw hat, it's great! The hoe is quite good for a starting weapon as well. The atmosphere is perfect, very subtle not just the generic insects, but different species in the ambiance very nice, the music is excellent, again much as it was in "Serpent Isle", as in some of the magic houses music is similar to the Necromancer's house music in U7SI. Portraits, absent in modern games are beautiful! Rendered here and by painters obliviously! Again just like ultima VII! I am a harsh and picky critic about games, I am 44 years old so I don't just let crappy games fly, this is not a crappy game, it is not stupid, the dialogue is great, the characters likable, I don't say these things lightly. This is much as Ultima VII. Different setting same atmosphere, and different type of character. You are not a stalwart "avatar" but a kid and everyone except you and some other kid(who as some great dialogue!-Utlmia VII reference here too and on purpose) is turned to stone KQ8 reference. The graphics and the combat the same are much more as Torchlight or "Fate", but the game still has the Ulitma VII feel to it. If you are looking for a game that captures the atmosphere and makes you remember how it FELT to play Ultima VII the first time this is it! Worth Full price!
I have seen a lot of bad dialogue on TV but this takes the cake. I have never in my life heard jokes and puns so bad as in this game, that said, it does run stable, no troubles. the acting is horrible, the whole point of an "inter-active movie" unlike most games which rely on gameplay is the acting and beleivablility and at least relatable humor that isn't so forced it sounds like they took a crap while writing the script and didn't eat enough fiber bars. Stick with the pixels, I never did like these "live actors" in games, except Wing Commader which did it right and didn't over act on the green screen.
