Space is a daunting but tantalizing frontier for gaming. Perhaps you have played the spacefaring MMO EVE before, and were fascinated by its grand scale space battles and all varieties of ships/weapons etc. Or you’ve loved exploring a large sandbox universe, like Freelancer or Spore. Maybe you just like to build your own spaceships and enjoy the breathtaking view of final frontiers, like Kerbal Space Program. But often these games develop singular elements. Now imagine a game has all those fascinating elements, plus a top grade Sci-fi FPS experience like Star Wars: Battlefront. Sound too good to be true?Star Citizenis the game to deliver all of those elements, or at least that’s its potential and promise.
Genre: MMO
Developed by: Cloud Imperium Games
Published by: Cloud Imperium Games
Release date: Unannounced, 2017/2018
Age rating: Pending
Platforms: PC
Star Citizen Features
Story & Setting
Star Citizen will allow players to explore a universe with hundreds of locationsincludingplanets, systems and space ports. Each has a well designed area where your character can walk around, trade or fight with other players. you’re able to also invite friends to your well-craftedshipsand fight a blood-boiling battle together, or simply trade goods between systems and explore the uncharted territory. You can board an enemy ship in FPS style combat, or play space cowboy in ancient alien ruins. There’s a lot of freedom to be had and it is comprised as 2 games in one. Star Citizen is the the massively online exploration experience andSquadron 42is a single player campaign experience that can be experienced as cooperative multiplayer.
Both Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are set in a 30th-century Milky Way and revolve around the fictional United Empire of Earth. Citizenship in the empire must be earned through actions like military service. It is possible that gaining citizenship through your deeds will result in benefits like lower tax rates and other perks.
In the game you will travel across the vast expanse of space in a cargo hauler with 1 or 2 others manning the turrets, land on an alien world to engage in some smuggling work where you may be ambushed by outlaws and be forced to fight your way from the ground back into space. This all will take place in one seamless experience letting the game shift between genres and perspectives fluidly.
There will be hundreds of systems to visit ranging from dense cities to large alien worlds, and each will be developed procedurally. The goal is to create a living, breathing universe that is always fresh and always unique and always inviting players to explore on and on.
Players will be able to shift from their cargo hauling jobs to one of the raiding outlaws whenever they choose. No matter what they choose they will be interacting with a diverse and dynamic population. All of Star Citizen’sNPCpopulation have full day/night cycles due to the game’s proprietary AI Subsumption technology. This combines with the dynamic universe building to potentially deliver a remarkably diverse experience that is constantly changing. Further rounding out this structure will be a severe player driven economy complete with organizations to network and align with.
The universe itself is populated with all manner of cosmic phenomena to investigate. When you find a world you want to explore in more detail, you land and disembark to explore the landscape or cities within it in first person. The hundred star systems that release at launch will each have multiple landing zones within them. In other words, there’s going to be a ton to do. There will be multiple careers to explore, from fighter pilot, pirate, merchant and salvager and everything you do will have a bearing on the economy whether you are blockading a planet, engaging in supply lines or in conflict.
Of course, no space exploration game is complete withoutspaceshipsand the game features a massive variety of them. Beyond that variety of types, players will be able to make significant customization changes to suit their play styles, allowing them to change their ship’s appearance, weapons,componentsand more.
There are roughly six types of ships by their usage with many variants contained within. Some are good for racing and dogfighting, some for trading and exploration, some can bring your child-hood dream of a grand-scale space battle to reality. Each ship has their unique strengths and weaknesses, so players will have to read the detailed information of each ship to find which one suits them best. When you become more experienced, you can upgrade your old ship to certain variants, or even trade it for new ones. The flight mechanics are based on real physics, adding a realism that should satisfy Sci-Fi purists. There are multitudes of flight maneuvers you can engage in and you compensate for everything, including internal g-force. The icing on the cake is you can take your friends along for the ride as they can mount turrets and provide support.
The game was a crowdfunding mega success, so far raising over 145 million dollars from backers. Four years after the crowdfunding started, Star Citizen has now has a few components to offer supporters who want to play today while the game continues its development.
By merit of its released components, the graphics of Star Citizen are quite good, especially ships. When you drive your self-modified ships in its MMO-style universe, it’s easy to forgive the long development of this game. But when you try to explore the space ports or planets, the lack of proper story-driven missions,equipmentand NPCs, and fleshed out economy remind you that this game still needs a lot to add. However the potential for something special is there.
If you can ignore some of the early development bugs then the Arena Commander is the most playable part of Star Citizen so far, where you can pilot your ships against other players using lasers, missiles or other futuristic weapons in “Capture the Core” games, or you can participate in speed racing in an asteroid belt. The atmosphere here is great and gameplay is enjoyable enough to whet your appetite for the future.
The Halo-like solo FPS mode named Squadron 42 was initially set to release on late 2015, but it’s been delayed a few times. Squadron 42 is a story-based single-player campaign set in the Star Citizen fictional universe described by the developers as a “spiritual successor to Wing Commander”. It is being developed by Foundry 42 UK. What can be experienced now is the aforementioned Star Marine, which lets players test out the FPS module and gives us a preview of the kinds of seamless genre and perspective gameplay we can expect the full release to shift in and out of.
The most serious issue this game currently has in its present state is all those components feel disconnected, there is no racing, no ship boarding FPS or grand scale space battle in Persistent Universe, and there is no role playing or story in Arena Commander. The skeleton of Star Citizen is there, but a vast universe with multiple races filled with trades and battles still feels a bit away.
Overall, even if half of Star Citizen’s promised content becomes playable it will be one of the most impressive games out there. The game is huge and has massive potential with it’s promised features, but it still has a long way to success. Right now, it’s a blueprint with several playable fragments, promising but very incomplete. If all those features are delivered and successfully executed, Star Citizen will potentially draw in millions of players for years and redefine the Sci-Fi genre and change the conversation on what a game can be and offer players when it comes to freedom and choice.
