A while back I picked the SSI game "Reach for the Stars" out of a bargain bin, and found that it sucked massive ass. Curious to see what others thought, I googled for reviews and came up with this gem from scifi.com, as in the website of the cable channel that keeps rerunning every failed shitty network science-fiction show ad nauseum.
Linky:
http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue177/games.htmlUnpaid bills? Ankle-high lawn? Disgruntled spouse? Who cares! The Hive are attacking, and Mother Earth must be saved.
We're one sentence in, and the word "crapful" hasn't come up yet. Red alert.
It's the future, and humanity has colonized the solar system. There are people on Mars, there are people on Ganymede, and there are people on everyone's moon of the month, Titan. To be frank, it's getting a bit crowded.
But humans are pretty sharp, and they soon discover faster-than-light travel. Homo sapiens jump on their FTL ships and pour out into the rest of the universe. Unfortunately, some folks take exception to the pouring, and a galaxy-sized rumble ensues. It's up to the players to manage the exploration, the rumble and the technological advancements that will ensure success.
Oh man, how novel. Almost like it hasn't been done a million times before and a million times better.
Like the original title, which appeared in 1983, Reach for the Stars is a turn-based game. In each turn, players must choose research, allocate resources to spaceship and facility construction, colonize planets, explore space and fight intergalactic battles. Included are an Enterprise-sized bag of technologies to research, such as Talon torpedoes and particle beams,
None of these technologies have any real effect upon gameplay. Technology is divided into ten segments or eras, each of which contains a better ship, a better sensor, a better gun, etcetera. Stripping away any illusion of depth, there's a cybernetic species in the game that actually calls its tech items by names like Torpedo 1 and Scanner 3. Jesus.
and 16 species with which to research them. From the dumb-as-plankton Trogarchs to the highly advanced Klaa'Keen, there are species for every taste.
This is where the game well and truly fails, because these are some of the most forgettable alien species I've ever encountered in any format. Prepare to meet the bloblike tentacled Arimechs, who hate the bloblike tentacled Myrmodi, because they have tentacles that are more sensitive. No, I'm not fucking kidding.
The aforementioned stupid Trogarchs do have a little personality, in that they're apparently literally retarded and all talk like Bizzaro. Their energy weapons have names like Zaaap, their engines have names like Vrrrooom, and the text descriptions of these tend to say things like "Zaaap am good for make Trogarch enemy go dead!"
Up to six sentient beings can vie for control of this universe over a LAN. Four players can take a shot at Internet galactic supremacy, but the game runs a bit long in multiplayer mode.
Good luck finding anyone to play this turd.
Multiplayer aside, Reach for the Stars is one heck of a lot of fun. It's one of those games that yanks players into its world. There are no fancy-shmancy 3-D graphics; the 2-D look is clean and functional.
The game is boring and the graphics suck ass.
Each turn is seriously entertaining. Players research technology and face deep decisions--should the advanced star drive be first on the list, or is a more powerful weapon in order?
This literally made me laugh out loud. What really happens is that you throw all the tech items for your era into the to-be-researched queue and forget about them.
Players must decide which facilities to build,
You'll move from Industry 1, to Industry 2, and so on.
what ships to design and manufacture, and where to send the finished ships.
You take a pre-set hull design and fill the weapon slots with the highest gun you've researched so far. By the way, ships have no upkeep costs. That's right, you'd better be churning out warships every goddamn turn of the game, because everyone else sure as hell is. Sometimes the insane number of ships in play makes the game crash.
The research, facilities, ships and exploration weave together into a symphony of intriguing strategy.
You fill the various queues with generic facilities, technologies, and ships, and then go on to the next turn.
Nor does the strategy stop when the fighting starts. Fleet commanders must select which formations and which ranges to fight. These tactical decisions, blended with the choice among ship designs (some are better at close-in knife fights, others at long-range sniping) determine a battle's outcome. It's a deceptively simple yet elegant system.
It's crap. You have a total of two inputs: Formation and range. You click the ones that are marked as being mathematically the most favorable to you, and then watch the shitty graphics shoot at each other.
Therein lies the rub; it's a speck too simple. Fans of detailed space conquest titles such as Emperor of the Fading Suns will lament the whitewashed plainness of planetary attacks. In Reach for the Stars, players bombard a planet and land a number of marines greater than the defenders, and the rock is theirs. It just doesn't hold up against the enthralling hex-by-hex struggle in Fading Suns.
Look, an attempt to seem objective! Really, the planetary assaults in this game are the saddest part of all. First your ships shoot down some defense sattelites. Unlike fleet combat, you don't even choose formations or range here. You're simply faced with what amounts to two buttons that say "attack" and "retreat." After that, it's two buttons that say "land troops" and "nuke them." If you nuke them you get a crap little fireball graphic on the surface.
Nevertheless, Reach for the Stars is a gem. There are tense moments, desperate battles and loads of choices--in short, everything that makes strategy gaming great. Anyone who likes space exploration and conquest will love this game.
There's no diplomacy. Even the supposed pacifists will attack you for no reason with endless waves of ships. Even when diplomacy does enter the equation it's confusing, shallow, and devoid of personality. The other species never even address you directly.
Even if you'd never seen Star Trek before, after a few games of Birth of the Federation you'd have a pretty good idea what a Klingon is like. Because the first time you met them, you got a picture of an ugly Klingon guy, and a voice clip where they threaten to gloriously kick your ass if you fuck with them. In Reach for the Stars, all you get is "Arimechs reject peace treaty" at the end of a turn, and the only image you ever see of a given species is a sad little thumb-sized image of them at the species selection screen.
Really, I might forgive some of the game's flaws if it had personality. Give me a close-up shot of a stupidly grinning Trogarch accompanied by the message "We am no sign peace treaty! We am have Zaaap for what to make you go boom!" At least that would amuse me the first time I saw it, and remind me of who I was dealing with. As it is, all I see are generic unpronouncable alien names slapped into the "X rejects treaty" string.
Gaaah. Really, was this guy bribed or is it just his job to like everything? Opinions.
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