Welcome to my review of Space Pirates and Zombies, the first game developed by Minmax Games (minmax-games.com).
Space Pirates and Zombies or SPaZ for short (what a deliciously un-PC name) is the brainchild of two 20 year veterans of the triple A game development market, Andrew Hume and Richard Clifford, who had both previously worked on the unreleased Scarface 2 at Radical Entertainment. After Scarface 2 and another undisclosed project were cancelled, the pair decided to start MinMax Games, to attempt to emulate and improve on what they consider the "Golden Age of Gaming".
That's a pretty big ask, to improve on the golden age of gaming, so with their first game SPaZ have they managed it? Well yes and no.
According to steam i have currently sunk around 20 hours into the game, which may not seem like much. Around this sort of timespan is where I normally get distracted by the next shiny object, but with SPaZ I'm still going back.
I don't find it's a game that I can sit and sink hours and hours into in one session, but after a hard day of making sure packets get from A to B, or writing some horrendous Perl script (not due to the language being horrible just my coding skills ), I often find myself firing up SPaZ rather than DuesEx:HR or Call of Duty:BlackOps. But why is that?
In keeping with what I consider the golden age of gaming, SPaZ really has that one more turn or in SPaZ's case, that one more battle feeling that I remember from classics like CIV2 and Jagged Alliance 2.
When you start the game you are informed by a voice over from John "Totalbiscuit" Bain, that far in the future mankind has colonized the galaxy, but Earth has become a toxic wasteland, you also learn of a rumour that one of the systems close to the galaxy core could contain a vast amount of Rez (the in game currency), as well as a scientific treasure trove. So your band of pirates, decided to build a ship and push forward to the galaxy core to get rich.
Here lies the first problem of your groups plan, travel between systems is only possible through special "Warp Gates", which are guarded by a faction called the UVA.
The UVA were established back when the warp gates were being constructed to police trade and travel between the galaxy's systems, but for some reason, which isn't really important to the game and which I can't remember, they decide the galaxy would be better off if no one was able to move between the galaxy's systems.
So the game starts and off you go on the quest to reach the core worlds and to become rich as well a very rich thing.
Gameplay in SPaZ takes the form of a top down shooter, with you controlling one ship whilst the AI takes care of the other ships in your fleet; you have the ability to swap between your ships with an easy key press. The game is controlled with standard PC controls, WASD for movement, and the mouse for ship orientation, the left mouse button takes care of firing your beam/cannon weapons, and the right mouse button takes care of firing off missiles, torpedoes and bombs.
When you first start the game, you have access to only a few different hulls, which come in tiny, small, medium, large and HUGE, and each of the hulls is fully customizable, Using an intuitive drag and drop system. Part of the fun of SPaZ is that you can spend ages tinkering with the ship load outs. For example I normally put extra shield boosters onto my ships, but another player might find that they want to be able to fire quicker so will replace one of their tractor beams with a beam booster, this combined with each hull having different strengths and weaknesses really helps to keep things from stagnating too quickly.
The universe, in which the SPaZ takes place, is massive, its smallest size being around 100 stars, at largest goes up past 400. This is important, and goes a long way into setting the difficulty. Above I mentioned the Warp Gates as being the only way to travel, and they fact that they are all blockaded by the UTA, well each of those blockades is given a level number, which helps to indicate what Tech level you will be facing, and give an indication of how hard it will be to break through. So if you have only 100 stars, the tech levels you will be facing will jump in greater numbers, so instead of a nice learning curve you can be faced with a learning curve that looks a little like Everest. On the plus side the number of stars slider as well as the traditional Easy Medium and hard settings, can help you to fine tune your gaming experience.
The combat, which makes up the meat of the game, comes across as being well thought out, and hectic, boy are some of the battles hectic. When you spawn in an area, you normally spawn close to the enemy, or the people you're about to make enemies of, so there is no waiting around for the fun to start, you just charge off towards them and let loose with all manner of lovely death dealing toys. The use of the WASD keys helps to keep the juking diving, and manoeuvring nice and simple, but allows you the freedom to try different tactics, you can also hit space at any time and give basic orders to your wingmen(women). All ships have shields and armour, so you have to balance out your ship customizations to ensure you are able to deal decent damage to both. I can't remember the number of times I have flown in, smacked a ship hard with a load of anti-shield weapons, and then realised, I couldn't do jack to the armour.
Once an enemy ship or station is destroyed, they release Rez, Goons, knowledge and ship specs. Rez is the main game currency, and is used to buy new systems from stations. Goons, are crewmembers and can be used in trade to improve relations with the CIV faction, knowledge on the other hand fills a bar which in turn allows you to level up and receive upgrade points. Upgrade points are then spent on a multitude of different tech levels, anything from shields to reactors. The more points you put into one tech the better that tech will perform, and the more impressive the items you can use from that tech. For instance, all your ships start with surplus shields, the weakest of all shield types, from a station you can buy better shields, but in order to use those, you need to be level 3 in shields, so you need to grind enough enemy kills to gain six upgrade points which you then spend in the shield category to enable you to use those shields. At the same time, any points you spend in the different techs, also add pluses to the current items your ship is using, so again with shields, if you had not found a base selling shields, but you still spend the same six upgrade points on shields you would still see a +15% to those shields basic stats.
Ship specs allow you to reverse engineer enemy vessel types, that you currently do not have available, every time you kill an enemy of a type that you do not possess they release a part of that know age, once you capture enough parts, you will be able to build that ship type. This forces you to hunt for different enemy types, to build your fleet, and adds another nice layer to the game.
This brings me to my one bug bear of the game. Grind, grind, grind, as I said earlier, this is not a game I can personally put hours and hours into in one go. SPaZ can become a little repetitive at times, you will come to a point whilst playing this game that all the warp gate blockades around you are at a level above your current tech, and attempting to break them leads to suicide, fun suicide, but suicide all the same. Over my last 20 hours of game play, more than once, I have been forced back to only being able to build the Short Bus, and having to go on a massive Rez mining operation. Or i have been forced to farm the same missions over and over again in order to drag my knowledge bar up a couple of levels so i can beef up my weapons, to stand a chance at smashing that next blockade.
Does this mean I don't like SPaZ, or that I wouldn't recommend it. In a word NO. Some people, mainly MMO players, seem to love the grind, and it's not that big a problem to dissuade me from recommending it.
SPaZ really is one of the greatest games I have played all year, and I can see it providing me with many more hours of fun and excitement. Couple this with a developer who really do care about the game, just check their forums, they actually interact with their fan base and has promised additional content, and imp still as excited as when I first started playing.
SPaZ is available via Steam, Impulse, Desura, Direct2Drive and also direct from MinMax
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