Indeed, Mr Joined-In-2005-Building-Up-His-Cover Guy! I hear you liked that game that time!!!
Parkan 2 is available here. I played the Russian version back then and wow, it was one buggy mess. Word is they’ve fixed that though…
Parkan 2 tripped my what-the-hell buying circuits. I’ve played a little bit of it so far, basically through the tutorial sequences. The translation has its good points and bad points. On the plus side, it’s pretty funny, like my favorite thing your AI narrator, Airene (of course) has said so far, “Every system is broken. But everything else is okay.” or something like that. It’s good to keep that kind of perspective in the face of personal misfortune!
The voiceacting is, of course, horrible. This falls mostly on the positive side of the balance sheet, especially when you factor in the death-cries of enemy robots.
The downside of the russglish comes from needed information to progress sometimes getting garbled in it. There was a bit of the tutorial I was flatout stumped on for a bit, needing some ship geegaw to perform intersystem jumps. It was only after visiting every planet in the starting system that I found what I was looking for–and in retrospect was able to parse the info it was trying to get across.
One crash so far, due to the engine choking on some kind of scripting error, and the framerate is really jerky when docked to an enemy ship, but inside yours.
Does support up to 1920x1200, but it’s one of those games without scaling UIs, so the text is nigh-unreadable for my bad eyes at that, so had to kick it down. Further, there didn’t seem to be any lower-res widescreen settings, so sideboxing it went.
Money is fuel is money, which is an interesting minor abstraction. Fuel seems to only get used when jumping from one system to another, not flying from planet to planet within one, and for purchasing. You can also manufacture personal packs of rockets for your secondary rocket launcher weapon in FPS mode at your rearming station.
Apparently later on in the game, you can use it to upgrade and build onto planetary bases that you take over.
The easiest way to win all ship-to-ship combat is to not even try, just get close enough to an enemy long enough to trigger the autodocking. Whereupon you can board and blow up the robot crew on the ship; as the last one goes, the ship enters into an extremely generous self-destruct timer, which gives more than enough time to run around, steal whatever bits of cargo you can, and undock. All the other enemy ships will have been politely waiting their turn for you to then do the same to them.
RED ALARM
I picked up Parkan II yesterday as well and my impressions are similar to Drastics, though I haven’t had any crashes so far.
Both the ship combat and FPS combat are decent but nothing special. I found myself doing some circle strafing in the outdoor areas, as well as using changes in the terrain for cover (like ducking behind the crest of a hill). Indoor combat so far is usually a matter of making sure you take on the enemy is small groups, so I end up doing a lot of “door choking”. Space combat is not Newtonian, it’s pretty typical arcade space flight. I haven’t tried it with my stick or 360 controller because the mouse control is adequate. As was mentioned above it does seem easier, at least for the initial encounters, to just board the enemy ships than to fight them since it takes forever to shoot down a ship. Of course a lot of that might have to do with the fact that your initial ship weapons seriously blow. I upgraded to a laser than does half again the damage of the starting one and space combat became better.
Even though the individual pieces are good but not great, I am really enjoying the game so far. I really like the combination of ship combat and planetary/boarding action.
How does the universe feel? Is there space chatter? Pirates? Police? Contraband to smuggle? Does it feel alive?
Give some details, please. It sounds a bit like Battlecruiser done better.
The universe thus far is very sterile. I randomly met one neutral trader (which knocks you right out of autopilot to talk with him), and a pirate trying to get me to take over friendly planetary bases. Aside from that, I haven’t seen any NPC traffic whatsoever.
Planetside feels a bit better–the bases have a small handful of robots roaming around, at least. Of course, when you’re in good graces, you never need to step outside your ship when you land, as you can contract all business from inside it.
It’s similar to Battlecruiser only inasmuch as it does quite a few things at once, none of them particularly well, but with a certain earnestness. All in all, the things it does, while not done particularly well, are still done rather better than Battlecruiser. Unknown whether the developers are insane or not, though.
whatever the opinion of Parkan II gameplay, it’s safe to say they sure know how to make a great looking and functional GUI.
How stable is it?
Can you do a Freelancer and just fly around a system in realspace, exploring?
Seconded here. I’m jonesing for something like this, but does it have even a speck of exploration in it? Is it worthwhile to just fly around and upgrade your rig/cash/whatever with zero storyline progression, or does it lock you out if you don’t advance the story?
I’ve been playing for a few more hours and I’m loving it. I try to quickly write up some general info and answers to the questions asked. Forgive my fast typing and total lack of proofreading.
I’ve moved out of the starting system and have been exploring the local cluster of star systems. It seems that you can go as far as your fuel can take you. I don’t know if there are special areas or encounters to reward random exploration. You can go down to any planet and check out the port, factories, and other facilities (which are cookie cutter structures so far) and you can grab any equipment you find so that is a minor reward for exploring. You do suffer a penalty to you relations with the clan the base belongs to if you do steal, and of course on bases where clans are already hostile to you, you will be attacked on sight.
You can make a decent profit raiding enemy bases, however missions are probably more profitable. Missions are what you’d expect of generated missions. Take this to here. Destroy enemy ships there. There are more interesting missions, like ones where you must fight some ships, land on the planet, have a ground battle, board an enemy ship and get something or upload a virus (which means stand in the command spot and hit x after killing all the enemies).
You have your ship to upgrade, with power plant, engine, sensors, shield modules, and various weapons and special modules. Plus you have your battlesuit to upgrade, with it’s power plant, exoskeleton (analogous to your ships engine), shield, sensors, weapons and special modules.
You can take over planets, and it appears you can build factories and make stuff, but I haven’t done any of that yet.
Your ship can carry drones (fighters) that assist you in ship combat. There are also “warbots” that assist you in ground combat. There are flying warbots, walking warbots, tanks, etc. It is pretty cool to land, run to cover and command the ship to drop the warbots and watch the battle for a few seconds before engaging (though sometimes you want to run out by yourself and land some missiles on the large defense turrets that will shred your guys if you drop them too soon, and then have them drop to finish off enemy forces, a lesson I just learned the hard way).
There are random encounters in space. Enemies will often attack, but sometimes give you missions to get in their good graces. Neutral and friendly ships can be traded with, they will also have info (things like navigation maps and planet info for other systems) and missions, just like planets as bases.
Like everything I’ve experienced in the game the encounters are pretty cookie cutter, so far I get one of a handful of greetings in a cheesy droid voice (good cheesy though), and then you either fight or you have access to the trade, info and mission menus in the UI until you or the other guy leaves the area.
We really should start a new thread specifically for Parkan. Maybe later I’ll try to parse this huge post into good initial post for one.
And to be on topic for a moment, SR2 seemed cool for the hour I played it. The demo is harsh. No tutorial. It starts, you get attacked and you die, and you die, and you die, and if you stick with it you get the hang of it and you finally beat the initial encounter. That’s as far as I got as I needed a break after that.
I’ve been playing for a few more hours and I’m loving it. I try to quickly write up some general info and answers to the questions asked. Forgive my fast typing and total lack of proofreading.
I’ve moved out of the starting system and have been exploring the local cluster of star systems. It seems that you can go as far as your fuel can take you. I don’t know if there are special areas or encounters to reward random exploration. You can go down to any planet and check out the port, factories, and other facilities (which are cookie cutter structures so far) and you can grab any equipment you find so that is a minor reward for exploring. You do suffer a penalty to you relations with the clan the base belongs to if you do steal, and of course on bases where clans are already hostile to you, you will be attacked on sight.
You can make a decent profit raiding enemy bases, however missions are probably more profitable. Missions are what you’d expect of generated missions. Take this to here. Destroy enemy ships there. There are more interesting missions, like ones where you must fight some ships, land on the planet, have a ground battle, board an enemy ship and get something or upload a virus (which means stand in the command spot and hit x after killing all the enemies).
You have your ship to upgrade, with power plant, engine, sensors, shield modules, and various weapons and special modules. Plus you have your battlesuit to upgrade, with it’s power plant, exoskeleton (analogous to your ships engine), shield, sensors, weapons and special modules.
You can take over planets, and it appears you can build factories and make stuff, but I haven’t done any of that yet.
Your ship can carry drones (fighters) that assist you in ship combat. There are also “warbots” that assist you in ground combat. There are flying warbots, walking warbots, tanks, etc. It is pretty cool to land, run to cover and command the ship to drop the warbots and watch the battle for a few seconds before engaging (though sometimes you want to run out by yourself and land some missiles on the large defense turrets that will shred your guys if you drop them too soon, and then have them drop to finish off enemy forces, a lesson I just learned the hard way).
There are random encounters in space. Enemies will often attack, but sometimes give you missions to get in their good graces. Neutral and friendly ships can be traded with, they will also have info (things like navigation maps and planet info for other systems) and missions, just like planets as bases.
Like everything I’ve experienced in the game the encounters are pretty cookie cutter, so far I get one of a handful of greetings in a cheesy droid voice (good cheesy though), and then you either fight or you have access to the trade, info and mission menus in the UI until you or the other guy leaves the area.
We really should start a new thread specifically for Parkan. Maybe later I’ll try to parse this huge post into good initial post for one.
And to be on topic for a moment, SR2 seemed cool for the hour I played it. The demo is harsh. No tutorial. It starts, you get attacked and you die, and you die, and you die, and if you stick with it you get the hang of it and you finally beat the initial encounter. That’s as far as I got as I needed a break after that.
Hmmmm… ok, more Parkan 2 questions.
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When you are exploring these planets, is it a menu or are you running around first person? Is it a small map that loads and has borders, or can you run around the whole surface? For instance, could you land several miles outside of a settlement and make your way to it on foot, approach it from a better angle, etc?
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Can you go in/board space stations on foot? Or is it all menu driven?
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When you say there are random encounters in space, do you mean that a ship pops out of nowhere, or can you see it approach from a distance and run if you want? Is flying in real time or turn based like Space Rangers 2?
On planets that you are friendly with you can access the various station services while still in your ship through the interface menus, but you can still go and walk around the port. On neutral planets you have to get out an walk to the port. I haven’t noticed if the area has any invisible walls, I imagine it doesn’t go on forever.
Space stations work much the same way.
Random encounters in space involve ships popping out of hyperspace at a distance, so you can probably run (I haven’t tried yet).
Man, this sounds too cool to be true. Boarding and fighting ships? Landing and fighting on planets? Space battles? Ordering troops around?
How’s space combat? Does the mouse and keyboard work well?
Mouse and keyboard work fine. So far I haven’t bothered to knock the dust off my stick and throttle.
Combat is arcade space combat, no inertia. When you take your hand off the throttle you slow down. You can thrust left, right, up and down in addition to yaw, pitch and roll. You have an afterburner as well.
The commands for drones and warbots are pretty simple, “follow me”, “attack my target” type things. They will of course engage on their own as well.
My only major gripe is the slowdown when you are on your own ship in a boarding action or on a planet/station. It’s weird, I get >100 fps sometimes, but in that situation it goes down to 12. Thankfully the only thing you generally do on your own ship is walk to the transport beam which is never far away.
My minor gripe is the cookie cutter nature of the universe. So far every spaceport I’ve seen has the same layout. I think I’ve seen a couple of different layouts of planetary factories, so I imagine there is some small variety in the structures. However this sort of thing is pretty typical in a game of this nature so I can forgive it. I do wish there were modding community of people adding new structures and things to the game.
You know, other than the opening scene, I haven’t hated the voice acting. The voice for AIrene is acceptable, and the droid voices are fine as well.
My god though, that opening scene was terrible in every possible way. Terribly scripted to begin with (long narrative inner monologues as always bad, this one doubly so), terribly translated (RED ALARM?!?), even the animation is somehow painful.
How do the graphics look compared to X3? Talking about Parkan 2.
I only played the X3 demo for maybe a day so I don’t know if I can really compare. Like most things the graphics aren’t spectacular, but not bad either. The engine and textures seem a few years out of date at this point, but they don’t detract from my enjoyment so far.
I finally started a new thread for Parkan II.
Regarding Space Force- there isn’t a manual included, at all?
Jesus.