Over recent months I’ve found that I am really missing a good space combat and trading simulation, the last good space game I played was Freelancer and EVE Online and even though EVE continues to expand and grow I object to paying a sub for a game where I don’t enjoy the online game play and it has no offline game play. And Freelancer is quite old now, although there are a lot of mod’s there’s only so many times you can play through the same systems before it all become a little too familiar. So what else is there? Well at the moment not a lot, X3 is a little to technical and a little user unfriendly not to mention the bug’s and the story is a little cliché all this adds up to a big game that’s boring and overly technical.
Soon there will be a new game from Codemasters called Jumpgate Evolution but I’ve not seen enough of this game to really grab my interest, it looks OK although a little basic but then I felt the same way about Freelancer until I played it so it could be good. There is also another game due out soon called Black Prophecy, judging from the visuals it appears to be quite extensive and very graphically rich but seems to focus on combat and even though combat looks good and rich a bit of trading and ship customization would be good.
So where have all the other games of this type been, when I was younger it seemed like there was a new Space RPG out every year and yet it’s been nearly 8 years since the last good one was released. I remember a few years ago getting quite excited as I heard that Elite 4 was in development, until I read that there hasn’t been any news about it for quite a while and the developer’s web site Frontier has removed listings from theyre main web pages but keep the forum thread about the game active.
(NOTE: The original Elite has passed its 25th Anniversary more information can be found here)
Although for Elite fan’s there could be a glimmer of hope as in an interview with Eurogamer GDC David Braben after giving some disappointing news about a title he was working on let’s slip that Elite 4 is not gone or forgotten! But some fans have turned they hand at updating Elite 2 with some cool results, there is the ever evolving project called FFE D3D (see below for video footage) and another good-looking remake called Pioneer (Also see below for video footage).
So where is this genre heading, EVE online and to some extent Star Wars Galaxies online (Space flight portion) have added quite a lot but they seem to be the only real options at the moment. Also once Jumpgate Evolution and Black Prophecy have been released is there nothing else to follow them? it saddens me that such a wonderful area of gaming has been neglected in such a way, please don’t let the space sim die!
Although while writing this post I came across a good resource for space sim’s, Space Sim Central contains a lot of information about games and projects.
Some of the games that I have discovered there are:
- Evochron Mercenary
- Miner Wars
- Heresy War
- Naumachia: Space Warfare (Developers site – AureaSection.com)
- Infinity: Quest for Earth
Living in the Now! 