Spaceforce: Rogue Universe
Preview
For those who enjoy FPS games, especially shootouts in space
by Marcus Mulkins
previewed on PC
How Do You Define "Big"? (cont.)
As for other factors, trivial things like fuel limitations and limited ammunition don't seem to be a concern: you never run out of fuel or ammo - how realistic is that? Then there's the fact that your character is going to be running around in his very own interstellar vessel, as available as a souped up hotrod owned by a teenager back in the 1950's. Except that this hotrod will be the envy of the galaxy. And given that this game will be primarily a FPS, the question I keep encountering is, "Doesn't any opponent have some kind of survival instinct?" It seems that the NPC's have absolutely no compunction about wasting their lives - much less their mega-credit spacegoing vessels. It seems that space is populated only with independently wealthy kamikazes.
Another obvious prejudice of most space game designers seems to be that Humanoids rule! The frills may change, but it seems that in order to become sentient and space traveling requires that the creature be upright, oxygen-breathing, bipedal, two-armed, grasping digits at the end of the arms, brain encased in a structure at the top of the construction, equipped with a mouth that can manage to pronounce the sounds that humans use for speech. (For some unknown reason it is our primary language that gets adopted by everyone else.) For movies and television it is rather necessary to fixate on such aliens (you have to put a human actor in the alien suit), but games utilizing computer graphics have no such limitation. The Flinx & Pip series written by Alan Dean Foster should be required reading for designers so they can expand their comprehension of the myriad of shapes intelligent life can take. And for some peculiar reason, despite the fact that we ourselves come from a species that utilizes thousands of languages, it seems that every space empire dominated by one species has but one language. And isn't the concept of the Universal Translator (thank you, Star Trek!) just a tad overused? One of the primary reasons different races of people so often war with one another is because they can't communicate easily with one another; lack of understanding breeds mistrust. Imagine the relations between two spacegoing empires that are incapable of even communicating because they don't even think in the same fashion. (And we think it was so traumatic when East met West? Or when the Old World encountered the New World? Ha!)
And have you ever noticed that the majority of spacecraft in these kinds of space games are so very aerodynamically designed? When they zip around in the vacuum of space they execute the most beautiful banking turns as they dogfight, their ramjets mounted in the rear thrusting the ship forward through all manner of maneuvers. Now, what's wrong with that picture? Something about Physics 101 and the fact that changing direction in a void is a matter of thrust being applied from several lateral vectors. In a nutshell: aerodynamic designs and maneuvers do not work in a vacuum. Did the designers miss the hint that it's supposed to be Science Fiction? The days of the Hollywood prop men making spaceships for Buck Rogers are long past. Isn't it time that they offer their educated audiences designs that are grounded in fact, not fantasy?
How Long Can You Hold Your Breath?
When all is said and done, the bottom line is that if you are the kind of person that enjoys FPS games, especially those that feature shootouts in space, you will most likely enjoy SpaceForce 2. Provox hasn't announced a firm release date as yet, but that means that perhaps you'll have enough time to save up enough money to purchase a PC that will actually be able to play the game when it finally appears in a store near you.
It's also worth noting that Provox is also planning to release a turn-based strategy game entitled SpaceForce Captains. That game will be more for those that prefer to live off their wits than risking defeat because of slow reflexes.
