09-18-2012, 04:06 AM
So a PC Gamer pre Alpha report awhile back got me interested, then I was teased again with a preview then I forgot about it because that was Dec of last year and Feb of this year. But then this showed up a few days ago and I had to shell out the $9 to see for myself.
If you don't follow the PC Gamer reviews and want my quick run down, the site says FTL:Faster than light is "A spaceship simulation real-time rogue-like." It is.
Of course the real time is real time in the same way Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale were real time. You can pause freely at anytime with the space bar. Gameplay is simple but deep and always different, the graphics feel like something that could have been on a Commodore 64, though they really aren't that bad, it's just intended to have a retro feel which it succeeds at. A 95 - 100 jump victory will take about 2 hours. You can save and exit at any time other than in combat. Most battles take about a minute or so to complete though I've had a few that took longer because of having weak weapons and them having good defenses and having to wait for the longest cooldowns (and they can be up to 20s if you don't have skilled gunner) so that I could burst everything.
The randomness can be frustrating, like when my Rock ship (one of the 9 ship types, 8 of which you have to unlock) never managed to find a beam weapon or a drone controller, and I ran out of missiles and really didn't have the scrap (scap is the currency of the game) to buy any even if I could get to a store. Well I say frustrating, but I still had a blast seeing if I could get lucky and maybe find a Engi in distress and maybe they would give me a beam weapon for helping them.
You will die, even on easy, and even more on normal, though I admit I've only tried normal a few times, and while I've made it to the final sector I've never beaten it. I keep playing easy and trying out the new ships, I've got 6 of 9, and the Rock ship is the only one I haven't beaten the game with yet, I died during phase 3 of the final boss.
The game does a great job, with it's simplicity, of making you feel fragile and desperate. Jumping from system to system trying to stay ahead of the coming rebel armada. Ordering your crew around the ship to put out fires or repair systems, hoping to get the shields back online before that next laser blast comes in. Even after the battle during the "calm" you might be fighting to get life support and the door controls back up because the only way to put out the raging fires during the battle was to open a path from the burning sections to the outer airlocks and vent everything, only to have a crew beam over and take out your door controls just before you could close them again.
It's a telling sign that the games I've lost might have been more fun than the games I won.
I curse those Rock pirates that move the beacons closer to the sun so that your ship gets hammered by solar flares during combat with them, knowing the Rocks are immune to fire so while the flares hurt them too, it's easier for them to put them out. I also curse the slugs knocking out life support before the battle in an ion storm and then using weapons that start fires, better station extra folks in the shield generators to stop those.
Anyway, I just figure there are folks here who might enjoy it as much as I do, and for $9 it was a steal. If you don't want to get it straight from the dev (I think that's actually the best deal) you can grab it from GoG or off Steam.
I'm off to either try and get a victory with the Rock ship or try and unlock the Mantis and Slug cruisers (I'm not expecting to unlock the unidentified cruiser anytime soon as I think that has to happen on normal, but I don't know I'm not googling anything I just charge blindly off into space!)
If you don't follow the PC Gamer reviews and want my quick run down, the site says FTL:Faster than light is "A spaceship simulation real-time rogue-like." It is.
Of course the real time is real time in the same way Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale were real time. You can pause freely at anytime with the space bar. Gameplay is simple but deep and always different, the graphics feel like something that could have been on a Commodore 64, though they really aren't that bad, it's just intended to have a retro feel which it succeeds at. A 95 - 100 jump victory will take about 2 hours. You can save and exit at any time other than in combat. Most battles take about a minute or so to complete though I've had a few that took longer because of having weak weapons and them having good defenses and having to wait for the longest cooldowns (and they can be up to 20s if you don't have skilled gunner) so that I could burst everything.
The randomness can be frustrating, like when my Rock ship (one of the 9 ship types, 8 of which you have to unlock) never managed to find a beam weapon or a drone controller, and I ran out of missiles and really didn't have the scrap (scap is the currency of the game) to buy any even if I could get to a store. Well I say frustrating, but I still had a blast seeing if I could get lucky and maybe find a Engi in distress and maybe they would give me a beam weapon for helping them.
You will die, even on easy, and even more on normal, though I admit I've only tried normal a few times, and while I've made it to the final sector I've never beaten it. I keep playing easy and trying out the new ships, I've got 6 of 9, and the Rock ship is the only one I haven't beaten the game with yet, I died during phase 3 of the final boss.
The game does a great job, with it's simplicity, of making you feel fragile and desperate. Jumping from system to system trying to stay ahead of the coming rebel armada. Ordering your crew around the ship to put out fires or repair systems, hoping to get the shields back online before that next laser blast comes in. Even after the battle during the "calm" you might be fighting to get life support and the door controls back up because the only way to put out the raging fires during the battle was to open a path from the burning sections to the outer airlocks and vent everything, only to have a crew beam over and take out your door controls just before you could close them again.
It's a telling sign that the games I've lost might have been more fun than the games I won.
I curse those Rock pirates that move the beacons closer to the sun so that your ship gets hammered by solar flares during combat with them, knowing the Rocks are immune to fire so while the flares hurt them too, it's easier for them to put them out. I also curse the slugs knocking out life support before the battle in an ion storm and then using weapons that start fires, better station extra folks in the shield generators to stop those.
Anyway, I just figure there are folks here who might enjoy it as much as I do, and for $9 it was a steal. If you don't want to get it straight from the dev (I think that's actually the best deal) you can grab it from GoG or off Steam.
I'm off to either try and get a victory with the Rock ship or try and unlock the Mantis and Slug cruisers (I'm not expecting to unlock the unidentified cruiser anytime soon as I think that has to happen on normal, but I don't know I'm not googling anything I just charge blindly off into space!)
---
It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.
It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.