Sponsored By: Ccesarano
Time Spent: 50 minutes
Cheap Knockoff Review
Remember when I reviewed FTL? Go back and read that. You won't miss much.
Loving Homage Review
The games industry has a long and storied history of intellectual property theft mutual inspiration. Something successful comes along that results in a million conference calls in which CTOs say "I hear lanes are popular. Make a game with the lanes!" This is how MOBAs became a genre. (And make sure all the players are horrible people! All of them, sir? How about 90%, sir? Would you be happy if I told you our safety team's goal was to prevent 90% of workplace accidents? Well, no, but... Then you shoot for a hundred, and we'll set the metrics for bonus payouts later! Hop to it!)
Space Rogue feels like the result of such a conference call. Someone played FTL and decided that there was plenty of room in the Industry for a game exactly like FTL with 3D graphics. Specifically, the 3D graphics from Evil Genius.
Well, okay, that's not entirely fair. I'm sure the polygon count is higher than Evil Genius, and I have absolutely no complaints with a game that cribs heavily from Evil Genius in the art department. That said, all while I was playing Space Rogue I couldn't quite shake the feeling that I should be building elaborate traps to capture international spies.
For those of you not hep to the FTL jive, let me illuminate. You start with a ship with a random crew and a random weapons loadout in a random galaxy full of random events, random enemies and general randomness. Your ship has several rooms dedicated to various functions: weapons, shield, life support, etc. – My favorite is the etc. room, but it takes three crew members to make it work right. Any given room can be damaged and must be repaired, which you must do while attacking enemy ships and occasionally defending against boarders.
As you careen through the random map, you have random adventures that randomly add or subtract from your bank account. Your bank account is important, because you need to upgrade everything – from your ship to your crew to your captain – and upgrades cost money.
I could go into a list of specific features that were cribbed from FTL, but it would save a lot of time if I just focus on what's different.
First, there's now a mining mini-game that you may occasionally partake in. By "mini-game" I mean "random card draw" in which you choose a hexagonal tile and find out whether you found anything useful. Sometimes it's ore! Sometimes it's money! Sometimes you lose money! Sometimes you find nothing at all! Whee! Dice rolls are fun!
Another difference is that Space Rogue doesn't give you control over your airlocks. If something catches fire, you have to send a crew member to put it out. Fans of FTL will recall that as being the Bloody Stupid Way to fight fires. Well, you only get the BSW in Space Rogue, so best stock up on crew.
Finally, there's the narrative.
There is none.
FTL kept you moving forward ahead of an advancing, invincible armada. As far as I can tell, in Space Rogue you can putter about as long as you like in any given system. Honestly, I'm not sure which I like better. The advancing enemy in FTL made the game tense in ways I didn't always enjoy, but without it the game would feel kind of pointless. Then again, it's a roguelike. [I'll see you in the comments. -Ed.] If you're looking for a reason to press on rather than milking every resource to upgrade yourself and your ship, maybe you should be playing in different genres.
Lastly, I want to point out that Space Rogue is in Beta, which means I'm not allowed to complain about bugs, glitches or misbehaviors. So when my Warrior was engaged in battle with an alien boarder and they both got bored and forgot they were fighting each other halfway through, I didn't get upset at all. I'm certainly not complaining about it. Nope. Not me. I just quit the game.
As a Beta, everything I've written above is subject to change. Heck, by the time you read this the game could have been reimagined as a street-cleaning simulator. I hear those are popular now, right?
Loot On?
I might. The art style is appealing, and if they can fix some of the game-ending bugs I might be inclined to keep chipping away.
Or I might just go back and play more FTL.
Is it the Bloodborne of FTL clones?
FTL already has a bit of a reputation for difficulty. I've never actually managed to finish a run in it, not on the PC nor on the iPad. With no end-game to pursue, I don't see Space Rogue approaching that level. It's a rogue-like. You're supposed to die every time you play.
I'm giving it fifteen points out of a possible forty-two.
Comments
So on top of the disappointment of not being a remake of
it's also a disappointment in its own right?
I don't remember that game, Bravado, but I see the logo at the bottom and I get excited.
Words... are a big deal.
Jill Lapore wrote:Editing is one of the great inventions of civilization.
It was kind of a mashup of Elite and Ultima. I have no idea how well it'd hold up now, but it blew my mind when I was a kid.
You, sir, have been sigged!
"Yes, I crave the dark and dramatic duo of Minsc and Boo"
- Kehama
A call for help
Every time I see the new game mentioned, this is what I think about. I have that box in my basement somewhere. I think I had it for Mac, but it may have been my C-64 instead.
I don't remember much about the game, except that I didn't get very far in it, and I had a hell of a time with the wormhole travel.
Un bon mot ne prouve rien (A witty saying proves nothing). - Voltaire
Yeah, this game is kind of a turd.
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