Nothing really happens, and the walking and jumping is overkill. It's 4-5 hours, so if the game had half the amount of walking/jumping that would've at least condensed it down to a few hours and made it a bit more enjoyable. To say I don't recommend it at all would be a bit harsh, because by the end I was kinda ok with it. Just every time there was one or two jumping/walking areas too many.
You know the drill: you're a pilot of the United Earth Terran Nations Defence Force or whatever they're called in this one, in a war with some bad guys, who have a giant super-weapon which they're going to destroy Earth with, which has the unusual design flaw of being able to be destroyed by one small ship and/or person. Claudia Black and a sensual blue alien female are the only boxes not ticked in the 'things that something set in space must have' checklist. Oh and you have amnesia. Of course you have amnesia. But your ship turns into a robot mech. If you've played something of this genre before, like the X-Wing games, Project Freedom, Project Sylpheed, not Project Cars, it'll be familiar. Nothing complicated here though, no diverting energy or doing fancy moves. There is a bit of tactics given that your ship has a mech form and that enemies require different approaches. The mech form handles just like its ship form. You press a button to transform and you carry on shooting, but with a lock-on and better firepower so the enemies get obliterated faster. You'll be fighting alongside ally fleets in decently sized space battles and the graphics are decent enough if kinda, I don't know, grainy? Blurry? The backgrounds and ideas for them are pretty awesome, even though they're more like still paintings and lack the shiny, sparkly prettiness we've come to expect from space games. The music is by the same guy who did Homeworld's, so it's more of that with a little Zone of the Enders. There are 13 missions, and 5 or so included DLC missions are different enough to be worthwhile. You can also play the original non-Director's Cut version, even though everyone hates it because the story/missions were slower, allies were useless and difficulty Nintendo Hard. All things the Director's Cut is not.
After making this game, Sid Meier coined the 'Covert Action rule', which was essentially that each game should be one game, not a bunch of little conflicting ones. And all the criticisms he has of his own game were just as obvious to me. The main problem is a huge chunk of the time is spent 'infiltrating' a building. Of course that sounds fun, but it's a case of awkwardly moving from room to room interacting with drawers then going back the way you came. If this was just one game, it would be an action game, because so much time is spent shooting guards and taking photos of cabinets. Sid noted that this was an action game with fleeting moments of careful spy shenanigans, and he's right, because the other game is a bit of 'Carmen Sandiego' and you'll be collecting clues and going to locations. Though in this game you have the choice of following or tracking cars or bugging their phones. It's nothing special after you've done those same puzzles a few times though. And once you've played one case you've played them all. It's the same thing every time and gets old fast. I found myself thinking "why am I not playing something like Alpha Protocol instead?" Because in 1990 this was alright, but nowadays you really should be playing something else that does the spying shtick way better.
One of the best point-and-click games I've ever played. That this was pretty much made by two guys with a budget of a few thousand crowdfunded dollars is incredible. I took a risk buying this game. I like space settings, but know that point-and-clicks is hardly a hotbed for groundbreaking games, but this exceeded expectations. This is a remake/update of an earlier game, which form the looks of it was a bit crap, but here no shortcuts were taken in making this a proper game. The standard is way more professional than it has any right to be, the graphics are yummy, the voice acting and writing isn't as awful as you'd imagine. Even the few comedy bits inserted in notes or conversation were funny. Most of the puzzles aren't ridiculously hard, but still challenging. One of the endings ends abruptly without satisfaction, and the plot goes a bit (ok, a lot) weird and maybe drags a bit, but overall this was an enjoyable experience of making futuristic screens go bloop bleep.
