Gratuitous Space Battles
Created by: Positech Games
http://www.positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/
The second title in my series is Gratuitous Space Battles developed by Positech Games way back in 2009. Players are given a library of parts and weapons and must build and equip a fleet of space ships on a budget. Along with designing the layout of the ships you must also give them behaviors and priorities so they know how to act without your input in battle. The player creates the fleet, chooses how they behave, deploys them on the battlefield and watches the fun. Victory comes with survival and earns you honor.
WARNING: My summary above may make this game seem easier than its actually going to be. It's described as being like a tower defense game, but that doesn't do it justice. For each battle you play you must revamp your ships changing out the layouts trying to get the most effective unit possible while keeping your budget to a minimum(The less you spend on winning a battle, the more you get as a reward). This makes the game pretty tough and very time consuming.
To make the game REALLY challenging they took away real time control of the units. Instead of telling which ships where to fire mid battle, the player must set priorities for the ships to follow on their own. This behavior mechanic/passive control combo works well as replacement to constant control, however with more variables comes more tweaking post-battle.
This game is invaluable to the hardcore strategist who likes careful planning over quick maneuvering, as long as they have a lot of time on their hands. Each battle will have to be played a few times over to figure out the enemy fleets weaknesses, then a few more times to carefully utilize your ships to gain maximum honor. I only wish I had more time to play this game(or faster than 4x speed in battle). That, I think, is the only drawback about the game. It takes a certain amount of commitment to finish a battle, not including maximizing honor, that can be intimidating for your average player. For those who consider themselves experts at strategy games or who like being seriously challenged, Gratuitous Space Battles is everything you've been looking for. Especially if you can find it for the $10 price that I did.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Gratuitous Space Battles
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