Before too long there are fires all over the place and they’re doing continual damage to your systems, while the enemy ship has taken nary a scratch. Let’s say you come up against an enemy with hefty shields, and a weapon that teleports explosive firebombs onto your ship at random locations. If things go wrong then you might end up losing Scrap, suffering the death of a crew member, taking hull damage, or getting into a fight.įights are really the crux of the game, as they’re where the “full power to shields” bits come in, and at their best you’re making an important decision every, ooh, two in-game seconds or so. Having certain systems installed on your ship, or crew members of certain races, may afford you extra options.Ĭhoose wisely (or get lucky) and you might get a new crew member, a new weapon, or some resources, the most common of which is the ever-precious Scrap, which functions as both experience points and currency in that it can either be traded or used to directly upgrade your ship. Most nodes will present you with a short Choose Your Own Adventure-style choice – you might come across a friendly station under attack by pirates, or a small planetoid with a single life sign, and you have to decide whether or not to intervene, and what action to take. The game works like this: you’re trying to reach the end of each sector, and you do this by jumping from node to node. FTL is fundamentally a game about making choices, both short-term and long-term, and weighing up the risks and consequences of any given action. Your role is closer to that of a Star Trek captain you’re the one ordering people to divert power from the medical bay to shields, or to lock ion weapons onto the enemy shield generator and follow that up with lasers to their life support, or to hurry up and put out that bloody fire you idiots. You’re not dogfighting through deft use of a joystick, nor are you manually aiming and firing weapons. I said it above, but it bears mentioning again that FTL is a game in which you command a spaceship. To put it into shorter, nerdier terms: you’re the Tantive IV, the Empire is right behind you, and they aren’t interested in taking you alive. If that’s not bad enough, you’re also being chased by the entire Rebel fleet, and they’d much happier if you were dead. You’ve come into possession of some rather important information and as such you need to make it through eight sectors of mostly hostile space in order to deliver it to Federation lines, despite not having nearly enough fuel or armaments for the trip. “Mess about with your energy configurations” sounds a bit dull, doesn’t it? Let’s try that again.įTL is a game in which you command a spaceship, initially crewed by a mere three or four people. Hell, for a game in which you can pause at any time you like to change orders or mess about with your energy configuration, it’s unbelievably frantic. And, eventually, my pilot perished along with the ship, when a beam weapon sliced it neatly in two.įor a game that – from start to finish – essentially displays nothing but a top-down view of your ship, FTL is astonishingly involving. My security officer ended up sucking vacuum when attempting to repair a breach next to our life support systems. My shield operator was ripped apart by a boarding party of fearsome Mantis pirates, after we refused to pay a “toll.” My gunner burned alive trying to put out a fire in our weapons room. It would almost work as a text-based adventure.My engineer got left behind when we failed to help some scientists with a giant spider problem. But the real guts of FTL comes down to the simplest of decisions – to investigate the abandoned space station or not to buy the clone bay or the backup battery to keep fighting or cut your losses and run. And there’s a wonderful depth of stuff, ranging from weapons and droid systems, medical upgrades and exotic alien crew members to entire ship types to be unlocked. The graphics are extraordinarily evocative (if, for the most part, retro-flavoured), and the soundtrack plays its part too. Here, while the beginner is strongly advised to make the most of the early sectors (which contain easier bad guys), you’re always working against a countdown. How can I get more fuel? How can I get enough scrap to afford a droid control system? How can I upgrade my shields? How can I get out of this sector alive? And how will I ever have a powerful enough ship to take down the enemy flagship?įTL shares the grinding and upgrading aspects of an RPG, but in those games you can almost always hang around in the low-level areas until you’re happy with your gear and skills. On Normal difficulty or above (and even for much of the time on Easy), you’re constantly fighting fires, metaphorically and occasionally literally. All of which adds up to a glorious whole, but one which doesn’t take it easy on you for a second.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |