| Platform | OVERALL |
|---|---|
| PC | 9.20 |
| Overall | 9.20 |
|
Your shields are down 75%. A fire has broken out in the engine room, your head engineer is desperately trying to put out the flames while injured from the missile that just blasted your ship. An alien intruder just beamed aboard and is heading for your oxygen control room to suffocate the crew. The enemy ship with its full shields is readying a barrage of missiles that will shatter your hull. All looks lost... but you are the best damn captain this galaxy has ever seen. You cloak right when the missiles are fired, they lose tracking and miss. Your mantis crew members, experts in hand to hand combat ambush the alien invaders ending the threat. Weapons are fully powered and ready as you uncloak. Fire missiles! You nail their shields! They are vulnerable, FIRE ALL LASERS. Enemies weapons are down, shields are down and now they are hailing you to surrender. "Please accept this scrap, let us live!" they beg. But you know they wouldn't show your crew any mercy. "Open fire!" Their ship explodes in a brilliant white flash. Another battle won, time to prepare for another faster than light jump where the next dangerous encounter awaits. While that sounds like a state of the art modern space sim game its actually a game with extremely basic graphics all done on one screen. That is the beauty of FTL, it captures the essence of the space exploration and combat with all its complexities and boils it down into something that easy to learn and instantly addicting. At its core FTL is part of the roguelike genre meaning it is a game you are supposed to be able to finish in one sitting but every time you play it will be different. Randomly generated maps and scenarios keep you guessing every time you start a new game. In one run you may find all sorts of drone components, leading you to invest in a drone control. Another time maybe you decide to buy a teleporter so that you can beam into enemy vessels and attack them from within. While the tactics may change the goal always remains the same, keep moving from one sector to the next until you reach the end where you battle an epic final boss ship which will take the entire game to plan for. A simple 10 minute tutorial teaches you everything you need to know to become a legendary captain but it will take many many hours before you feel like a Kirk. You manage a crew which will handle repairs and fend off intruders. Managing the power allocation of all the ships systems is the primary way of "leveling up" so to speak. In combat you handle where your weapons should fire, and manage the crew to fix the ships damage. The tougher battles have you worrying about four different problems at once, as a ship captain you need to be ready for anything and still manage the crew even while taking damage. None of it is skill based, you aren't aiming at anything, the game is all about you giving orders and hoping those commands lead your ship to victory. As you defeat enemies and explore the galaxy you earn scrap which can be used to upgrade any of the systems, buy new weapons or augmentations. All ships start the same way but after a few sectors the ship can become almost anything you want it to be. There are no complex menus to navigate through, no giant inventory screens, everything is activated or accessible from one screen. It is so beautifully simple that it is hard for me to even imagine games where you 10 menu screens to run one ship. Prepare to die over and over again, sometimes because you made one bad mistake, other times it will feel like you just got the bad end of a random draw. No matter what happens you will want to jump right back in to try a new tactic, or hope that maybe this time your reward drops give you that weapon you have been looking for. Randomized quests may result in a well needed gift or it could be a disastrous trap. Its up to you to decide if it is worth the risk to try. There are some hidden ships to unlock and many achievements that force you try out some interesting runs. While the game itself my last two hours there is plenty of reason to play multiple times, the main one being that you will lose a lot more than you win. Faster Than Light is one of those games that just seem to execute it's gameplay to perfection. To me it compares to something like Tetris, it maybe a simple game but its perfect in its own way. If I had to find a complaint about FTL it is simply that the first few sectors get really boring once you master the game and that the final boss is always the same. In a game all about random encounters it kind of sucks when you know exactly what to do after you have fought the final boss a few times. That is just me nitpicking, the most important thing is that this game sucks you in and won't let you go. It is immensely entertaining and incredibly addicting. Best of all I can recommended it to everyone, it doesn't matter if you hate strategy games, love action games, no matter your preference you will most likely find something to love about FTL. |
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Posted by Dvader Mon, 29 Jul 2013 06:35:33
Tue, 30 Jul 2013 12:15:30
I've never heard of this game.
Tue, 30 Jul 2013 21:59:06
Screw Pikmin, get this on steam now.Wed, 31 Jul 2013 14:55:24
Steam? My laptop is fucked.
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