Weyl, it's been interesting, so I thought I should share my views with the community at large - not that I imagine you're interested, but I'm bored.
Sooo, got the game on Friday (after paying a nasty customs charge - stupid HM Customs), and rushed off to give it a try. To my great relief it actually worked (the demo... did not) - so, not one to start out slow, I read the manual cover to cover and started my brave new life as a TER/MIL Commander in my big ol' Firestorm, since everyone seems to like it.
After undocking, much blank staring ensued, followed by a frantic search for The Button To Make Spaceship Go - this took some time, during which I was jumped by a whole hoarde of red dots and promptly blown to tiny little spaceship bits.
Hm. I can see this will take some time.
After managing to Make Ship Go a second time around, I had lots of fun whizzing about the place generally causing a ruckus - and had several notable experiences; to whit:
1. The jolly hijinks resulting from Trying To Find My Damn Mining Drones Again (Got the hang of that now, thank God).
2. Decided to go give some Insurgent base on Earth a taste of GALCOM justice via the direct route of flying my Aestrom overhead (watching the PTA's rake the buildings is just coolness on stilts) - and by keeping the EMD online at all times, I am completely safe from counterattack! Stupid Insurgents. In fact, I had so much fun, I decided to park the Aestrom and go walkies in the wreckage.
Good idea, until the autopilot decided to take off again, leaving poor little me stranded. However, the autopilot then decided to carry on my destructive work, and walking around on the ground with an Aestrom performing strafing runs with its PTA's overhead (Admittedly, occasionally bouncing off the ground) was VERY IMPRESSIVE AND COOL. Then it blew up. Bugger.
3. Rather annoyingly, a brave attempt to have a Proper Career Not Involving Random Acts Of Stupidity was foiled when my (only) savegame decided to go all corrupt and crash to desktop every time I loaded it. In future, I shall have to save to more than one slot.
However, it did give me the oppurtunity to start a new career in a Nightstar - the PTA turrets can't hit the broad side of a Stormcarrier and the fighters are apparently made of cardboard... But it looks so damn cool! Like a big aircraft carrier in space! FIRE THE YAMATO GUN! Ahem. Also it's kinda tanky, which is nice, and this led to another VERY COOL moment - whilst waiting for some upgrades to be installed, I decided I was bored, so I was going to go take on some of those irritatingly immobile space marines with my Commanderly skillz - and the sheer awe and joy of floating in a spacesuit around my Nightstar is hard to describe... Running along the flight decks, sitting on the PTA Turrets... And then finding an enemy marine floating overhead (immobile, at least until I floated up to him and shot him in the head - then he whizzed off at the speed of sound, the coward).
This all culminated with a very nasty situation on board the GCV-Retaliator - being towed from Lennen to Lyrius because the intruders running riot on my ship had blown up the engines, and were making a good go at the reactor core, and all the marines were too beaten up and frightened to leave their quarters (bloody cowards! show 'em some cold steel, I say! Those intruders, they don't like it up 'em!).
And then crash to desktop, bah, but no matter, I saved earlier.
Minor niggles:
1. Enemy ships constantly and constistently decide to have fights inside the planetary sphere, thus causing me to auto-planetfall when I jump to them. (generally this is around a nice hostile planet designed to make ship go boom).
2. Get stuck inside models of other ships if I fly into the back of them (which happens a lot).
Despite this, and the crashes, it's annoyingly addictive - and it's rare to get that 'One More Game' quality in something of this genre... Even as we speak I have just formulated a plan in which the Commander hops into a spacesuit and goes to sit on top of his Nightstar's main guns to issue attack orders (of course, it might just fly through me, but experimentation is fun).
Then it's probably time to kamikaze the Nightstar into an Insurgent ground-base, those PTA's just make me fighter-bait.
Marcus Arac
