Space Siege - Review @ IGN

First online review honours for Space Siege go to IGN, who were completely underwhelmed. The score is 6.4/10 and here's a snip:

Unfortunately, there's no real character or personality in a system that has you spending 200 upgrade parts to buy a 2-percent increase to your critical hit chance. Sure, that type of math may be used under the hood of most games, but it's like the developers at Gas Powered Games didn't even feel like disguising it beneath a layer of science fiction description. They missed a great opportunity to not only to add to the uniqueness of your own character, but also missed out on a chance to reinforce the setting.

More information.

It will be interesting to see if this game sells well or if it completely tanks. If it tanks, I wonder if it will change Chris Taylor's mind about how games need to be dumbed down more.

Heh, actually if it tanks, they are just going to blame piracy again…

Originally Posted by leth
Heh, actually if it tanks, they are just going to blame piracy again…

Or he'll start making screensavers. Oh right, he already does…

That score it exactly what I would expect from an honest reviewer… Taylor's "Siege" series has got to be one of the most boring set of games I've ever seen.

Granted I only "played" DS1 (and I use the word "played" very lightly… it was more like watching the game play itself)… but I just saw more of the same in DS2 so I didn't buy it. And I won't buy Space Siege… I just can't support that kind of game development.

Originally Posted by leth
Heh, actually if it tanks, they are just going to blame piracy again…

Oh yeah I forgot about that.

Originally Posted by leth
Heh, actually if it tanks, they are just going to blame piracy again…

Yep. I can imagine it. It became a trend these days. If you want to be "hip" and "cool" and your game sales flop - blame piracy.

You know, I may be the only one here that thought Dungeon Siege was a fun game and almost played it to completion. It was mindless, sure, but sometimes that's what you need.

Dungeon Siege 2 was pretty good.

Space Siege is even more streamlined than the original Dungeon Siege, and we're talking a game from the king of streamlining.

I didn't expect much based on the demo, but this is even worse than I thought. Coop multiplayer based on missions unrelated to the campaign? Count me out.

Taylor could use the lesson, though I doubt he'll learn. He's already gone the way of Spector and Molyneux.

PC Gamer dropped the big elbow on it, too. Wasn't hard to see coming. Dungeon Seige came out in 2002 and the engine looks like it's still the same after all these years.

Dungeon Siege 2 was very enjoyable in co-op mode and very accessible that way. This game, however, looks like crap.

Don't get me wrong, I think DS series has its place. And they definitely provided me with some hours of mindless enjoyment.

However, I am not a fan of the so called "streamlining" I will just quote the review from Gameradar.com:

It’d be unfair to hold Space Siege to the epic storytelling standards of Mass Effect, but it’s advantageous to have that dangling “carrot” to entice us to hack and slash (or, in this case, shooting and slashing) ever forward. That carrot may come in the form of cool and unique loot drops, massively configurable characters and armor sets, increasingly flamboyant attacks delivered by a party-full of disparate characters, and a new and interesting environment around every corner. Space Siege skimps on carrots: loot consists of boring health kits and scrap parts that can be traded for stat improvements in your abilities and weapons; your sole companion is HR-V, an upgradeable robot buddy; and the ship is one long, drab maze of metallic gray hallways and metallic gray catwalks. Worst of all, your cybernetic implants can’t be upgraded like your weapons and armor, or replaced with better ones. Even though the ship is infested by “cybers” - cyber-enhanced humans under Kerak control - only one of each body part implant is available.

And that is why I don't think I can get myself interested in the game

Damn game pirates!

No wonder the game gets such poor reviews. Based on the demo, it's complete, utter crap.

Like I'm going to trust a reviewer who last name is Butts

Originally Posted by narpet
That score it exactly what I would expect from an honest reviewer… Taylor's "Siege" series has got to be one of the most boring set of games I've ever seen.

Granted I only "played" DS1 (and I use the word "played" very lightly… it was more like watching the game play itself)… but I just saw more of the same in DS2 so I didn't buy it. And I won't buy Space Siege… I just can't support that kind of game development.

From what I've read/heard about DS1 it was a game where you could "play" it without actually having to interact with it almost at all, given that I opted to skip it until Lazarus and then didn't bother with the campaign at all.

Apparently DSII added more interactivity, and I own this as well, and found it to be an acceptable, if not memorable, ARPG. It's better than many of the shovelware ARPGs out there, but it's no classic and while improving the gameplay, they seemed to have just about killed the modability as there are very few mods for DSII, while there are quite a few smaller ones for DS1 plus the full makeover Lazarus.

Space Siege sounds like they went back to the failed DS1 forumla then went even further to make it and entirely unenjoyable game. I would've thought that they had learned their lesson when going from DS1 to DSII as the changes to DSII were, apparently, entirely driven by the almost entirely non-interactive nature of DS1, but then maybe he's now trying to get "casual" "gamers" to buy his crap. The reviewers seem to be correct that GPG missed the boat in all they had to do was copy DSII, update the engine and graphics, but leave the mechanics essentially alone…

I just don't get it. Casual gamers that I know of, will NEVER buy anything other than a trivial puzzle game, or card game and are best left to shareware and small indie developers. Oblivious was really a failure as from my personal experience I imagine that the vast majority of PC sales were driven by expectations of something equalling Morrowind if not returning more to Daggerfall in terms of world and play, while on consoles it was likely driven somewhat by that(but I doubt it with the entire lack of modability) and the near complete lack of decent RPGs(which Oblivious was mistakenly billed as). This is looking to be followed up by the FPS with the BFN(uclear)G based Fallout 3. Too bad they didn't add MP as it might've been worth it for online matches since the game itself sounds like it's Oblivious with BFNG, but, then, that's the only kind of game that Bethesda apparently knows how to make any longer since they managed to fire or otherwise get rid of any of their worthwhile staff, apparently along with any of them that had any technical skills.

I'm just glad that I picked up a Nintendo DS last year for my RPG goodness fix, even if it mostly just re-makes, as some of the re-makes are new in English while others are getting tired. (FFIV I'm looking at you, 5 versions now IIRC the SNES original plus 4 ports, 2 on Nintendo handhelds FFS! Might be time to pick up a PSP slim, put a custom firmware on it, and make eboots of all my PSX RPGs, as *ahem* I never actually did finish several of them, too bad that I have no way of porting my old save points…)

After playing DS1 through - in the end is definitively felt like a masochistric drug addicvtion - I was quite surprised to find the world in the demo of DS2 so … diverse … … The world, and the NPCs, not the game itself.

Presentation
Not worthy of the RPG half of its name. Too few choices and too little variety all around.

One of the best comments ever.

Originally Posted by Zloth
PC Gamer dropped the big elbow on it, too. Wasn't hard to see coming. Dungeon Seige came out in 2002 and the engine looks like it's still the same after all these years.

That's completely ridiculous. If you're gonna criticize a game, at least come up with decent arguments. I haven't played the demo, but from the screenshots alone it's obvious that the graphics look nothing like the antiquated Dungeon Siege— not even close to Dungeon Siege 2, which looked better than the original.

I just wish to point out that there's a great difference between Dungeon Siege and Dungeon Siege II. Dungeon Siege II is much closer to the kind of game that I believe most people on this site wants when it comes to story, quests, companions and a fleshed out world. While Dungeon Siege was almost strictly a linear diablo-clone-with-party, Dungeon Siege II kinda feels like playing a game like Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale, only using the DS combat/graphic engine.

It's therefore unfortunate that both the expansion (Broken World) and Space Siege go back to the Dungeon Siege 1 formula. Had they kept the improvements of DS2 then SS could really have been something.

Oh well. I guess Gas Powered Games is another "lost hope". Another nail in the RPG coffin.

Sounds like DS2 didin´t sell so well and GPG analyzed why. Unfortunately they didn´t find the answer "DS1 already ruined everything, including DS2´s buzz."