Space Force: Rogue Universe was a blast from the past for me. It reminded me a lot of Freelancer, a game put out by Microsoft a few years back. And Freelancer reminded me of Privateer. Now what do all of these games have in common besides the player choosing an identity and spending hours cruising through a virtual universe? Open-ended gaming. These final frontier semi-RPGs allow you to choose your identity, profession, ship, politics, you name it. In return all you have to do is ride out the single player campaign story until you’ve broken free of the main storyline and then go bonkers on the universe. Yessir, I do so love me a good space cruising simulator with open-ended plotlines. While the prospects of flight is difficult to get a hang of at first, overall the game offers a solid piece of software that you and your mother can be proud of.
We’ll get the negatives out of the way before we plunge into the positive: namely, opening orientation and learning how to use the controls. The player receives absolutely no hints or advice as to why they should choose one particular character class over another. Sure titles like “Pirate” and “Bounty Hunter” sound cool, and we all would like the notoriety of Mr. Fett, but SFRU does absolutely nothing to help you understand what the advantages of each class truly are. Why should I care if I have plus 10 shield on my ship? It certainly doesn’t seem like all that big of a boost. Indeed, some classes have gifts that are easy to understand the advantages of like the ability to cut costs of repairs or repair your ship yourself. Obvious advantages. But sometimes, some classes just seem like a whole lot of filler to provide a variety of playing styles without any particular distinction. A for effort, D for execution.
Second negative: absolutely no introduction into how to pilot, maneuver, survive, etc. You’re thrust into your player scenario and asked to survive a first encounter that even a deaf and blind child could make it through assuming you taught it to mash buttons. Unfortunately, the survival is due largely in part to the ineptitude of those first enemies and will have nothing to do with you being able to understand the controls. Happy day.
The third and final negative grated most heavily upon my nerves. Maybe I’m expecting far too much from a computer game’s voice acting…but I don’t think so. Even Freelancer put a little effort into giving the characters a rougher edge. Space Force’s characters are born yesterday twits acted by people who are their real-life incarnations. Depressing. I almost gagged when I heard the opening narration. I wanted to drive a screwdriver, a pen, any sharp object through my speakers. Horrible.
But once you get beyond that…if you get beyond that…you’ll find the Space Force: Rogue Universe gameplay to be quite enjoyable and worthy of your hard-earned gaming obsessed weekends. The graphics are sharp with a soundtrack that takes a few hours before it gets ridiculously repetitive (that’s pretty impressive these days). Even the Lord of the Rings MMORPG soundtrack hits repeat after a mind-numbing 40 minutes. So a few hours of decent music is a good step. Sadly, you’ll get nothing of John Williams quality, but what you will get is your stereotypical “floating through an endless void of space” style soundtrack all too common in Star Trek films. Eat that Star Trek…your soundtracks are tediously stereotypical. But as I’ve said, even if the music is pretty uneventful (of course, that changes when you get attacked by space pirates or other unsavory characters) at least it has better repeat value than some MMORPGs out there.
Graphics definitely help this game escape the doldrums of an otherwise tedious game genre. Flying from one end of a galaxy for too few space credits can get pretty dull. Scratch that. Horribly dull. But the intense detail given to each ship and asteroid makes SFRU a floating beacon of eye candy (even if it is borderline tedious to play). You can actually see the mountings of various missile launchers, cannons, and mine droppers on your ship as you fly through the galaxy. While this is not only appealing in a visual way, it’s also quite helpful when it comes down to gameplay.
SFRU sees the player flying through tons of dog fights with who knows what kind of odds, and sometimes the only way to win is to use every weapon at your disposal. Of course, what good is it to have an arsenal if you don’t know their default positions on your ship. As I mentioned, the intense detail given to the visual design of the game gives the player a clear vantage point of where each weapon and accessory is located on the hull of their ship. This means you’ll know if a mine will be deployed slightly below your ship, to the left, to the right, etc. and plan accordingly.
In terms of storyline, Space Force: Rogue Universe allows the player to take side missions that will not only line their pockets but take them to locations that they might have otherwise avoided altogether. Unfortunately, a small oversight in programming prevents any amount of obscene leveling through side missions until the game’s default storyline has been completed. Boo hiss. I spent countless hours in side quests before I realized my work was going unappreciated, experientially, by the game’s engine. I was quite upset to find that even though I’d done about 30 side jobs, the only reward I’d received was money – which I couldn’t even use to upgrade my ship since upgrades become available in concordance with the main plot. Once again, boo hiss. But on top of it all, the game’s free-floating and non-linear game play allows for plenty of deviation from the main plot when it starts to get tedious. Just remember that if you want to actually progress in any real sense of the word, you need to return to the storyline.
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