Hello everyone, and welcome to Friday! Sorry I didn’t post anything yesterday, the day TOTALLY got away from me, as evidenced by the fact that I didn’t have time to even update the streaming sites before we went live yesterday with Drox Operative. Speaking of which, that was a GREAT time last night, as the game always is. We linked up with Hamachi — which worked well once we all went through the initial setup — and failed a sector before moving onto another one. I just can’t get over how good the game is. It’s so great I didn’t even notice two hours had gone by until I was getting hunger pangs for dinner. This is a game I actually have to avoid playing because I’ll play nothing else if I dive in, but it’s definitely a desert island game for me. Top of the mountain.
Today also marks the closure of both the Starpoint Gemini Warlords and Everspace series. Both games are just so great that I totally plan to make time for them in the coming weeks and months, which is not something I always do with a game. Starting with Starpoint Gemini Warlords, I’m still in the early part of the game wherein the game explains to me how to take over some territory, which is so, so fun. This game is truly, truly fantastic. While I never fully clicked with the previous games, I have with this one (having a fleet along helps a great deal, since I’m still terrible at combat). They’ve managed to merge 4X elements and base building on top of a refined engine that streamlines the gameplay of the last game really well. I’ve played a good deal more since I made this video and am having a blast with it.
For Everspace, in today’s video, I tried out the hard difficulty mode, and lasted three to six minutes at most. They weren’t kidding when they labeled this difficulty level, because geeeeeeeezy christmas is it difficult. Overall though, Everspace is a great experience. Phenomenal flight engine with superb, smooth graphics with fun, randomly generated levels and solid progression. The only thing, the ONLY thing I wish it had was some sort of “target closest enemy” button. That is really all it needs to be freaking superb. Right now it’s just mostly superb.
This weekend is going to be very tight, gaming-wise, because we’re just so busy. Beyond seeing Wonder Woman tomorrow, we have two birthday parties. It’s kind of a problem because SO MANY GAMES have come out of late that I’m actually, I think for the first time ever, backlogged. I’ve spent part of this week with Icarus Starship Command Simulator (which I am REALLY enjoying) and just have to do one more video to finish that one up. I then have to find time to record some videos of StarSmashers (which I’ve not even touched yet). If I have ANY time left over (which is REALLY unlikely), my time will likely go to LOGistICAL, which is just the relaxing experience I’ll need because OMG So busy.
Alright, to news, for there is a lot!
- Navalia is a new space game that just hit Steam at full 1.0 TODAY, and I’d never heard of it before. I’m so hoping to try it out soon.
- Starpoint Gemini Warlords has a small patch out, plus notes as to what’s coming, like bounty hunting!
- Starway Fleet has gotten its first update in aaaages, and it looks great!
- The Long Journey Home got a masssssive patch that adds an easier difficulty mode and plenty more fixes.
- Stellaris got an update to its multiplayer beta along with a massive development update.
- Starfighter Origins got a small update which fixes its in-game database.
- Remnants of the Precursors has a new blog update talking about its upcoming roadmap, which was posted yesterday. They also have some early Mrrshan artwork.
- The CIC reprinted an interview with composer George Oldziey found in the Wing Commander III strategy guide.
- Endless Space 2 got a great podcast from the Three Moves Ahead folks.
- Interstellar Rift apparently got the second part of its industry automation system.
- Icarus Starship Command Simulator got another patch which invalidated save games AGAIN. How’s a guy supposed to make a Let’s Play like this? ;)
- NEXT JUMP: Shmup Tactics got a nice patch and a word of future updates! Can’t wait!
- Everspace got a fairly large patch with a ton of little fixes.
- Fringes of the Empire got its first update in a while, which reminds me that I need to play it.
- Finally, it’s not a space game, but the developer of Sol Trader is about to launch a Kickstarter for his next game, Ealdorlight, so head over and check it out
In sales, we only have a couple:
- Steam is having a massive THQ Nordic sale, which includes all the Novalogic and Imperium Galactica games.
- Green Man Gaming is having a Stellaris sale.
WHEW! That took a while, but it was worth it. Thanks folks, and have a great weekend!