Welcome back to another week of spacey gaming my friends! This week’s game of the week is the recently-released fleet combat sector control game Hexterminate, which had been in the works for ages and was released out of nowhere. So far it’s looking pretty great. The new stream time is still keeping me pretty tired, but I’m loving it. Suffice it to say if I have extra time or energy I’ll try to fit more videos in this week.
Moving on from pre-recorded content, here’s this week’s streaming schedule (please remember, all times are Pacific). Please recall we’ve now moved to a 6 AM Pacific start time:
Tuesday - 6:00 AM-9:00 AM, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay stream. 4:00 PM-6:00 PM, space games that focus on building spaceships live podcast recording.
Wednesday - 6:00 AM-9:00 AM, Mass Effect 3 stream.
Friday - 6:00 AM-9:00 AM, Freespace Fridays continues as we continue our campaign in Descent: Freespace using the FSPort!
Saturday - No stream today. It’s the first anniversary of my first cat’s passing and I know I’m gonna be a wreck.
Sunday - 6:00 AM-9:00 AM, Far Cry 5 co-op stream.
You can watch any of these streams live on Twitch, and you can see all of our planned upcoming streams and events on our calendar, as always!
In this week’s op-ed, I talk about a lot of things, such as how, for the first time, I don’t feel guilty for taking a break from streaming for a day or two to avoid burnout.
That’s it for this upcoming week, my wonderful friends. Hopefully I’ll see y’all at a thing!
Friends, today was my fifth attempt in Star Fleet II to capture an enemy cruiser, and I finally did it with seconds to spare. Truly one of my greatest gaming moments in all my years.
Hah. Basically I attacked and captured an enemy light cruiser, then took it in a tractor beam, then risked overloading my engines to get to my starfort to turn it in before the timer ran out. I had 25 days to do it, I did it with 0.01 day left.
I think I’ve got about 60 hours into Star Valor now. I’m at the point where I can totally see the man behind the curtain and know I’m only playing it for the quick endorphin hits, but I’m still playing it anyway. I just bought a new super-expensive ship and want to play around with it for a bit. I need to move on to another game soon because it’s getting that bloated ‘Halloween candy’ feel at this point.
So… great music, great arcadey feel, solid graphics, good spread of ship customization options. On the downside, universe feels large but ankle-deep, very little variety in mission types, and not much to work toward in the endgame other than hoarding money and trying to take down those ‘ravager’ boss ships that appear in certain zones. You could probably get many hours of play just out of tweaking builds to take on ravagers at near your own level, but I’d say at that point you’re pretty deep in diminishing-returns land.
I also have very mixed feelings about the choice of putting an MMO-style level layer on top of your standard Elite goulash. The idea that some sectors are ‘higher level’ than others (complete with low, ‘grey’ XP that you earn from exploring severely under-level zones) just feels kinda gross in a space game.
The little ‘war zones’ that pop up - fleets from one faction can attack a sector controlled by another - are fun in the moment but seem to have little impact on the big picture. When you zoom way out on the galactic map it just ends up looking like stochastic noise. But there are some nice opportunities in the early game to sneak into those big battles and scoop up loot and easy kills, etc. It’s also fun to watch the ships’ AI playing out with each other and there are nice touches like how you get a rep boost if you help a ship from a particular faction when it’s in a fight.
As much as I am a fan of procedural content and have never put much weight in games as a storytelling medium, I am increasingly appreciative of a ‘main plot’ in any game simply as a way to tell your lizard brain that it’s over and you can move on with your life. It does provide some nice closure. It’s like, the game is giving you permission to stop playing it. MMOs of course explicitly avoid doing that. Sandboxes by their nature tend not to do that. But it has its value.
Anyway, it’s certainly worth <$10 but it’s time for me to move on.
Which game gives the better impression of commanding a spaceship with a crew (and not some “crew number bar” you need to refill at space stations)?
I would really love to see something like the Akella’s Pirates games, but in space. Is there something like that?
Any free roam 2d games where you guide your carrier around, launching fighter squads made up of pilots with personalities, stats, stories, etc? Too much to ask that a BSG Star Control exists? :)
