Space Rangers

"An interesting 2D space sim"

Introduction
It's the year 3000 and humanity, after mastering interstellar flight, finds itself sharing the galaxy with 4 alien races. They get along for the most part, and a Galaxy Council is formed for the Five Races' Commonwealth.

Enter a new alien race, the Klissans. From the start, they appear hellbent on wiping out all 5 races, and attempts to communicate with them were futile. Inevitably all-out war was declared, but as time passed the Klissans are gradually winning, threatening all five civilisations. In desperation, their military resources stretched beyond limits, the Commonwealth decides to recruit the services of freelance civilians called Rangers from all 5 races. You start as a freshly recruited Ranger, eager to make your mark.

Gameplay
The main game plays like a simplistic 2D space sim, with a strong emphasis on combat and a noticeably less emphasised trading aspect. Given the background story, this is to be expected: you play a Ranger, a freelance mercenary of one of the races from the Commonwealth. You obtain randomly generated missions from friendly planets by landing on them and visiting the local government (for the game's purposes, each planet is an indivisible political unit). The mission types are pretty varied, from the typical courier-boy ones to text-based mini-games. The mini-games can be quite interesting; for example, one of them requires you to land on an uninhabited planet to supervise the construction of a base, and how you go about it is through choosing from the text options presented to you. Another mini-game puts you in the shoes of a sports coach, fighting a deadline and impossible odds. The text is quite funny, and the ideas wild, making for excellent diversions.

In flight, the game plays in a deceptively simple turn-based style, but you can make it behave real-time-like by toggling the pause option. The game also automatically interrupts and pauses you if you get attacked - so you really don't have to worry about getting whacked when you least expect it (to be sure, timing and positioning can still give you that edge in combat). Keyboard and mouse functions are pretty intuitive, and most actions have corresponding hotkeys which shouldn't take you more than several minutes to master. You can save/load pretty much anywhere too, which is definitely a big plus.

On planets, besides taking missions at the government building, buying new ship equipment at the dealer, or trading merchandise at the exchange, you can also go to an information centre to view the latest goings-on in the neighbouring star systems. The news items on display are usually very helpful; they often tip you off to where the latest fights against the Klissans are being held (so you can participate in system-clearing if that's your goal), where certain items can be bought low or sold high, and there's even a search option if you're looking for a specific Ranger or ship (some missions require you to track someone down). In short, the data centre is really useful, not like in a lot of other games where the news is merely back-story flavouring. Also, the text-based minigames are accessed through a special icon which appears if your mission requires you to play one.

The galaxy is also quite dynamic, indeed frantically so, with systems being overrun by or freed from the Klissans almost monthly (the single unit of movement your ship can fly as indicated by the coloured line to your destination takes exactly one game day). Often as you fly around you will see notices pop up on your taskbar informing you of the latest star system to succumb to the Klissans, or those freed from Klissan invasion, as well as the radio chatter coming from nearby ships in the same star system you are in. Don't forget to stop by at Military Bases from time to time; besides earning Military Ranks (which you can increase by racking up pirate and Klissan kills), you can also request for a galaxy-wide summary of the current situation. In Easy games, you generally start at 50% and eventually the Commonwealth will force the Klissans out. I've played a Normal game, and the Klissans seem to have the upper hand, occupying 70% of the galaxy. The Hard and Expert difficulties are more or less similar, but the time limits and mission rewards seem narrower.

On Easy mode you won't really get that much Klissan action, considering how the Commonwealth Military and other Rangers will be eager to rack up their own kill tallies. In the normal game I'm seeing a whole lot more action. The tougher difficulty levels bring their own reward in this sense; the more Klissans you fight, the more protoplasm you can haul off to Ranger Bases and thus increase your Ranger Points which you can use to better your skills. Money might be a bit tight, although the mission rewards do scale upwards in time. Apparently the longer you play, the more technologies seem to be available. It takes real patience to fly around on missions just to remain in the black, though. Players just wanting to buy "the best" equipment and kick Klissan butt will find themselves running out of money. The game needs more balance, economy-wise.

Story
This isn't a typical mission-driven game. Like most trading sims, you have a rough sort of freedom to go where you like and do as you like, although most of the time you will find yourself looking for missions to earn cash, since fighting is a fairly costly business. It's not as bad as it sounds, although players who prefer some sort of guiding story, in the form of "true plot missions" won't find those. Basically when you start a game, your Ranger is at the lowest rank, which you can improve through killing Klissans, trading, and piracy. The equipment upgrades available to you do improve over time - although you have to contribute, flying around aimlessly doesn't achieve anything, plus equipment degrades over time and you need a constant positive cashflow.

It's also exciting to participate in the system-clearing battles by joining other Rangers, military pilots, or even civilian ships on crusades through Klissan-held territory. The game is cool in that you can actively help to keep systems Klissan-free and if you're strong enough, to dislodge them from systems that they already control. There's also the Scientific Research angle, where you can see how close the scientists are in creating that device so you can attempt to communicate with the Klissan mothership. There is also another facet to the story besides the aliens, that of a rogue military leader now turned pirate. How you deal with him eventually will also be reflected in the endgame stats that are displayed in the top scores list.

Your actions can gain you Ranger Points which is basically just a list of Rangers ordered by "contribution", that is, the amount of Klissan protoplasm you've managed to capture and send to a Ranger Station. Besides bragging rights, the best Rangers are often given incentives and access to better equipment. There are three top categories too, which are Best Trader, Best Warrior, and Luckiest Ranger (heh). Occasionally the Rangers nominated for the Best positions are even mentioned on the news.

There's also a ship-kill tally, which shows the tally of Klissan, pirate, and other (civilian, mercenary, etc) kills. The number of ships destroyed, trading, and missions undertaken all have an impact on your relationship with the various planets and the 5 races. It's pretty dynamic, even the NPC Rangers on the list behave accordingly - some of them are noble warriors, some cold-blooded mercenaries, and some are even outright buccaneers preying on the innocent. You can earn praise from the Council and planets, and be awarded medals and titles (which are even displayed on the Ranger list) besides Ranger Points and cool equipment. You can also be a merciless pirate and have others gunning for the bounty on you. You can also view the other Rangers' awards and kill tallies on the Ranger list, and the NPCs do work to improve themselves. So if you merely coast along, not only will you run out of money and favour, you will also be overtaken by more ambitious and hardworking Rangers.

Note that research gets progressively slower unless you help chip in by bringing in Klissan artifacts (anything other than protoplasm) to scientific bases. The projected completion date for research can go well beyond 40 years if you don't help out (which kind of begs the question what the heck are the other Rangers doing since they scramble for protoplasm and Klissan artifacts as eagerly as you do).

Graphics/Sound
The background effects are pretty nice and do help give that spacefaring atmosphere. Unfortunately if you turn on all the pretty effects, you might not notice those asteroids flying around, especially if you leave the game at the default setting of "many asteroids". They pack quite a mean punch if you get hit by one, so it pays to scout around the system before making a move, especially if you've just entered a system or launched from a planet/base. Sound effects are a tad sparse though, mostly just weapon effects, and the music is serviceable catchy synth techno, not horrible but nothing special either. There isn't much animation though, and a lot of the time, you'll feel as if you're playing some sort of tabletop game.

Play time/Replayability
An hour of realtime can translate into roughly a game year, that is, if you fly around quite a bit doing missions and stuff. Or maybe that's just me. Anyway, looking at the default high-score list, a typical game can last maybe about 15 years. You may get it down to 15 or so years if you push it, I suppose, but there's no real rush to do things fast (but do keep an eye on the news on military bases regarding which important star systems should be defended or retaken lest the Klissans overrun the galaxy). Most of the game you will be scrounging around for money to better yourself, and waiting for the science people over at the various scientific stations to complete their research, which you can help hasten by selling Klissan salvage to them. There are several difficulty modes but differences seem mostly cosmetic: faster introduction of new technology.

Flaws
There are several areas in the game which could definitely use some polishing up, such as warning you that you will need to refuel at the next system you jump to because you don't have enough fuel remaining in the tanks to jump out to any of the neighbouring systems. Yes I know ALL systems contain planets you can land on to refuel, but you can't do that in Klissan-held territory. The refueling fee is peanuts compared to the extortionate equipment maintenance fees.

The other small flaws are similarly annoying, like the tiny space you have left over after you've kitted out your ship, often leaving you with little room for salvage or carrying trade goods. In fact, playing a fully trade-oriented game does not seem feasible at a glance. The thing is, even if you can make, say, a $50 profit from a unit (that seems to be a fairly high margin), usually you'll have maybe about 100 units of free space. A $5k profit is quite fair early in the game, but the wear-and-tear on your ship and equipment is ruinously expensive, and maintenance costs never go down, unlike trading where you can lose money if you don't watch the prices carefully.

The communications options are similarly terse. Basically you can either threaten someone, ask them to help you attack someone else, or offer the local authorities a bribe to fix your rep with them. Your responses are similarly limited. There are no "regular" chatter options, such as greeting a passing civilian, although occasionally they may greet you. There's real potential in this area which doesn't really take all that much to implement, considering what they already have in place. Basically, it's all combat oriented, just like in many other games.

Apparently you are also limited to taking on one quest at a time. I've never successfully gotten another quest while in the middle of one; the government of the planet you're on will just tell you they don't have any at the moment. This is both good and bad - good in the sense that it emphasises the deadline-style urgency of the missions, but bad in the sense that you are practically leashed. They could have simply eased on the day count, and improved the NPC hazard (i.e. make the faction friction tougher). As it is, it's fairly simple to be friendly or at least neutral with most people if not all of them, and those that aren't are easily fixed with bribes.

The entire galaxy also seems pretty small, if you look at the total number of star systems. The problem is, most of the time you'll be shuttling between a select number of them due to mission constraints - many require you to return to the originating planet to get your reward. You'll want to save up a bit of cash before wandering around finding new planets to check out, and if you're thinking of tangling with the Klissans, make sure you have a lot of disposable wealth. And I mean a LOT. You won't find yourself eventually strong enough to shrug off damage and live solely to chase Klissans - repairs just keep mounting, and you'll HAVE to take breaks from helping out the military by going back and taking up missions AGAIN until you've built up your money again. Although admittedly realistic, many players are spoiled by most games giving them an easy time once they've passed a certain point. No such babying here. Even when you're Number #1 (in whatever position), you don't stay there out of inertia.

Another unfortunate point is the research being done on Klissans. After the research has been completed, there's no reward for turning in Klissan artifacts (other than Protoplasm for Ranger Points), so this part of the game is effectively rendered useless, and collecting non-protoplasm artifacts just turned a whole lot more pointless. They could have tied this in with the rate of new equipment appearing as well, but they didn't.

You can't play this game in a window either; which doesn't make sense since most of the time you'll be scrolling around checking out stuff which is out of your immediate range anyway. A lot of the minigames don't require that much display space either. This game would find a perfect niche as a "Solitaire substitute" if you could tuck the window elsewhere while you did something else.

Final Recommendation
All in all, it's a good diversion, and I certainly recommend this title. It may not be one of those games which you buy, install, and eagerly play for a few weeks before deleting it - in fact, this is fast becoming a tiresome trend, no thanks to the instant gratification expectations of our 5 second attention span MTV generation consumers - rather, it's more likely you'll have this game installed permanently, and play it for a while in between other things. Kind of like a more sophisticated Solitaire, if you will. The turn-based pacing fits the bill perfectly; now if only we could run this in windowed mode.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/14/05, Updated 03/29/05