Maniacal Monday – Hailing Frequencies Open for 6/19/17

Welcome to Monday my friends. I’m tweaking the title a bit up there to be a bit more natural/varied, so I hope y’all like it. These articles are an ever-present work-in-progress, so every now and then I might change something up. Hopefully the content will always stay awesome though! Speaking of, I’ve got some content for y’all this week, starting with 1995’s insanely mediocre space sim, Renegade: Battle for Jacob’s Star.

This game came out a year after TIE Fighter and Wing Commander III. If it had existed in a universe without those two games, maybe it’d be looked upon more favorably despite its confusing story, inconsistent AI and ridiculous dialogue (seriously, it’s hilarious). The missions were all pretty much the same though. Recon mission? Kill waves of enemies. Rescue mission? Kill waves of enemies. It’s so weird. Star Crusader, which came out a year earlier, had you doing actual recon during recon missions. Here they just talk about the recon. Again, super weird. The soundtrack is AMAZING though. On the other side of the coin, it also gave me the most technical issues of any DOS game I’ve reviewed to date, sadly.

Today’s second video is a one-off preview of a space fighter game called Disputed Space. This is basically a game with Descent-like controls in an open arena with A FUCKTON of ships shooting at each other. Seriously, dozens, if not hundreds of things are all fighting it out in front of you, and it can get a bit overwhelming, truth be told. I hope the developer adds some tools for situational awareness, because the only way I could truly tell what to shoot at next is to see what my AI buddies were shooting at. Overall, it was a fantastic time though.

As for other gaming, I got so little in this past weekend I’m actually feeling a bit of withdrawal. Seriously, I’m feeling bit prickly and anxious, so I think I just need to sit down at my PC and play something today or tomorrow just for myself. Likely some DOOM or LOGistICAL, or both if I have the time. I did get some TxK in, thankfully, but that’s just not the same at all, really. That’s like a teensy cracker when you’re used to a feast, you know?

Anyway, enough about me, there’s a ton of news to go through, so let’s dive in:

• Galactic Civilizations III got a massive patch that adds content, fixes balance issues and a ton more. Seriously, it’s huge, and it works on both the base game and the Crusade expansion (which I still need to try out, cursed lack of time).
• Star Fleet Armada Rogue Adventures got a patch that deals with fleet upgrades, and another which deals with combat.
• SuperCluster: Void got two patches, one for bug fixes and one that added zoom and other features!
• Gemini Wars (remember that one?) has news that they’re removing both the DRM and multiplayer from the game, since the devs weren’t really supporting it.
• Concealed Intent’s developer not only did a big move, but got a job (yay!), so development on the game will slow a bit, understandably.
• Remnants of the Precursors has some new ship design UI that is just dead sexy. Seriously, I love UI, and I love how this game gives off a 90s feel while still being modern in its UI.
• Wayward Terran Frontier: Zero Falls now has Steam Workshop support, thanks to a recent patch.
• Disputed Space got a new patch before I made that video above that adds “much more impressive capital ship explosions for enemy capital ships.” He is not kidding.
• Istrolid (which I still need to play, sorry) got a patch which modded its weapons a bit.
• Stellar Tactics has updated their Dauntless experience, as they’re calling it, in a recent patch.
• Discovery Freelancer (which we’ll be streaming this weekend, by the way) has a big new patch with a lot of stuff in it. Like shotguns! ;)
• The Sentient’s developers are working on better AI pathing for their crewmembers, according to a new dev update.

Finally, the Steam Summer Sale is dropping in a few days, so be sure to grab any deals from GOG while their sale is still on. To get some momentum before Steam launches their Summer Sale, GamersGate have launched theirs, with way too many deals to mention, but some really great stuff, like Starpoint Gemini Warlords for $24.

That’s it for today folks! Have a great one!