In space, no one can hear you sigh... The thick stench of disappointment hangs in the air as I write this; at least I’m pretty sure it’s disappointment. You see, I’ve been playing Space Siege for an indeterminate number of hours now. I was determined that “this isn’t it; there’s something more to it than this”. Let me tell you now. There isn’t.
Like me putting my name to a hastily written and badly spelt review (just imagine), Chris Taylor of Supreme Commander fame has his name slapped on the box of Space Siege, and I hope the thought of that makes him cringe. Gas Powered Games’ moderately successful previous RPG series, Dungeon Siege, was characterised by hiding away the traditional beardy RPG elements in an effort to hit a wider audience. It succeeded by being a good action RPG and by giving the player the sense of character progression in a less intimidating way than its rivals. Space Siege took this idea and ran with it, Forest Gump-style, until it had forgotten why it was running so it curled up in a hedge and had a little nap, then went to get pizza. By which I mean it’s taken it a touch too far... a bit like that analogy really. In Space Siege character progression is achieved by simply reaching a given point in the game. There is no point exploring to gain some extra XP, it makes no difference, you’ll be given the same 2 new skill points no matter how many generic aliens you kill.
Speaking of generic, your fallen foes drop a very descriptively named “Upgrade Material” that can, inexplicably, be used to make your gun fire more quickly. It’s also the same upgrade material that is found in toolboxes around the level. Some of which will have an incendiary mine in, that kills you. Can you say “Fun Game Mechanic”? No? Don’t feel bad, neither can Gas Powered Games. Undetectable traps like this sucked in FFXI and Everquest and countless other RPGs, and always will. This leads me on to the camera... Now I know complaining about a camera in a 3rd person game is like complaining about the liquorice in Liquorice Allsorts, but I hate liquorice. At least you can eat the yummy coloured bits and leave the horrible black bits. The camera in Space Siege can’t be chewed around and spat out so easily. I can’t fathom how GPG can go from creating the single greatest in-game camera ever (Supreme Commander) to this constrictive, counterintuitive, clumsy... *insert your own c word to finish this sentence*. When you play an action RPG in this day and age you expect the WASD keys to move your character - it’s a given. Yet Space Siege is determined that this should move the camera. The only way to move your character is to click on the ground; the only way to attack is to use that same mouse to click on the bad guy. Can you see the difficulty this might present when trying to maintain an attack while moving out of the way of incoming grenades? No? Again, it’s ok, you’re clearly not alone.
Another RPG trope is moral dilemmas, you walk into town and before you know it you’re the moral authority on everything from drug taking to underage inter-species sex. Space Siege’s moral topic of choice is cybernetics and their effect on humanity. They have cleverly avoided any moral sticking points by taking an arbitrary percentage score off your “Humanity Meter” for every implant installed and in return you get steel legs that give you +twelvety in the high jump. Neither the humanity score nor your new found ability in the high jump has any tangible effect on the gameplay. Unfortunately the cybernetic eye does not make you better at pub darts either.
I’m done complaining now, apart from the voice acting and the lack of any real story, oh, and the disappointment I felt that after seeing WALL-E they could do no better than a walking gun turret as a side kick. Not a very clever or friendly gun turret either, not like the turrets in Portal, oh no.
So then, redeeming features... well... I know I wrote something down... Aha! Physx! Some of you might be thinking that I’ve finally given up any attempt at correct spelling, but you can blame nVidia for that. Physx is a hardware controlled physics engine that allows an expensive physics card or people with new nVidia graphics cards to see REAL PHYSICS. Don’t get me wrong, the hardware physics are more impressive than their software created counterparts, but they have no bearing on the game and in many cases exploding gas bottles seemed more likely to come flying at me and explode in my face with hardware Physx turned on...
Insanely, given this rambling tirade, I didn’t actually hate Space Siege. It was almost therapeutic at times, just holding down the mouse button to alternately move and shoot. It gave me time to get excited about the coming months of impressive releases. And I’m still hopeful for Chris Taylor’s next project, Demigod.
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