I couldn’t really get into it.
It felt like a nice concept, but just wasn’t that interesting : I didn’t find the top down fighting very satisfying, with its floppyness (excepting, strangely, for the wrenches), and the difficulty was totally random. Yet, losing didn’t feel like it had much of any implication. Which might be linked to the “strategic” layer, which I think is kind of a mess.
I bounced off it so much, I feel that I must have misunderstood something about the game and that I am bad.
I’m enjoying Heat Signature a lot. I bought it with my Helium Rain refund. It even has docking just like Helium Rain. Except that it’s fun, not incredibly annoying. :)
I think Helium Rain is great, and you don’t ever need to dock manually again if you buy the docking upgrade (which you can do in the first couple hours of the game). And manual docking isn’t any worse than any of the lockpicking minigames in Western RPGs of late. I liked what they were trying to do, and I appreciate that the game gives you the option to never dock manually again beyond a certain point. :)
Since Starflight came up in the Star Control thread, has anyone heard anything else about someone possibly working on it since it was teased by Brian Fargo last year?
Yep. I suspect someone with some sense looked at the concept before going ahead with it and said, “Nah, people won’t like that.” Shame it never released.