So, I got the non-BTA version in a trade earlier today.
I like DRM. It's pretty awesome, and a very finely-tuned challenge. It's a bit blinding though.
Dark Scavenger is pretty awesome too, but I already had it.
However...
I don't get Space Giraffe. It told me what I was doing, I shot the enemies, I rammed into the ones that made it to the edge of the power area thing-a-majig, and I just don't get what's happening. Sometimes the power area becomes larger, sometimes it becomes smaller, and overall, I just don't get why, or why it's important to make the power area larger. Or what exactly it is. Or why the enemies would be coming out of it, when it's supposedly a good thing.
The "giraffe" also looks nothing like a giraffe. Only vaguely does the shape even resemble a giraffe's head. I'd have guessed a deer long before a giraffe.
Oh, and from the viewing angle they give you, it is really, really hard to see what's going on at times. Not to mention it runs in a tiny, approx. 800x600 window, and all of the art is done in lines like a pixel thin, with an extremely small amount of glow/bloom, and absolutely no thickness at all, for the most part. And pretty much everything is put in pretty much the same shade of yellow, so it blurs together a bit.
I also don't get why it needs more than one tutorial level when it's so simplistic (or is it? I gave up mid-way through the second tutorial). Or what was going on at times in the tutorial. Sometimes it'd say something, it'd hang there like it was waiting for me to complete the action it said I could do, and then it'd move on without me ever really knowing what I did or how I got it to progress. Other times, it waited like 2 minutes between messages when I'd repeatedly completed the requested action.
/rant_about_space_giraffe
Armalyte looks really cool, but I haven't played it much yet. I was a bit confused as to why the graphics didn't look all C64-y, but I guess they didn't retain the graphical integrity in the port. I had been under the impression it was just run on an emulator, but re-reading it, it seems it was a full-on port with new graphics and all.
I did try it once though and it kicked my ass a bit.
And then there's the Wreckless. Ugh. I was looking forward to it due to the favorable Wing Commander comparisons, but man, I barely made it past the tutorial. I will probably try again later, because I at least want to partake in the "large scale battles" before putting it aside forever, but I'll at least tell you why I'm so "ugh" about it.
First off, they drop you straight into a cinematic with quite a bit of dull conversation. Pretty much just telling you you're in a drone that you're not actually inside. And by "drop you straight into a cinematic", I mean before the main menu.
Second, the actual menu for mission selection didn't make a whole lot of sense. It took me a while to realize I could select the group of drones I was going to be in. That and it doesn't really give you an indication of how far into the game you are from what I can tell, just that it's another mission. Oh, and remember that drone you pilot in the first cinematic? Not in the tutorial, which struck me as really, really odd.
Third, alright, yes, it has some form of Newtonian physics implemented, but it's pretty much shot to hell by the fact that:
a. You can come to a full stop by pressing a button, rather than being forced to find the exact equilibrium by turning your ship 180 degrees and turning on the thrusters.
b. When you turn your ship, it doesn't rotate on some point around your ship's center axis, like you'd expect it to, it rotates on the center axis of an invisible sphere attached to your ship's back end.
Oh, and then there's the fact that they have the targets leading in front of your currently selected target to give you an idea of where to aim, right? Well, they're annoyingly bright solid-colored purple boxes with a purple tube attached to them that runs from the box to the ship. Oh, and they don't scale for distance. That's right, if your opponent is 5 km away, that box will not scale. It will be invisible. And if he's in your face, it will probably take up a decent portion of your screen (haven't had that issue yet).
So yeah, ugh.
Oh, and I know I posted something about not liking SOL at all before. Mainly, though, it's due to the impossibly weird control scheme that I'm pretty sure you can't customize.
EDIT: Oh, vote for Cyberganked.
Post edited September 19, 2012 by johnki
