Space combat games are sometimes held up as a dying genre, but let’s face facts. They were never very common. You would have the occasional Elite or Wing Commander, and the Star Wars games. But it’s not like retail space was ever crowded with them. A lot of this is because if you don’t have an interesting story or license to hang things on, one space game looks pretty much like another. You can’t fall back on realism and aliens are rarely all that alien anymore. You can, apparently, be rare and overly familiar at the same time.
That’s the problem facing Space Force: Rogue Universe. You explore the vast emptiness of space, complete quests and upgrade your ship. Certain character classes get little bonuses here and there, but there isn’t that much to distinguish a policeman from an adventurer. This is Elite 2007 – where you trade your way to success and kill baddies along the way.
You can, at least, choose who the baddies are. The universe is divided into star systems dominated by particular civilizations. By doing quests for them and not harassing their ships you can be on good terms with whoever you visit. You start with some people hating you on sight, and it’s tempting to go with the flow and keep your friends close and your enemies in your crosshairs. If you really need to fly in enemy space, you can buy ID badges that will mask your origin. There’s no shame in being sneaky.
Before you even get to that stage you need to prove you can handle your ship with little to no preparation. The opening mission of the story-based campaign begins with intimations on how to fly your piece of junk, but before that can happen, pirates swoop in and interrupt your training session. There is no tutorial to teach you when to fire your missiles or how to disrupt incoming fire or when your afterburners will come in handy. This is on-the-job training for the space faring set.
Once you’ve died over and over again trying to figure out what you are doing, the ship control is a little spotty, and it’s easy to get disoriented once you’ve collided with an object or missile. There is no “up” in space, and the overwhelming blackness sucks up your situational awareness. That’s perfectly fine, but when you are taking hits to the hull and need to find friendlies to cover you, less sensitive bouncing would be nice.
But for what it is, Space Force is pretty solid. If you buy in to the trade world they’ve built for you, you can track good deals and set up your own trading routes from one side of the galaxy to the next. You can jump within star systems to local jump gates or space stations, and there’s a wide range of goods for sale. You’ll want to save some of them for your own use since metals and other items are necessary for ship upgrades, but for the most part whatever you find is easy cash. The trick is finding out who will pay the most for it.
The range of quests isn’t as broad as it should be. They all boil down to “destroy this” or “activate that”. For some of them you will want a wingman, and, for once, your computerized backup is pretty good. Quests are basically diplomatic exercises and affect how the universe sees you more than they affect the universe itself.
