Wadaya Buyin’? Evochron Mercenary
Like this? (No Votes Yet)I’ve briefly started on Star Trek Online since I talked about it last week. I’ve created a character (a Betazoid Science Officer), and finished the tutorial. It’s still too early to say whether I’ll be sticking with this, but there are some positives with my experience so far. I think that the spaceship combat is quite well designed, and extremely reminiscent of the Starfleet Command PC games from the late 90s/early 2000s. The balance between leveling up the ship, your main character and your cast of Bridge Officers is also an interesting dynamic.
I can see my house from here!
However, my short time with STO has made me crave another type of space game all together, and for one that I’m not sure really exists right now. Essentially, I’d love to have a space sim/sci-fi/Star Trek equivalent of Skyrim. I want to have a game where I can roam and explore at my leisure. Where I can just fly in any direction in the big, wide universe, and just see what happens. And it seems that this desire has resonated with a number of my fellow game writers/twitter friends (@JamesPinnell, @RaygunBrown and @milescosmo).
I know there are games like the X series, Escape Velocity Nova or Space Pirates & Zombies (which I’ve also talked about previously). But these games aren’t quite hitting the mark. It seems to me that these games have a large emphasis on in-game systems and mechanics. And success is defined by how well a player manipulates these mechanics to their benefit. The focus is on political alignment, combat or trade/economy. But I just want a game to satisfy my wanderlust.
I think I'm gonna hurl...
So I don’t expect Evochron Mercenary to quite satisfy that urge. But I’m willing to give it a chance. Though it seems to be quite similar to the X games, it also appears to be a step down in complexity. Which suits me fine, as I’m not looking for that level of experience.
Evochron Mercenary is available from the game’s website or Steam for US24.95. System requirements are fairly low, so even my middling laptop can run it fairly well.
Just picked it up, Steam has it on sale for 20 USD at the moment.
Yea, that was what spurred me to pick it up. I wonder how long the 20% discount will be valid…
Evochron is a great game; you’ve gotta invest time into it, though, to really get something out of it.
Think Freelancer, but much more ambitious.
[...] I remember a time when these games were plentiful. Freelancer, Starlancer, Colony Wars, X-Wing, Wing Commander, Freespace, Independence War. These are just a few notable names of a once popular genre. Nowadays, the genre is survived only by hardcore, open space simulators like the X series and the recently released Evochron Mercenary (which I talked about last week). [...]