No doubt about it, the space game genre is in a much abused, neglected state. Oh, sure, we’ve seen a few classics come out like Homeworld 2, and a few half-assed wannabes like Hegemonia or X2: The Threat (which had the right ideas, but lousy execution), but largely the genre has been sat upon in favor of more popular fronts, such as first person shooters or more conventional RTS games. One incredibly sad example of this is Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, a little title from Mithis Entertainment which has suffered an incredibly bumpy development cycle. Originally being published by the bastardizing CDV Entertainment under the name Imperium Galactica 3, the game missed several release dates, was renamed to Galaxy Andromeda, and eventually cancelled outright before HD Interactive swooped in to rescue the development team and game license to give us yearning space game fans the title we so badly craved. The game is now being rapidly finished up in preparation for its planned October release date under the name Nexus, and this crazy little game looks so sweet, it may end up rolling over Homeworld 2 and taking the crown as “best space-based strategy title”. Through freak chance, I managed to get my hands on a copy of the impending singleplayer demo of the game, and was amazed enough to feel that a glowing article giving it some thorough pluggage would be well worth writing.
The hundred-meg demo contains only a single mission – disappointing, given the lack of a dedicated tutorial mission, and file size of the demo, but it proved to be more than enough to get a feel for what the gameplay will be like in the final version. Like the impressive technology demo that was leaked out several years ago way back when the game was called Imperium Galactica 3 (side note: anybody who’s played this older demo will find themselves having a leg up on Nexus’ difficulty curve, despite the gameplay and interface changes that have occurred since then), this new demo puts players right into the action. An alien race humanity is at war with called the “Gorg” have recently concluded a surprise assault on a station called “Stonehenge” off in the ass-end of space and have crippled much of the station’s defenses. Stonehenge and its defense fleet manage to beat off the initial assault, but the surviving Gorg that pull back end up setting up minefields and jamming waves to prevent any attempts to escape or call in reinforcements. Using the few assets at their disposal, the Stonehenge defense fleet has to find a way to either destroy the ship creating the radio jamming waves, or get one of their own ships far enough away so that it can use its I.P. (Inter-planetary) drive and jump away so that reinforcements can be summoned.
As I basically just hinted at, there are multiple ways to try and win the mission. The demo started by providing me with a mere four ships – three flimsy little Frigates and a slightly larger Destroyer, but combined they are equipped with enough firepower to hold off a smaller offensive. Unfortunately, the Gorg fleet consists of many Destroyers and even a huge ominous Battleship, hence constituting the need for a slightly larger fleet of my own – or at least, some creative tactical planning. As stated, the demo doesn’t ship with any kind of tutorial, but a brief glance at the included readme file was more than enough to get me started (and again, experience with the old tech demo helps). After finally being let loose to play around with the interface, I almost immediately found myself overwhelmed. Buttons to the left of me, buttons to the right of me, but which one would start the carnage? After spending several minutes getting used to the camera controls and carefully analyzing tooltips and the objectives listing for the demo, I finally got started. Gameplay in Nexus actually made me think of some manner of hybrid between the Starfleet Command series and Homeworld 2 in that there’s a mix between obsessing over the specific controls of one ship, but trying to manage several other ships at the same time, but there’s enough uniqueness that it could almost be put into a category of its own. The entire focus is on tactical gameplay rather than base or fleet-building, and the demo showed this by allowing me two control modes over my fleet – either I could issue automatic command pre-sets via the toolbar at the bottom (such as “Destroy Hull”, “Drain Shields”, or “Approach”), or I could switch over to manual control mode and do everything myself. Manual control in a nutshell basically offers the ability to manually direct which weapons on a ship will be fired and at what target, what distance a ship will keep from a target and what kind of speed it should try to maintain while getting there, and allows support of other functionality, such as fiddling with shield controls. It’s really cool having the ability to suddenly take control of a ship and tell it exactly what you want it to do, but the automatic functions are good enough that this won’t always be necessary – and certainly not for beginners still trying to wrap their heads around the interface.
As far as tactical combat itself goes, the game is definitely a very different experience from both the aforementioned Starfleet Command series as well as Homeworld 2 in that players don’t actually have any kind of instantaneous direct control over their ships, but instead issue indirect orders based on the tasks that need to be carried out. Even with the manual control interface, things rapidly became a hands-off experience for me once I had chosen my targets and set my distance. And that’s how combat basically worked in the demo; trying to maintain a relative distance around a target and laying down as much firepower as possible into it. But there’s still a lot to do. Ships have four major attack types – shield draining, sub-system attack, hull damaging, and long-range artillery. In order to successfully destroy a major enemy ship, its shields usually need to be brought down first before the real heavy guns can be brought to bear, requiring the use of specific shield-damaging weapons. Subsystem attacks can be done with conventional laser cannons featured on most of the smaller ships in the demo and have the advantage of being able to do appreciable damage to a ship’s systems even if its shields are up and at full power, but aren’t really useful for much else. Finally, hull-damaging weapons, like torpedoes (limited) and plasma cannons are the things that make the big explosions and work to get an enemy ship out of your face once and for all. Also, the artillery attacks I mentioned can be pulled off effectively by long-range nukes, but if the target ship has any escorts with Phalanx cannons, the missile might be shot down before it reaches the target – the resulting explosion (throw on a pair of shades) makes the effort worth it, however.
Combat in Nexus is fast-paced and brutal. There are a number of different ship types, from tiny Frigates to hefty Battlecruisers, and each one had a purpose it brought to bear on the battlefield. Getting into the action wasn’t difficult, and on their default idle setting my ships automatically responded to any attack by maneuvering around and countering appropriately with its available weapons, and it never took long before my fleet ended up deep in combat, with my smaller ships dancing around the Gorg capital ships trying to harass them and take out essential subsystems while my bigger vessels moved into position (this was later on, of course – my own heavy-hitters, including a Carrier and Heavy Battleship don’t arrive in the demo until you find a way to get that distress signal out). One really cool thing I noticed is that when a ship takes enough damage and hits critical hull integrity, the crew won’t always sit and fight it out to the death; instead, they’ll scramble to the lifeboats and abandon ship, leaving the lifeless, dark hulk floating in space for you to either finish off or destroy, and the life pods can even be shot down before they reach a friendly vessel if the right weapons are handy. But while the AI seemed to do a pretty good job of handling things at first, it quickly became apparent that my attempts at intergalactic warfare would be met with grisly failure unless I constantly stepped in with direct intervention (something I consider a good thing, to keep the interaction and immersiveness going, though things can definitely get a bit wild).
Each time I wanted to engage and destroy an enemy ship, I had to quickly determine which vessels under my control had the required shield-damaging weapons, issue an order for them to use them on the enemy ship in question, then wait and monitor the situation until the shields were breached so I could issue the order to let the torpedoes fly. While this was occurring, I had to constantly keep an eye on the status of my ships to ensure they never took too much damage – something that can be alleviated through use of the easily accessible power allocation panel to temporarily boost power to shields or weapons as necessary (it’s possible to do this at no cost to a ship’s other systems, but this taps into a limited power reserve that can run out very quickly). When you throw several friendly ships into the fray, then combat can actually become very hectic as you rapidly jump from one ship to the other, dealing with incoming status reports and trying to keep each vessel performing at optimal levels. Just from the demo I could tell that the game tries to push one’s multitasking talents to the extreme, though I’ll be very curious to see how chaotic things will actually get during the even larger-scale fleet conflicts the final game will undoubtedly feature. One complaint I have though is that I wish the ships felt a little bit easier and more precise to control, as during combat they would sometimes inadvertently wander into the minefield surrounding the level, and by the time I noticed what was happening there was nothing I could do to get them out again. Speaking of which, the minefield in the demo is actually invisible, and while there are several apparent ways of navigating it, these were not immediately obvious until I had played the demo several times (such as a series of obscure navpoints that suddenly appear once your reinforcements arrive to help you in getting them over to the station to help defend it unmolested). A couple of advance pointers on this might’ve helped.
But the demands of manipulating the interface and trying to stay on top of a battle is only part of what makes the game’s combat so intense and attractive. The old tech demo showed a level of special effects and graphical quality that seriously rivaled any other space game in existence at the time, but since its release the development team has apparently gone overboard, implementing all manner of advanced DX9-supported effects. Pixel shaders and bump mapping effects are put to absolutely beautiful use in rounding out the environments and objects (there’s even a toggleable bloom setting that has a bit of a framerate hit, but makes everything look even more amazing), dynamic shadows affect each and every object on the battlefield, and the special effects are absolutely jaw-dropping. What impressed me the most about the game engine, however, is that despite all of this insane detail flying around that almost makes the game look like the “Doom 3” of space titles, it managed to maintain perfectly smooth and playable framerates at all times no matter what was happening on the screen – an astonishing accomplishment, given how the venerable Homeworld 2 kept choking to death every time I dared to try enable its shadow effects in even the smallest of missions. And judging by reports from the community, a slight amount of graphical scaling back still allows the game to be rendered at a playable speed on systems that even go below the listed minimum requirements. I don’t know who exactly coded this amazing engine together, but I hope he’s given big sacks of cash once the game ships.
But seriously, several times playing this demo I found myself just wanting to stop and look at the amazing detail. On each and every ship, maneuvering thrusters fire realistically as they propel themselves through space (the game appears to operate on a Newtonian physics model), turrets rotate realistically to fire upon incoming targets as necessary, nameplates are clearly emblazoned on specific areas of a ship’s hull in a highly legible manner, and there’s even damage scarring, that blackens and scratches up a ship’s hull depending on where it takes a hit. I think the award for my most favorite special effect in the demo, however, goes to the mighty “Fortress Shield”. This special device is equipped on the otherwise unshielded Carrier I got in the demo after sending out the distress call, and can only be raised when the ship is at a standstill. Once it comes online however, a gigantic spherical bubble envelopes a large area of space around the ship, offering protection to anything inside (hopefully your own ships, but poor shield placement might mean enemy ships will end up inside too). Anything trying to shoot in from the outside will find their projectiles being totally absorbed by the shield (with a really cool distortion effect), while your own ships can shoot back out from inside with complete impunity. Just seeing this shield go up for the first time set my gaming hormones a-buzzing in that oh-so-pleasurable manner, and watching several Gorg vessels trying in vain to hammer away at my precious ubershield was incredibly cool.
