Xbox
Review

Space Crew

by
on

A lack of mission variety and no real story meant that my time with Space Crew was never going to live long, or prosper.

3

You can definitely have too much of a “good” thing. Space Crew is the sci-fi sequel to Bomber Crew, a game which I enjoyed when it was on Game Pass and played to completion, putting in around a dozen or so hours.

What Bomber Crew was to World War 2 and the stories told in the likes of Dam Busters and Battle of Britain, Space Crew is to Star Trek. As such I was looking forward to playing it. I was, sadly, disappointed.

Maybe it was too many hours on the previous game, but, only after a just a few missions I found the game very repetitive and actually worse than its predecessor. The sci-fi setting introduces new graphics and new controls to your craft, but it fundamentally remains the same game.

You can still customise your ship, earning rewards as you progress and your crew level up as they complete missions, gaining extra abilities and skills. As with Bomber Crew, if a crew member gets killed, they are dead and gone, and with them all that hard work and experience. Unlike a lot of roguelike games though, you really feel punished for it and progress feels like a grind. That backup squadron you called up to protect you on the last mission? Well the radio operator who called them up is dead, and with them, that support.

An exterior screenshot from Space Crew, showing your ship battling several others in an asteroid field.

Yes it's a risk/reward system but the missions and the environments are so similar that it just becomes dull. I constantly had a feeling of déjà vu and again, that was added to due to the time I'd spent in the previous game.

The controls and game mechanics also felt much more finicky than before. The move to space brings with it greater freedom of movement – no plummeting into the sea this time! - however the enemy craft can now attack from all angles. The big issue with this is the level of micro management involved to take on your attackers.

A screenshot from Space Crew, showing your 6-person crew lined up in the gear room.

Having a crew member manning the weapons is all well and good, but unless you drop into the first person view and manually target the enemy they don’t do anything. This makes the juggling act of managing your ship & crew much more complex than it needs to be.

Maybe had I not invested time in the previous game I may have felt different. I may have been taken in by the 'cute', basic graphics and the humour of the game, and enjoyed it more. But the lack of any real variety in missions along with no real story just makes the game seem like a string of unconnected events, and meant that I soon lost interest.

A map view from Space Crew, showing the layout of your ship with markers for your crew members.

Should it pop up on Game Pass and if you haven't played Bomber Crew, you may get some enjoyment from the game, but for me my time here was never going to live long, or prosper.

Special thanks to Curve Digital & PressEngine for the review code.