If there ever has been a golden age for space combat games, it is now. I know some people might disagree with what I say, and put forward cases of game like Star Fox or Wing Commander. However, if we are to look at the Kickstarter success of games like Star Citizen, we will see that fans are ready to put in support for this genre. In fact, one only needs to look at the multi-billion dollar success of Star Citizen to draw a conclusion. With games like these coming out, there isn’t a better time to be a space combat fan.
The first and crucial thing to notice when playing any flight based games, are the controls in my opinion. With a flight game you have to be careful to maintain a control scheme that is not overly complicated, but functional enough to control various manoeuvres that if properly learned, can give you an edge on the battlefield. To put it straight, what separates a good flight combat game from a great one is how accessible it is to both the experienced and casual gamers. A great combat game will not only be fun enough for casual gamers, but it will also be content rich enough for experienced gamers to invest their time in. Secondly, with free to play games, the deciding factor for most people is whether or not the game is a heavy pay to win experience, as it is usually frowned upon quite a bit.
Regarding the controls, they are very well laid out and are easy to remember. You basically control the speed of your ship with the W or S key, rotate it with Q or E, and strafe with A or D. The main navigation however, is done with your mouse. You can use it to select which direction you want to face freely in all angles. It will take you some time to get used to it, but once you do, navigating will be a breeze.
There are other keys you will be using as well. For example the F key will control your main enhancer, which is an ability you can pick. For example, the ability I use is the cloak. Then, your numeric buttons will control some of your other perks. These perks give you a slight advantage either defensive or offensive according to what class you are playing as. So, I would really advise you to try out not only different ships and weapons, but also different perks and enhancer combinations to see what best suits you. I would also recommend you to play through the games tutorial modes and read up on what different menus and buttons do. It will help you get used to the games infrastructure, on which we will talk about more later.
Some aspects that stand out in this game are how good the voice over and damage effects are. When you first start the game, you are met with an animated opening that pretty much sets the mood for the game. The artwork in this game is absolutely crisp, with ships that are nicely modelled and detailed. The effects like explosions are also pretty well made, and resemble those you have gotten used to watching space dogfight movies. I would say that the sound effect engine needs a bit of a work as it looks like some audio has been inputted as raw sound files. For example, let’s say you are firing your laser, if you were to tap your mouse button you would hear the audio crack because it is replaying the entire loop every time. In my opinion this could’ve been solved with more complex layering techniques. The music on the other hand though, is bombastic and well fitting to the overall tone of the game. You’ll get to everything from electronic samples fused with uplifting and heroic strings to alarming brass work.
Now, to finally talk about the free-to-play concept of this game, I can definitely say that there are ways money can buy you edge in this. For example, during one of the game modes if you are to die, you can respawn by paying for it, otherwise you’d stay dead. However, this is only on one of the game’s player versus everyone mode, so you can say that the balance is there. Then, there are weapons and enhancements that you can obtain without having to play for them, but instead just paying for them. Still, I wouldn’t really say that it got into my face or ruined my experience as the game is quite well balanced in that regards.
Coming back to the infrastructure which I mentioned before, is a typical free to play fare, as in most free to play games the menu is cluttered with buttons and functions that take some time to get used to. You’ve got your option buttons, store profiles, crew upgrades, etc… The highlight however, is the ships you can view in real time during the menus. You can move around your ship, rotate it and change its weapons and functions without having to necessarily go through different menus. That in my opinion saves a lot of time.
One of the interesting features of the game is the crew mechanics. These are basically skills you can upgrade in order to provide you a better edge during combat. Each level of skill provides you with three upgrade options, of which you can choose one. The good thing however, is that if you make a mistake you can reset that specific skill and choose another one. You have to be careful with these skills and select those that you think are most relevant to your style of gameplay. Some will give you better weapon performance, while others are more defence oriented.
Speaking of weapons, there are several you can choose from according to how you like to play. However, for some weapons to have desirable effects, you need to make sure that you selected the right class to use those weapons. So, rather than using a long-range cannon for your fast and versatile assault ship , it is better to save it for a heavy long range focused ship that can take a lot of damage as it will be stationary quite a bit. The engineer class is available in this game as well which allows you to not only provide support, but also repair your team members’ ship. Basically the medic class.
However, before you even begin to play the game, you are told to choose a side. The Empire, Federation or The Sith… er, I mean Jericho. Seriously though, that guy above looks like Darth Vader without his mask. Anyways, each side gives you specific benefits that will help you according to your style. There isn’t much lore in this game, or I may have missed it. Basically, it isn’t given that much importance which I didn’t mind at all.
The way these ships are balanced is right as you’d expect. The long range or engineer ships will be a bit more heavy to control while assault class will be much more versatile and fast. So, it is better to experiment with various ships to see which one best suits you. If you are worried about the game being hard, fear not as the game has a pretty helpful User Interface. Whenever you manage to get a lock on a ship, you will see a small circle with a dot pop up next to it. This small circle basically calculates where you should shoot in order to hit the enemy. I don’t know about others, but this saved me a lot of frustration!
Now, to talk about the PC performance and graphics of this game. Even though the specs aren’t that demanding and most users will be able to run this at full HD resolutions, the game doesn’t look bad. If you have a mid-tier PC, sure you might notice a hit in FPS during the main menu in the hangar because of all the items and effects that are populating the scene, but since this is a space combat game, you won’t be expecting any heavy landscape work and instead will mostly fight through an open and vast environments. So, it isn’t really that performance heavy, however that does not mean the maps are empty per se but instead are really interestingly designed, taking you from asteroid littered fields to huge orbital stations.
The PC optimisation in my opinion is absolutely well made. You can even freely switch your application by pressing alt-tab with the application running continuously in the background. This really helps when you are searching for matches to play as you can multi-task during that time. I know this will not be an issue for most of the people, but in 2014 where we have cutting edge processors and no shortage of Ram, multitasking should not be a problem. So, I am glad that this game is well made in that sense. One thing I really like regarding the development of this game is how dedicated the developers are. If you were to go to their official website, you will get to read in-depth developer blogs highlighting their future plans for this game. The updates have been generous over the past few days as well, which added brand new modules and a new battleground.
However, one thing I did not see in this game are the events. Events in free to play online games can really determine how long your user base remains interested in your product. These are a way of providing your customers with different experiences and interesting scenarios. However, online games keep on evolving, so we may see these in the future. Another thing that irritated me was the lack of controller support. They might have implemented it, but no matter how much I tried I couldn’t get my Xbox 360 controller for Windows to work. I know they might not want to cause parity among users, but different controller support is crucial in a flight combat game for a lot of enthusiast players.
At the moment, the game has Skirmish (Player vs. Player), Attacked Sector and Sector Conquest modes available. The Skirmish mode includes Team Battle, Domination, Combat Recon, Beacon Hunt, Detonation and Capture The Beacon. My favourite ones by far are Team Battle and Domination. You can compare Team Battle to Team Deathmatch, but it comes with a twist. Rather than gunning for as many kills as possible during a set time, each team is given the objective to destroy their foe’s captain. If the captain is destroyed, players will not be able to respawn that round. Capture the Beacon on the other hand, is your usual capture the base kind of fare, only here it is orbital relays you need to take over. The other two modes are more A.I focused, where you will have to team up with other players to complete different sets of objectives. All in all, you have definitely got a great amount of content available for the game’s launch.
Last thing I would like to talk about is the reward aspect of this game. In free to play games, it is usually the norm to have a reward system that grants players resources for sticking to the game. You have got some rewards here as well. If you complete the tutorials (which are located under the help icon by the way), you will gain some credits. Logging in everyday will also ensure you get a new reward each day, part of the daily rewards program. Another way to score some loot is by sticking till the end of a game mode, where you are given the choice to scan some sections. You have a limited number of tries available, so you have to be sure of what you pick. Think of it something like the card select at the end of every Payday 2 heist, which even though not completely the same, has the same random reward chance.
Overall, the game is a solidly built space combat affair that is loaded with various items, interesting battlegrounds and crazy game modes. Both the graphics and the voice work is absolutely stellar and the PC controls actually make sense. The only quirk here is that you are limited in how you control the game, as controller support is not available. Still, this is not only a good free to play game, but also a fun space combat game too. If you are a fan of games like World of Tanks, you will love this. If you love combat games in general, do give this a try as it is free, but not at all cheap.