Spaceforce: Rogue Universe

"The only game to make Zero Wing's dialog look good."

One of the most maltreated groups of gamers are fans of the space-sim genre. Once upon a time, space-sims were abundant. It is one of those classic genres that people thought would never get old; except it kind of did. Developers started taking the “sim” part more seriously and games got harder, less accessible, and therefore less popular. A lot of the things that made space-sims so great were sacrificed in order to just make the game larger and more complicated. The competition was no longer ‘who can make the most exciting and stimulating game' and instead was ‘who can make the most complicated and boring space economy' (I'm looking at you X3). It was no longer about fun, and was more about how many ships you could fly and how many factors came into spice trading.

So the games stopped making money, developers stopped bothering, and a once proud genre became more of an afterthought. Those fans of space-sims now really only see a handful of releases over the course of the year, and even few of those releases are remotely entertaining. It is almost always amusing to see messageboards for this genre after a new game gets released simply to see the way these people try and justify playing the most average of space-sims instead of just saying it is because they have no other options.

So, as it has been a few months since a game like this has come out, SpaceForce: Rogue Universe blazes across the horizon.

SpaceForce tries to distance itself from the other bloated titles within this subcategory of gaming by removing a lot of the nonsense that has seemed to dominate the genre. The economy does not take hours to figure out; you won't be flying from system to system simply to make a few extra credits. It is still in your best interest to squeeze as much out of the products you can buy and sell, but it isn't a necessity, and it also is never super frustrating.

Also, one of the complaints I can see diehards of the genre having is that you can only fly fighters. That's right, no capital ships or anything like that, just fighters. If that really bothers you that much then you probably need to go outside more. The bread and butter of these games should be the combat, and the combat should be fun. I see nothing fun about slaughtering weaker ships in a significantly powerful capital cruiser or trucking slowly across the vast galaxy in a sluggish trade ship. The fact you really only have a handful of unique fighter-class ships does not detract from this game at all, in my opinion it actually makes it better as everything is much more focused and action (read: entertainment) oriented.

You can upgrade your fighter in all the ways you are used to, as long as you have the money to back it up. You get money by selling goods and doing quests and missions. Most of the missions in the game are of the same flavor, either running items from place to place, destroying enemies, escorting, and everything else you would expect. The game does an exceptionally good job of keeping these missions from getting repetitive because of the dynamic universe.

Simply put, the best part of this game by far is the games living universe. I have yet to play a game of this genre that actually feels like it is alive, and part of that has to do with how good the AI actually is. Not just in battle, but in general. There are many times where you will be doing some menial task to gain credits and you will fly into the middle of a dogfight between a few enemies or, in some cases, a full out space battle. Pirates will do what pirates do, factions will defend their trade routes and borders, and your allies will come to your aid when you need it. All in all, the dynamic universe of this game is the selling point and it will definitely be what keeps you coming back to it after you are done.

In a way, SpaceForce is lucky that the universe is so interesting, because the story mode in this game is absolutely embarrassing. The plot is simple enough fare as you play a member of the Earth Defense Force who has to find his sister somewhere in the vast galaxy and avenge the loss of his father 20 years earlier. Nothing special, but it wouldn't really matter if not for one thing; this game has, without a shadow of doubt, the absolute WORST dialog I have ever heard. Ever. The only example I can even think to compare it to is, well, ever seen those Legend of Zelda fan cartoons? The Light of Courage? You know, the one those guys made as a joke after finding a, possibly mentally challenged, guys script on a fan site. Yeah, that is about the quality you can expect. Whoever actually sat down and scripted the dialog in this game should be hung for warcrimes. On top of that, not only is the dialog laughably bad, but the voice acting is even worse. It is astounding that a company could let something that bad into a otherwise decent game.

I kind of think SpaceForce's developers must have realized how terrible the story mode was, because this game actually has two modes of play. There is the aforementioned mode that seems to be more of an experiment in horrible writing, and then there is a freeplay mode which just flat out saves the game. Freeplay is just how it sounds. You create a character, give him whatever class, race, and ship you want, and just fly through the universe doing whatever the hell you want. Do you want to liberate Earth? Fight for the UF. Do you want to be a bad-ass space pirate and make your living destroying trade ships and hacking space stations? Go right ahead and do that. This freedom, and the sheer amount of universe to explore, keep SpaceForce from getting dull.

All is not space-roses though, as SpaceForce suffers from an infuriatingly steep learning curve. No tutorial, no real explanations, nothing helpful at all to help ease you into the controls of this game. You are pretty much flying blind from the start, which will scare off a huge amount of people when it comes to the game. Along with that, SpaceForce sometimes forces you to bite off more than you can chew, as the opponent AI isn't just really smart, but it is also pretty damn cheap. No matter how good you get, the AI will present a challenge by almost always providing a flawless defense against your dogfighting ability. I don't really view this as a completely bad thing, though, as they will still make mistakes, and if you are good enough you will know when to capitalize. Still, there are many instances where it is just way too many against way too little. You can fly with wingmen as long as you can afford it, but even with them you will still find instances of the ratio being 6 or 7 to 1 in big battles.

The worst part of the game is that it seems like it just never got finished. The amount of bugs and weird little issues try as hard as they possibly can to kill the enjoyment of this game. Because of these technical issues, the absolutely laughable story mode, and difficulty it is hard to recommend this to casual fans, but pretty easy to recommend to fans of the genre that aren't too into crippling realism and depth.

Eh, who am I kidding, I'm just waiting for someone to mod it into Battlestar Galactica.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 07/10/08

Game Release: Spaceforce: Rogue Universe (US, 06/05/07)