Reviews

• gamedeal user

  May 8, 2017

  I'm afraid it really is as bad as people say. I didn't listen to the reviews and purchased. 20 minutes later I hit the refund button. Optimisation is horrible, controls hideous and it's just boring. Yes it is a looker but that can't hide it's many and game breaking faults. I wanted to like this and for people to be wrong but I couldn't and they are not. I love space sims but comparing this to wing commander, freespace and star wars is just wrong. It's set in space and there the similarity ends.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 26, 2017

  https://youtu.be/kgjxonzOxp0 As a huge fan of the Space Combat Sim Genre, I had high hopes for this game and seeing where this game took it's inspiration from I admit I allowed myself to get a bit excited. However, what I was forced to endure for my First Impressions review quickly dispelled any vestige of hope or excitement. The options menus are a broken mess, some even requiring a loading screen? Also there is no menu for audio adjustments and the buttons to select an inverted Y axis do not seem to function at all. Also, in spite of the Developer's claim for HOTAS support, the game refused to recognize my joystick and only allowed me to use the controller... where I'm sorry but right stick for maneuvering and left stick for throttle? To me that seems exceptionally backwards. The game itself is buggy and tedious. It requires you to slog through the tutorial missions before it will even unlock the campaign. Once you finally get there, IF you manage to get the campaign to load, you will be met with more tedium and broken missions. There is a good game here, but it is buried under layers of inadequate controls, menus, and bugs both game breaking and non. Do not buy until the game is HEAVILY patched. See my First Impressions Review above for more information.
• gamedeal user

  May 22, 2017

  The game is not as horrible as the nay sayers have been droning on about. However to be fair the game is far from perfect. I got the game expecting the worst based on the reviews. But it seems the developer has been taking a look at the reviews both here and other media and slowy fixing some of the more "painful" issues. I have had no major issues with the game up to this point, most of the issues I've had were with game play as there are certain things that can be improved upon with ship to ship combat and cockpit layout. For what its worth I think this is a great contribution from the independant developer side of the house. So far I have been enjoying the game. If the Dev of this project keeps adding to this game I believe you'll have a decent space sim over some time. But alot more work is needed. Adding joystick support would greatly add to the feel of a space sim. As well add difficulty settings for the entire campaing rather than just in the instant action portion of the game. All in all I hope the developer keeps adding to this game, because I see alot of potential here.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 26, 2017

  Tutorial is bad, simply bad. It's just a voice with no subtitles, explaining everything and then throwing a buttons list in your face, pretending you'd be able to memorize them all in the span of one minute, then it proceeds to just refer to commands as "scan button", "acceleration", etc. I can't learn the game like this, there's no gradual easing of the player into the controls, no way for the player to easily discover the controls one by one like most standard tutorials do. If a game fails in the tutorial phase then the whole game fails.
• gamedeal user

  May 30, 2017

  From what has been posted in the earlier reviews I was hesitant to try this game, However, with Keyboard and mouse support,, It is fun and seems to work well. For 13.00 not a bad simulator and a fun game to play.
• gamedeal user

  Jan 12, 2018

  [h1]TL;DR[/h1] Campaign achievements not unlocking after the first mission. Robot voice may overlap during gameplay depending on how rapidly one presses targetting or speed matching keys and abruptly ends during loading screens. Music also ends abruptly during loading screens. Sound levels cannot be independently adjusted, infact it cannot be adjusted at all in-game. Other than that this game is close to AAA standard in presentation; graphics, voice acting, cutscenes and music. Considering that all development it's mostly done by a one man, it's really very impressive. Shaun T Williams is probably as talented as Chris Roberts of Wing Commander, Privateer and Freelancer fame [b]Review 1.05 update[/b] Can't comment on the state of the game before this patch because i bought it recently on 5th Jan 2017. At first i thought the random crashes are still present. After extended testing with various hardware and software combinations, i can confirm 2 major causes of crashes. One is the System Metrics, a new hardware monitoring feature in the AMD Crimson ReLive Adrenaline Edition that is incompatible with the game, especially during cutscenes. The other is due to an external USB headphone but a crash caused by this headphone driver only occurs rarely under specific conditions, both in this game and others that i've tried. Another reason, though i'm not sure if it causes random crashes is conflicting settings in the Realtek audio properties. If you set under Recording Devices, Stereo-Mix, Properties to use Enhancements but in Playback Devices, Speakers, Properties, Enhancement to disabled, then it would cause a strong pulsed humming glitch on exiting the game. I suspect this also causes instabilities in the sound buffer during gameplay sessions. Either set both to disabled or both to enabled. If you don't use AMD's hardware monitoring or an external USB sound device then this game is pretty solid. Mouse and keyboard control is excellent, very smooth and precise, more so than both gamepad and joystick. I have a generic gamepad and a Logitech Extreme 3D Pro joystick. Tried them both and didn't like it; calibration problems, centering problems, over sensitive and unstable jittery input. I never liked using gamepad or joysticks, they always break before i even get to fully experienced them and they are costly, genre specific controllers. Keyboard and mouse are my preferred choices; simple, reliable and good for any type of game. Speaking of controllers, game defaults to X-Box controller gamepad and switches back to it from time to time even if you select mouse and keyboard. This occurs when changing resolution or toggling v-sync or after a CTD (Crash-To-Desktop). This is not game breaking, only a little annoyance. [b]Gameplay[/b] I read that previously you're required to complete all 4 tutorials before you can begin the campaign. Since the 1.02 patch, you only need to complete the Basic Tutorial. I dunno why people complain about the tutorials, i find them easy. If you've played Test Drive Unlimited 2 tutorials with keyboard where you need to pass the driver's license tests in order to participate in supercar races, you know how long and gruelling those tests are. By comparison these tutorials are a walk in the park. The similarities with Wing Commander and Freespace is that it's missions based but there is no wingmen tactical commands. They fly according to script and there seems to be slight variance when the AI interacts with other AI or your action or inaction. For example, in the first campaign mission, if you don't hit the trigger points in the game properly, the transports ships would move too slowly. On the other hand if you hit them properly, they will move normally, thereby shortening their travel time. Or if you lead the enemy fighter to the transports they seem to move even quicker. Here is where i noticed a flaw s in the scripts, if your wingmen die, they will continue to broadcast radio messages giving you cues and help to move the story along. It's kinda like flying with ghost squadmates but it's fine. The alternative is silence for the rest of the mission or the developer has to write additional scripts to account for a change in narrative or mission flow. Graphics is top notch. Ships look great in the CDF database. Too bad you can't see your own ship in external rotating views or flyby cinematic views except during cutscenes. You can however look around the cockpit. I wanted to buy both Nightstar Rogue Wings and this game but after comparing cockpit designs and total diskspace usage, i decided that this is a better alternative despite the other game having more positive reviews. This game may not have the coolest cockpit designs but at least the MFDs are functional and readable, the other game has a fancier but unreadable displays. Also i prefer the music in this game than the one in Nighstar Rogue Wings. Eventually i might buy that one too just for the experience but this one is more appealing to me right now plus NRW is still in Early Access. Performance is very smooth in Full HD and high settings except that i didn't go for high Anti-Aliasing. Voice acting, OMG! it's incredible! very convincing. There is some humor in the squad chatter. I love every minute of it, even the robot voice has its shiny moments. At one point a voice sounded like the Stiletto character in Wing Commander Prophecy. I wonder if it's the same actress. Story wise, i can't comment on that at this stage but it looks like there's gonna be some alien encounter in the mix. My guess is the pirates had discovered some alien tech and are asserting their dominance or maybe there's a misunderstanding and there's gonna be an alliance with the pirates in order to eliminate the alien threat. Either way would be interesting. [b]Some minor issues[/b] Flight controls is a little lacking in that there are no side thrusters nor reverse thrusters. However speed control is very fine and it's subdivided into thousands of units. Because of this, acceleration and deceleration is very slow. To speed-up and slow down quickly you need to use the 'Match Target Speed' function. There are no max throttle and zero throttle buttons. CTA targetting is hard to use; it's like trying to aim with a sniper scope while running. A lead target indicator or auto-aiming assist would be a great help but i suppose that would require additional computations which could negatively impact game performance. In certain missions where you need to dock inside an asteroid mine, the wing commander tells you to dock at Bay 2 but in the mine the bays are not labelled so you have to guess which recess is dock 2. Trying to dock in the wrong bay will not end the session. Enemy AI is, i think, purposefully made a little dumber because of their insanely accurate targetting. If you fall into their line of sight, expect to take serious damage. However they don't turn, pursue or aim aggresively at you. Most of the time they appear to do warning shots but if you fly straight too long and you can expect a kick in the butt. Approaching them from the side and waiting for their guns to cool down is the best tactic. A head-on approach is too dangerous. There is no difficulty setting in the Campaign. Difficulty can be chosen in Instant Action Mode but that is mostly due to the different enemy types and scenarios. There are no checkpoints; fail or crash at any time means having to restart the mission. There might be a bug permadeath. Once i crashed on docking at the mine and i couldn't restart or continue the campaign. [b]Summary[/b] Overall, a great flying and combat experience. Nice cutscenes and voice acting. Excellent graphics, sound and music. Completely playable offline and without Steam overhead. Mostly stable but Campaign achievements are broken. As it stands, a solid 7/10 if you don't care too much about achievements. Here is Campaign Mission 4 & 5: https://youtu.be/rG4Eet-sS0c
• gamedeal user

  Apr 28, 2017

  Dispite all these bad reviews I really am enjoying the game. I was pleasantly surprised how good this was for the price.. Looks stunning @ 3840 x 2560 maxed out .. I get steady 75fps even when flying close to capital ships,astroid fields and plantet's look awesome. The game has presence and feels emersive, the hud is cool, even with the odd cinamatics adds to the action along with the voice acting and music sound are good (except the Ai voice in 1st training sinario but gets better). Trackir works great and the xbox contoller works flawlessly too. I have Worthog hotas but im happy with the xbox control I loved Freespace back in the day ... I'm really liking this too, and some. Also just a 1 man Developer .. Wow just Wow.. Gem of a space Sim Imho.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 5, 2017

  Star Fighter Origins is an indie game, but the controls are a bit clunky apart from this the game is ok for the price.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 19, 2019

  There are elements in this that I like better than ALL other space Sims and I'm a huge space sim fan. Definitely far from perfect and seriously needs joystick support. I haven't played far into the game at all but I love the mechanics of the ship in flight and the screen in your cockpit is absolutely amazing when in combat. This game has a lot of potential in my opinion. Definitely worth a try.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 7, 2017

  I think the negative review were pretty much all pre-patch. I really like this game. If you like spacr combat games, buy this, you won't be disappointed.