These days, more and more developers seem to be catering to the ever-growing “casual crowd” of gamers. As gaming becomes more and more mainstream, casual gaming continues to expand its tendrils; whereas once it was relegated to puzzle games and online flash projects, now you can find a casual title in just about every genre. Space Siege is a perfect example of a new-age casual game.

Developed Gas Powered Games, the company behind hits such as Dungeon Siege and Supreme Commander, Space Siege is billed as a sci-fi action-RPG, and while it’s technically a sci-fi title with action and RPG elements it’s nowhere near as involved or deep as their previous Siege title.

A staple of the action-RPG genre is accomplishment and advancement. The reason we as gamers waste our time playing games for 20 hours when the gameplay hasn’t changed since the first fight is to get new and better loot, and to unlock new and cooler skills. Space Siege has neither of those.

For reasons unknown, Gas Powered Games went away from the formula which made the company a household name among PC gamers, abandoning the idea of traditional dungeon crawling loot. Instead of enemies dropping new equipment and unique items left and right, enemies drop a form of currency known as “upgrade parts” which you can use to upgrade one of your ten weapons you’ll have access to throughout the game.

Each of these weapons is given to you at a pre-destined spot, meaning no matter how many bad guys you kill, you won’t be getting a new gun until the game decides it’s time for a new gun. That wouldn’t be so bad on its own, but to compound matters, new guns don’t necessarily mean better guns in Space Siege. You can get three new guns back-to-back-to-back, and still find that the first one is by far the best choice in combat.