Moon Breakers: Browser-Based Action Space Combat Thingy

As a space game fan, I am insanely, INSANELY thankful of all the space games coming out of late. When I began this blog, I thought I’d barely have any new games to write about, but now I’m drowning in ’em. One of these is a Chrome-only browser-based space-based arena combat game entitled Moon Breakers and…it sure is something. Read on to find out what I thought of the game.

The version of the game I played was build 3280. Again, you need to download the Chrome app to run this game, which was simple enough to install. Once you install the app, you have to log in with a Gmail account — which I admit I wasn’t too thrilled with, but in this day and age it’s something that we seem to have to accept — and chose a server. Once logged into a server, I found my name was “Dead Saint”. If I wanted to change it…I had to pay for it. Whuuuut? I wasn’t thrilled with THIS either, but I moved on. Once you’re placed into a game — apparently you can’t choose a match either? — you’re given a choice of craft, from fighters to bombers.

I have to admit I’m a fan of bombers, so I went with the Rhino bomber, which has big-ass torpedoes. I launched from the carrier, Battlestar Galactica style, and found myself in a huge melee. The controls seemed easy enough. Mouse control for steering, two keys for weapons, two keys for throttle and some communications keys. Since I was in a bomber, I tried to target the enemy carrier…and found that there weren’t really any targeting controls. I think this is a pet-peeve of mine, as games without good targeting controlsreally piss me off. I therefore had to fly around randomly until I could see the dang thing, finally. Once I sighted my target, I headed right toward it and fired a torpedo

Sadly both the torpedo and I were shot down before we could do the enemy carrier much damage, which in a way is good, as it means the enemy carrier is sufficiently defended and posing a challenge. Sadly I again couldn’t target any fighters, especially those attacking me, so this lead to me bobbing and weaving and hoping to evade enemy fire long enough just to get a hit or two on the enemy carrier, which I did once or twice, but always found myself blowing up shortly thereafter, which made sense, but still, arg.

Eventually, our team lost — through little help or hindrance from me, I assume — but we were still rewarded. The game has apparently two sets of currency, Creds and He-3, both of which can be purchased using cashy money through Paypal. While you get creds through playing, which is nice, you need a good deal of ’em to change your name, upgrade your ship and so on, and there seem to be a decent amount of ship upgrades.

In between games, you get to see the next game you’ll be flung into, and which side you’ll be on, of which there are two, pirates and the government. The differences? Pirate ships are brown, government ships are gun-metal gray, that’s it. I also wasn’t able to change the game mode or the map, or even vote upon them, so if you want to set up a specific game type with specific people, you’re apparently out of luck. In the previous game, I was on the pirates side, this time, I was a government pilot, and we flew around in the broken moon map, which was kinda nifty.

Sadly, this bit was the only honest-to-goodness fun I had with Moon Breakers. I was able to get in two games, which ran fine on my old system, looked pretty good, and had decent sound effects for a browser game. However, in the middle of my second game, this happened…

…in a game with nine people in it. Nine. In a way, I saw this as a mixed blessing, because it never takes long for a good game to hook me, typically happening within minutes. After two games, nothing was clicking, and I just wasn’t having a lick of fun.

It’s a shame really. I hate crapping all over someone else’s hard work, but I have to honest in my findings. It’s my opinion that this game really isn’t that fun unless you’re looking for SUPER simple space combat. I don’t mind simple games, but I’d like at least some rudimentary controls for targeting and such, and sadly Moon Breakers didn’t have that. It’s a free game to try, so if you’re looking for uber-simple space combat, you could give it a try. Just keep your expectations really, really low, as I can’t honestly recommend it otherwise.

Thanks for reading, and please enjoy my gallery of screenshots below. Have a great day.