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dkirschner's Space Rangers 2: Rise of the Dominators (PC)

[September 17, 2013 12:07:37 PM]

Space Rangers has been sitting on my computer for at least 4 years. It's sort of a letdown to have a game that long and then not think it's very great when you play it. It's a space game, and I'm sure I've played something like it before, but I'm drawing blanks on exactly what. You command a ship and there are like 50 planets and a giant map, and you go around doing quests, trading goods from planet to planet, and killing pirates. It's an isometric viewpoint, so you actually fly quickly across the solar systems pointing your cursor and left-clicking to move. At the beginning, it seemed really cool, mostly because of the big ole map and capacity for upgrading your ship and exploring, but a lot of things turned me off after an afternoon of playing.

1. Too much dialogue - Holy crap, the NPCs speak volumes. I had yet to encounter much overarching narrative, so they just go on and on about the cargo you need to pick up or why salt is cheap on Earth but expensive on Venus. Sooo much dull text. There are also a ton of grammar mistakes and just incorrect language. The game was made by a Russian team, so I understand, but there are so many it's distracting.

2. It's simple - Many games of this type have a lot of depth. Space Rangers seemed like it would have a good amount, but it's actually very simplistic. Take trading for example. I was thinking, cool, I can trade and make some money and buy stuff to upgrade, and trading will be interesting. Not quite. Trading just involves going to one place, buying crap, and going around to other places until you find one that doesn't have any of what you are carrying around. Takes a long time traveling aimlessly around. Combat is simple. Traveling is simple. Flying is boring. Too simple, and so much room for complexity!

3. RTS battles suck - These are also simple, but they are also bad. The game in this way reminds me of Spore, which tried to be 5 genres in one. Why Space Rangers felt the need to include RTS battles, I'm not sure. But you can take missions where you land on a planet and have a base and can build a few types of units. There is hardly any variety and the enemies just pummeled me every time. It didn't mean I died though; rather, I just had to spend forever building new units, killing one of theirs, building a whole new army, killing one more enemy, building a whole new army, killing one more enemy, etc. It was really frustrating. They should have fleshed it out or cut it entirely.

It was interesting playing though because I enjoyed the *idea* behind the game, and the general presentation was something I connected with and wanted to see more of. It is lucky, then, that the game I have been playing for the last 2 weeks, King's Bounty: The Legend, happens to be published by the same Russian company, and so there are some great similarities and not many of the things I didn't like from Space Rangers! So more on King's Bounty later, which I am thoroughly enjoying.