You've finally made it out of the academy and have been given your first ship to command. Sure it's just a light shuttle, but you've got to start somewhere, right? Suddenly "somewhere" is stranded in an unknown galaxy surrounded by hostile aliens and no way home.
Explore the beautiful and myster...
You've finally made it out of the academy and have been given your first ship to command. Sure it's just a light shuttle, but you've got to start somewhere, right? Suddenly "somewhere" is stranded in an unknown galaxy surrounded by hostile aliens and no way home.
Explore the beautiful and mysterious open-world of Starcom: Nexus. It's a universe where you'll battle or befriend strange alien races, discover ancient artifacts, research powerful technologies and build your ultimate starship.
Features:
Fully open-world universe with numerous quests and storylines
Hundreds of unique planet anomalies, space discoveries, artifacts and more!
Fast-paced, exciting combat with numerous hostile factions
Over 150 technologies to research
Design your own ship using a modular construction system
Talk and trade with multiple alien factions, each with their own agendas and dynamic AI
The game is visually nice to look at. The mechanics are simple but refined. The research tree may look limited at first, but the progression feels impactful so it balances that feeling out eventually. The writing and scenarios are interesting and sometimes even educational. It has a bit of pleasant Star Trek vibe, and some fitting humour as well now and then.
It kept me entertained from beginning to end.
I’ve played and enjoyed old Dos games. Starflight, Starship: A command adventure, Star Control, Masters of Orion 1 & 2 and this game shows me that when you take all the best elements of those games and use modern graphics and programming, you can make an outstanding game. This game does so many things right. Your tech level is proportioned well to the level of exploring and enemies you encounter. They make it so you never feel it's impossible to explore dangerous areas but also never feel like you quite out of danger, regardless of how high up the tech tree you’re in. My biggest frustration with some games had been when you reach a certain tech level, the game either favors a missile boat, a gun boat or a laser boat. This game makes it so as you increase the tech on any weapon type, they make them pretty much fun to use regardless of where you are on the map. The exploring part is superb. The music and simplistic view really make outer space seem VAST, with new discovers JUST within reach. It was the first time in a long time that the music had a kind of Battlestar Galactica vibe when I ran into the first cybernetic race. The music transitions are smooth and not off putting, placing awe and suspense in appropriate circumstances and intense battle music that builds up the tempo. This game takes nearly every science fiction trope and excels in revealing it in the game. It never disappoints. There are so many random events and circumstances that it will never make you feel like you’re being chains into a direction. It’s really a job well done.
My only wish was for more cosmetic parts to be added to ship design to help allow making them look more like the famous sci-fi ships we hold near and dear to our hearts. But that’s really it. I'm getting close to the end and I'm looking forward to seeing what else will come from this team.
Thank you, very much.
A lot of other reviews said that this game is very Star Trek. It is. Lost in an unknown universe, you explore and shoot your way across the galaxy.
The gameplay itself is a top-down space shooter, but unlike others in its genre there's a lot of "drag" - so your ship will come to a halt relatively quickly if you let go of the controls. That actually made the game easier for me to play.
Combat? At the very start, it's not particularly good, but it gets better once you get missiles. Because every ship is made of separate components, destruction means that pieces get sent blown off into space and explode after a little drifting. That means that you destroy enemy ships piece by piece - or if you hit a critical joining segment, you can blow it in two. This all happens organically and it is very satisfying.
It gets better when you acquire the Wave Motion Gun. Charge up a spinal mounted cannon, shoot a blinding bolt of energy (which illuminates *entire planets* as it passes by) and it either explodes half your target (low charge/strong enemy), explodes all of your target (high charge, strong enemy) or splits your target in two, explodes all the bits and keeps going afterwards (high charge, medium or weak enemy). This is INCREDIBLY satisfying. It's 2D, but it's some of the punchiest, most visceral starship combat I've ever had. And all because everything is made of separate destructible parts.
Downsides? The ending. It happens. And that's it, it's all over with very little warning. No post-game exploration - if you want to go around the galaxy exploding things in your dreadnought, you need to load a save made before you Did The Ending Thing. It seemed like a very short game, but that could be because I was enjoying it so much and I never noticed the time passing.
Starcom Nexus reminds me of the games I used to play when I was a kid like Space Ranger and Privateer.
The writing is very good and the premise is interesting.
On the surface it is a space shooter with some mining and trading thrown in, but at it's heart it's a good old adventure and exploration game.
You fly around space, scanning planets and anomalies, befriending or fighting alien races all while trying to piece together why you and your crew find yourselves in an alien, unknown part of space.
When you scan planets you often get the chance to investigate further and you are sometimes faced with decisions that will decide your journey forward.
These segments are presented as small text adventures and are varied and well written.
If you are interested in these kinds of games, similar newer games I've played are Deathwar Redux 3030 and Starpoint Gemini 2. All of these games have several things in common.
Among which is the ability to explore a vast slice of space and putting story above all else.
They install a sense of adventure that I find compelling and that often are lost in newer AAA titles.
Games like these are what GOG is all about.
