I’ve heard a lot of good things about this game, but I want to know the opinion of the doper community on it. The reports from IGN and Computer Gamer are good, what’s the verdict? Do I need a supercomputer to run it? Is there more to the game than just graphics?
It sounds like a graphic version of TradeWars to me. Is there online-play?
It runs well on low end computers. I’ve heard reports that people with p400 and tnt2 card get satisfactory performance. I have an Athlon 700, 384 mb ram and a radeon 8500le and can play most of the game with the settings cranked. Only when there are a lot of ships (thinks 50 or 60) fighting at once does it slow down for me. I expect a 1 ghz processor or better wouldn’t even have that problem.
I enjoyed the heck out of it. My only problem is that the single player campaign is very, very short. Maybe 15-20 hours, tops?
The trade aspect isn’t as deep as it could be, in my opinion, and makes the game far too easy. One good run with the right cargo and your money problems can be solved for the rest of the game.
It is, however, extremely moddable. Lancer’s Reactor (can’t remember the URL) has some great mods. I’m currently mucking around with the rebalance mod, which adds a lot of cool stuff.
Verdict: very cool game, but too short for the $50. If you can find it for $30-40, though, it’s very much worth it.
Oh, yes. And there’s a pretty good multiplayer component–it’s basically the single player game, without the campaign missions. Random missions, exploration, trading, that sort of thing. Since the game world is fairly large, I’d expect it works very well, although I haven’t tried it.
Incidentally, this is one game that really, really needs an expansion pack. Hopefully Digital Anvil decides it’s worthwhile.