I downloaded it today, as a Games Designer myself I saw the possibilities of the title and wanted to give it a chance - maybe just maybe everything I had heard about Derek Smarts games could be wrong.
Boy was I wrong.
You install the game and are treated to a nice splash screen, I thought to myself upon seeing this "Hey, this may prove to be a good game" So I continued forward in my quest, again I was impressed (Hard to believe I know) you had access to crew members details, health information, craft information etc and I began to feel that I was
in charge of a real crew with real issues/history etc.
You can choose upon many, many roles and races and again I to smile yet again - the guys hit it on the head, this is exactly the type of Space Command sim I've been looking for, vast Galaxy, multiple races, a massive war between Galcom (Galatic Command, the Human faction) and other races. I smiled again.
So were are all the problems I had read about? Were was all the falmes, crashes etc?
I was about to find out.
Once you've selected your role, taken a brief look at your crew, ship and weapons I got lost. Yes lost. There were so many menu's showing me so much information, but not once had I seen outside of my ship or been able to land on planets or look out into the depths of space - no I was looking at text upon text.
At the top of the menu was a button saying 'Logout' I didn't press this for the best part of an hour thinking it would exit the game, so I left it. After 30mins had passed I said "Screw it" and pressed the button to quit, low and behold I was presented with a 3d view of space and my ship.
"At last" I thought, "Now lets get going" So I was looking through a HUD that represented my Carriers field of vision. Taking a more careful look around I noticed I was close to Earth - what LOOKED like Earth. For a game that was re-released in what 2000? The graphics were, to put it mildly, crap.
I could still see the design lines runing through the globe of Earth and the little pixel marks of its creation - my God, I thought we were passed that day and age?
Then my world fell apart. Upon selected a NAV point to travel to, my game crashed. "Hmmm" I said as I loaded it up again. Selected the same NAV point, crashed again.
So I loaded up again and decided to choose the Mars NAV point - ok it worked. So there I was traveling along space, a tiny smile on my face as I put the graphic problems behind me and decided to give a second chance to the game.
But what happend, I hear you ask? Well what the hell do I do to select different weapons, or hail different craft or (Forgive me) shoot a damn civilian target!?
So I loaded up the confiq menu, and unlike most games, this one didn't explain a damn thing. Only gave you a set of keys to use for the most basic functions!
Hello!? I want to land on Mars and kill stuff, or vist a city like your product said I could. But no were on that confiq menu did it tell me the command shortcuts to landing or deploying combat craft.
Whats worse is that I was getting communications from different ships and people, and had no way to respond as I didn't know the commands.
Then it hit me, the HUD and most of the game was very very very badly designed. Nothing worked to the players advantage.
So after passing two hours, I quit and uninstalled the game. Derek Smart: I want the two hours of my life back.
This sort of game, Derek, is what gives us game developers a bad name and this sort of product is what makes people think that we've run out of ideas or dont know how to create user friendly products.
Derek, I'd advice you to rethink your job path.
