Combat is also lacking, and offers no real challenge or incentive to keep going. This game is all about firefights on a spaceship against alien races…so why does it feel so boring? I’ve seen better action and carnage in certain 8-bit games. With the complete removal of almost all RPG aspects from the action-RPG formula, it would have been nice to at least have more emphasis on the remaining action- half, but even that’s not to be as you can only dodge forward into fire, and breakables (crates, barrels, and other genre staples) can’t be directly targeted; you can only break them by shooting things behind them or by blowing them up with a grenade.

Unfortunately the issues don’t stop there. Not only is combat depth nonexistent, but even moving around the game becomes a hassle as there’s no realtime minimap, no WASD movement, and no reconfiguring the keys. I can’t even remember the last time I played a PC game that didn’t let you change your key inputs, let alone one developed by experienced, multi-title veterans.

With the gameplay this stunted one would at least hope that they spent some time on the story aspect, but once again they decided that less was more. The single player story mode takes anywhere from 8-12 hours to complete (depending on how lost you get without a map), and the plot is C-grade cliché to say the least. One of the most hyped aspects of this game was the ability to modify your character using implants at a risk to your humanity, but even that has no apparent effect on the story. I’ve played with guys near full humanity, and with guys near full robotity, and I honestly couldn’t tell much (if any) of a difference in gameplay or the story.

A limited co-op mode can be beaten in less time than the single player story, and offers even less of a challenge. Basically, the only way to be in even remote trouble when playing with other people is to purposefully gimp your characters, which is almost impossible to do given the very limited amount of control you have over their customization, and how little customization seems to matter in the grand scheme of things.

It’s really perplexing how Chris Taylor and the rest of the Gas Powered Games team managed to put this one out given their track record. It seems like they were told to make Dungeon Siege in space, did it, and then were told to cut random things until it was casual gamer friendly. In the end the game just doesn’t work as an action or role-playing game and the result is an unfortunate black mark on the company’s resume.

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