This game was provided by Team17 to review.
Like all people who like space and science fiction, we crave more games with such things. When I heard of Genesis: Alpha One coming along, I was quite interested in it. I immediately was reminded from trailer and information about FTL: Faster Than Light. It looked to me like a first person version of that game.
I can safely say that yes it is very much a FPS FTL. Say that 50 times fast.
The worlds you do land on are gorgeous.
To give the basic story summary: Humanity is running out of resources and is in need of more. They’ve discovered the Hyperdrive, able to jump great distances in a seconds and now humanity is united in finding a new home as Earth is no longer palatable. You get to choose how many crew members you start out with, which corporation to sponsor your search (which gives different starting bonuses such as instant access to tech and weapons and others) then you build your ship…yes build your ship.
Human DNA meets Spider DNA equals spider queen…right?
Eh…close enough.
Your ship starts with ONLY its bridge, you put together everything else. Where you put your greenhouse (for atmosphere, not food) your crew quarters and anything else is up to you. You can build a long ship with everything just being built further back from your bridge or compact one with multiple levels above or below the bridge or anything in between.
Keep in mind that YOU will physically have to run around your ship (in first person) if you want to do certain things. You need to make more shotgun ammo? Gotta run to the workshop and put in the order for your crew to make it. Or if you don’t any available crew to make it, you gotta do it yourself which just involves you finding the terminal and holding E.
Building can be as simple or complicated as you want.
When you have enough crew all you have to do is give the order on things you need carried out. Scavenge iron from debris with the tractor beam, just go to the tractor control and click on what you need. Send a party down to a planet to mine resources, etc. is all done by them and you can either help them either directly (go with the landing party and help out or do it by yourself) or just help them be more efficient. Refining resources can be done quickly with you there. Something that takes say 15-20 seconds to complete by the crew can be done by you in 5-10 seconds. But again, you must physically be in the module, you can’t just pop up your PDA and help from afar.
And yes I did say “landing party” meaning, yes, you can land on planets but before you go “OMG IT’S THE NEXT STAR CITIZEN” it’s sadly not. All the planets you land on will be inhospitable in one way or another. When your harvester lands, it projects its shield out to give you a bubble in which you can mine and scavenge without having need for specialized equipment. This bubble is only so big but it allows you to search a small area in which to find tech and mine. You can go outside this shield but you’ll die very quickly.
And although you’re safe from the planetary hazards, the shield does not keep out hostiles. Wildlife can appear and attack you or hostile aliens can beam in and attack you as well.
Watching over my crew as they mine resources.
Killing hostiles also gives you DNA and weapon samples. Collect enough of these and you can create a new type of crew member (through cloning) or make a new weapon.
Weapons range from the basic, human weapons (have very good damage but can’t be upgraded) to alien laser rifles (start out slightly less damage than human weapons but can be upgraded) among other things. Each race (whether your crew or hostiles) have defenses against certain types of weapons so it’s a good idea to bring along a weapon that hurts them the most.
Speaking of crew and cloning, you start out with only some many crew members. You need to make more and upgrade them. Tougher (more hit points,) more intelligent (faster at jobs,) and better resistance (against certain types of weapons, you cannot choose.)
One thing you can choose for each crew member (and yourself if you wish) is abilities which you also find from loot dropped from enemies. This can range from something simple like having better awareness of enemies or damaged parts on your ship to healing aura or damage multiplier.
You’re the captain of the crew and if/when you die, you take control of a random crew member. If you have a certain module on your ship called the Respawn Chamber, you can designate the next one in line. You must designate them BEFORE you die, not when you do.
Each race has pluses and minuses to them. Some are more intelligent than others but lack a lot of defense. Others are very tough but lack intelligence. Don’t worry, if you put someone with low intelligence on a job they won’t be “How do?,” they will still do it, just not as fast as a high intelligence person.
The main problem you will be facing with all the different races, each one has a different atmosphere requirement. Not all aliens breath O2, some breath only nitrogen among other gases. So with that in mind, don’t worry you won’t have to redesign your ship from the ground up to clone Rok crew members but your greenhouse will have to also produce there atmosphere. You can have a mix of all crew members (meaning your greenhouse can make O2 and N2 at the same time not strictly just one or the other) but you can only clone as many of that atmosphere type as there are plants. One Pine tree (if you find them) can handle four 02 breathing crew members. Plant an alien mushroom which produces enough for four N2 breathing crew members and you’re good, both races can work together just fine.
Destroy the plants (either on purpose or by accident such as defending your ships from boarders) and your crew members slowly die until the atmosphere stabilizes. Loose all your crew, the game ends.
The genesis part, you are searching for a suitable planet to being human life again. Depending on what modifications you’ve done to your crew (such as cloning an entire crew of arachnids) it won’t matter what you’ve done to them, just want atmosphere they breath. Once you have another crew members you can start the genesis on a planet you find suitable. Doing this makes you fight a boss and once you’ve finished that, the game ends with a simple stats screen of all you’ve done since beginning your noble quest. As you play you unlock more corporations to help you start a new mission if you wish to repeat it. If you find a corp that you wish to unlock it will tell you what you need to unlock it, usually ranging from ‘refine this much resource in a game’ or ‘have this number of type of crew members,’ etc.
Each new game makes a new random space to explore.
Only a few negatives to mention though.
Your, I guess you would call it, ‘ships and/or suits voice’ likes to repeat herself a lot and it’s information I really don’t need constantly. When I’m on a planet and she tells me “life signs detected” that means ‘hey, bad guys are near you, get ready to fight.’ That’s fine, I need that actually.
But an annoying example would be if you found the shield generator tech for your ship. More generators means better shields to deal with enemy ships, solar flares, etc. (I should mention, no sorry, there is no space combat, only boarders you need to take care of) and when you have enough generators and they take damage, they almost immediately regenerate to 100%.
EVERY…TIME…it gets to 100%, the voice will announce “shields at full strength.” And when bad guys are trying to take down your shield and fire every 10-15 seconds, the voice will CONSTANTLY say that. I’d rather have the voice tell me “shields taking damage, down to 75%, 50%,” etc.
Another annoyance, scavenging planetary resources, there is a chance of bugs stowing away in the containers. When you go to refine them, they jump out and either attack the crew, the ships power, or just hide away in the bowels of your ship in which you have to go clean it up or it spread throughout your ship. This mechanic I don’t mind, I actually like it, but when you have a big ship like I do, it’s hard to figure out WHERE they all our easily. You have to go through the hatches and everything finding it yourself which is okay but a pain. I’d like a notification or a scanner or something to help me look for the damn bugs. And since the computer doesn’t tell me “hey, bugs on the ship,” I either have be lucky and stumble across them or wait until it pops up in text “module shutdown” which means the bugs attack a power node and if I don’t repair, the module will break, meaning I have to build it again.
Other than the boss battle being quite simple fight (I destroyed a spider queen to start my genesis, I don’t know if the boss is dependent on the type of planet) the one minor thing I would say is once you get everything, there isn’t much more to do. It feels like it needs a bit more content in it. Either finding more tech or functionality (bug scanner perhaps?) or maybe more things to unlock that you can’t get otherwise.
Overall though, this game at the price ($30) is very fun to play. The visual are very good, Unreal Engine 4 really shines when it comes to planets. It really does feel like FTL but in first person and I enjoyed that game immensely. I do hope they add a bit more things to do in the game after release as it would make me want to play more.
