I've been a game reviewer for quite some time, so there isn't any real set "way" I pick the game that I'm going to review next. Sometimes I just see that some company's about to release their next super hyped game. Maybe it's a press release email from their PR firm, or even the developers themselves. Word of mouth on the Netjak forums, or from other gaming news sites I frequent like Joystiq, or The Magic Box also factors in sometimes.
For this game however, it was something completely out of the blue. I had an email waiting for me that was titled "Space Rangers 2 Review", and it was from an MIT alumni e-mail address. He told me about this little known game that was getting some good reviews, but didn't feel like plunking down $40 on it until I weighed in on it because, in his words "I trust your reviews much more than I trust the droids at IGN or wherever."
I hadn't even heard of Space Rangers 1, and I was much less aware that it merited a part 2, but I glanced over the review that he had linked me to that got him interested, looked at a few of the screenshots on the publisher's site, and decided to give it a go...who am I to deny my loyal readers?
You haven't seen a lot of reviews out of me lately, and this game is the reason why. Not only is this my current pick for PC Game of the Year, and for Game of the Year all around, but this game just shot its way into my Top 20 Greatest of All Time.
Story
This game takes place a number of years after the events of the first game. The 5 major races are once, again, safe in the Universe, as the evil Klissans have been banished to another region of space, and the rag-tag band of loosely aligned pilots known as the Space Rangers who engineered their demise were disbanded.
Now a new threat has appeared, and the Space Rangers are being assembled to fight again. An entirely mechanical race, the Dominators, have emerged and started laying waste to the known Universe.
So you emerge as a new Human recruit for the Rangers, and come in to hopefully turn the tide in this battle for the fate of the Universe.
Gameplay
You start off creating your Ranger. You choose a class for your character, which basically just dictates which type of ship he gets, how much cash he has, and which planets he can land on without being thrown in jail. You also get to choose two pieces of equipment to start with, and two of the 6 skills to have slightly buffed.
After deciding all that, you're thrown into the randomly generated universe of the game. This is where things get a little confusing, and where gamers are likely to be put off. There's a really steep learning curve at the beginning. The manual's not very helpful past the basics, and the in-game instruction is either woefully inadequate, horribly translated, or outside the main confines of the game in a separate application that opens up.
Basically, in the "universe map" section of the game, you can click anywhere on the screen and then hit space for the game to pass turns while the game flies to the point specified. You may stop the game at any point during this travel by hitting the space bar again. The game will pause at the end of the day.
You can land on any inhabited planet simply by clicking on the planet and hitting the space bar to travel there. Once on the planet, you're able to ask the local leader of government if they have any missions they need you to undertake (this will be your primary source of income throughout the game.) trade commodities, buy/sell equipment for your ship, and repair your craft.
Missions will either involve shooting a "criminal" down, delivering an item to a planet, defending a solar system or a particular ship, or completing a completely off-the-wall puzzle sequence. These are generally set-up as slightly more complex "Choose Your Adventure" segments. If you played the original MechWarrior, you'll recognize the sequences. However, these are noticeably more complex, with some segments forcing me to reach into the deep recesses of my mind to dredge up high school Chemistry lessons in order to remember how to solve for X using like equations. If these missions get too bothersome for you, you can tell the game that you refuse to take these missions, and they'll stop offering them to you.
When you're ready to start trading or sticking it to the Dominators, you'll want to start upgrading your ship. With all the different things you can do in the game, obviously your craft is customizable to your style of play. Transport ships tend have larger hulls and a bit more defense, but have less available weaponry slots. Pirate ships tend to be lighter for higher speeds, but with more weapon hardpoints. The Ranger class of ships are kind of the "Jack of All Trades". They're not as nimble as the pirate ships, less spacious and well armored as the transport ones.
Space on your ship will play a key role. In addition to customizing your ship layout for maximum defense and offense, you're going to have to make sure that you can pick up larger pieces of valuable flotsam and jetsam, as well as getting yourself a good scanner. All of this takes what is probably your most scarce commodity in the game, space. Standard, your ship will be able to store twice the number of max hull HP your ship came with. You can get devices to increase the amount of hull space you have later on in the game, but for the most part, you're going to be shopping around in the equipment store, giving long thoughts to whether or not you want to pick up the Industry Laser that does 7-15 damage and takes up 15 units of space, or the one that does 8-18, but takes up 33. Sure, you'll be able to do a tad bit more damage, but, those extra 18 units of space might come in handy when making some of the higher profit margin delivery runs. This is the kind of decision that strategy gamers LOVE agonizing over.
Further adding to your flexibility are micromodules. Micromodules are made from the nodes that Dominators drop when they are wounded or destroyed. Micromodules are useful add-ons to specific pieces of equipment that do things from increase the range of your weaponry to reducing the cost of an item. (which becomes super useful once you realize that in addition to damage from weapons, you'll be taking wear & tear damage.) The only drawback to these items is that they can't be removed once they're slotted onto an item, and you can only have one per item. So, if you find one that's really useful, you might face a decision where you don't necessarily want to attach it to the older parts you have.
Combat
Combat gets its own segment because there's three different types of combat in the game, and they're significantly different from each other. In the standard combat, you can either take it the automatic route or the manual route. In the automatic route, the computer will start following the target as best as it can, and dedicate firing all its weapons at one target. I recommend against going this route because the AI ends up being inefficient it terms of its flight paths and you'll have a much better chance of taking down bigger enemies when you're more comfortable with the manual controls.
In the manual mode, combat and movement will take place 1 day at a time. You can assign your weapons to different targets, allowing you to shoot down incoming torpedos and missile projectiles. Once you have to start taking down swarms of small Dominator craft, you'll really start to appreciate the ability to divide up your weapon pool.
The other form of combat takes place in black holes. This also has the options of manual an automatic combat. Automatic combat, I won't get into because it's stupid. I want to shut it off entirely. Manual combat involves you using the arrow keys and flying around a 2D grid mapped onto a sphere. (You'll understand more once you play it.) The arrow keys will move you around and Ctrl fires. I spent most of my time flying in reverse and shooting at enemies coming towards me. There are power ups scattered throughout the level, but since none of them are explained in the manual, I don't actually know what they do. If you don't want to bother with the annoyances of a twitch shooter getting in the way of your strategic enjoyment, you can bypass this type of combat simply by not entering any black holes. However, combat in black holes is useful because it is the most plentiful source of artifacts, small gizmos like Micromodules that have their own ship slots. These artifacts will do things like ensuring more of the ships you destroy stay intact so you can salvage their better equipment.
The final mode of combat is ground battle. This is basically a stripped down version of the obscure old school RTS Metal Fatigue. Customize your own robots' weapon/utility loadouts, and use them to take ground until both enemy bases have been captured. One little wrinkle, and that's the fact that you're able take control of any unit manually, and guide the bot like the game was an FPS. If you're not fond of RTS games, this part of the game's combat is also something you can bypass by telling it that you simply don't want to do these types of missions.
With all of this crammed into one game, it sounds like it would get overwhelming, or you'd suspect that certain parts of the game were just slapped on and were essentially worthless. Not the case with Space Rangers 2. Instead, it boasts the same glorious balance that Star Control 2 has. While it won't dethrone SC2, it's the closest game to follow in its vaunted footsteps.
Audio
This is the first time in recent I can recall playing a game and hearing a tune, progressing, and then wanting to go back to the previous area just to hear the music again. Even considering the game's length, I never turned on any other music in the background, because I was enjoying the tracks from Space Rangers that much.
The one thing I have to complain about in this category is the opening movie. It has quite possibly the worst voice acting ever recorded. That isn't just Jack Thompson-esque hyperbole, it's actual fact.
Graphics
The graphics are a combination of fantastic old school 2D and psuedo 3D. The universe is fabulously detailed with things going on all over the background. I wish there was a bit more variety in the ship sprites, weapon effects, a customizable avatar, and wider variety of planetside visuals, but for the most part the game's visuals are pleasing.
Gripes
First and foremost, the worst thing about this game is StarForce. If you're unaware, StarForce is an copy protection scheme that is both circumventable and successfully blocks legitimate copies of the game from being played. Every other game on my PC works just fine...however, Space Rangers 2 seems to work about as well as those old NES carts. I double click to launch the game, and then put my fingers over the reset button on my computer because either I'm going to get the intro screen, or I'm going get a hard-lock. I've recommended this game to friends, only to have them find the game unable to launch on their machines, due to the StarForce protection. Game publishers, this is a warning...you want to send gamers running to pirate your games and download cracks for it? Put StarForce on it. Nobody wants to pay $40 for a game they can download and run, but not run their legitimate copy of. The only people StarForce actually keeps out are the people who paid you.
The other quirk this game has is that it's only on DVD. I had to swap out my CD-R so I could play this on my DVD. If you don't have a DVD-ROM drive on your computer, you're out of luck...sorry.
Now, as far as gameplay quirks, I'd just like to gripe about the hyperspace combat mode. It's perfectly fine as a mini-game, up until the point where you are taking on 7 or 8 other fighters. Even though the enemy AI is pretty stupid, once they start combo-ing you with weapons frustration starts piling up pretty damn quick. I would have stuck an enemy cap of 4 in hyperspace mode. Other than that, it's fine.
The English in the game is horrid. The manual tries to make light of it by saying it is supposed to be futuristic and the language has changed. I buy this just about as much as I buy the validity of them changing New York in the Gundam universe to "New Yark". If certain things changed in the language, then why does it look exactly like it changed into English at the level of a 4th grader, with all its inconsistencies? Sometimes the English sucks, sometimes the exact same words are spelled properly. Listen. Get a proper localization staff. Don't give me tongue-in-cheek excuses, give me a properly translated version.
My last complaint about the game is the ending. For all the struggle I had invested against these Dominators, I wanted a bit more of an ending than what I got. It's not as bad as say Halo 2 or Half-Life 2, because it actually ended the game convincingly, but it was still unsatisfying.
The biggest thing going against this game, however, is that nobody's heard of it! It was basically unreleased in the US, and the only place I could immediately find it was GoGamer.com. 1C and Elemental Games' websites would lead you to believe that this game isn't even currently out. The publisher, Excalibur is the only party involved that seems to care about getting this game to the English speaking public, and even they haven't done that well in a conventional sense.
Overall
Buy this game. It comes with Space Rangers 1, so it's really 2 games for $40. It's a fun experience from beginning to end, and it will keep you occupied for quite some time.
I had Advance Wars: Dual Strike, Radiata Stories, the online client for the Spycraft CCG, and a ton of other games to play and review. I was playing them before Space Rangers 2, and after I installed the game, I basically didn't touch any of them again until after I had beaten Space Rangers 2. After I had purchased the game, I replied to the guy with the MIT alumni address and told him, "Well, you've now completely sidetracked my review schedule." Not only is the best game I've played this year...it probably just cracked my top 15 games of all time.
