Nice name eh? Gratuitous Space Battles. The mere name sounds so grand and Gratuitous that you just want to destroy everything in space... presumably in a battle. My friend got me this game for my birthday claiming it to be the "kind of game I would like".
Gratuitous Space Battles doesn't really have much of a story. Depending on what packs you buy you'll have various species each with their own background story and appearance, but apart form that there just isn't any story to it.
It's graphics are nice though. When space battles (of the Gratuitous varieties) happen they are played from a top down perspective. It's like an old game in that aspect, the ships line up on either side of the map and after a while they get close enough to shoot glowy orbs at each other until one blows up. That is exactly what Gratuitous Space Battles has, only round and shiny. The graphics are clean and the animations are smooth, but that's what we expect from a game at this day and age. I cannot really describe the graphics, but the backgrounds look realistic enough, the ship designs are smooth and clean, which gives the game a very polished look, and most of all, it's shiny, and being an MMO player, I'm very drawn to shiny things.
First of all I'm just going to say, THIS GAME IS NOT FOR EVERYONE. Personally I loved it, it's well designed and has a nice graphical design to it. But the gameplay, or some might say, lack of gameplay, disappoints some people.
The entire game is based around designing ships, and sending them into battle. Now this is where some people turn off and go and play COD or the new C&C or whatever crap EA is shoving down our throats. You do not control the ships in battle. You can assign priorities and orders, to influence your ships behaviour, but this is not a real time strategy, or a flight simulator. It nearly falls under god game.
Ok, so when designing a ship you've got a few things to worry about. Armour, weapons, shield, speed. Then you have to cram in enough power generators and crew quarters to get the thing operational. This can prove difficult when you have a grand idea about the biggest ship in the game armed with about 20 nuke launchers. It will not be able to move, those things are damn heavy. So you've got to compensate a little, give and take. You've also got to consider how these ships will work well together. Every single ship you have won't need anti fighter defence lasers, the ship next to him has enough. Not every ship will need radiation launchers. Sure melting away their hull and vaporizing their crew is cool, but it's slow, you gotta get some DAMAGE in there. It's a difficult system and it requires careful thought about balancing the individual ships with the fleet.
After you've made a few ship designs, experimented with various combinations of weaponry and balanced your armour or shields problem, you're ready for battle. You select how many of what ships you send into the battle against the enemy fleet. Since you cannot issue orders in battle, you instead issue orders before the battle. There are several orders you can issue, including ship attack priorities (get the big ones first), vulture (attack the ones with less health), keep moving (get in range and circle so you're not a sitting duck for missiles) and keep together (your fleet forms into a massive group and slowly charges the enemy). Then you watch the battle unfold. I find this rewarding. It's great to see your perfectly laid out plan coming into effect, watching as the enemy fighters get blasted down by your giant cruisers, then the enemy cruisers get here and everything blows up in your face! Back to fleet deployment, new strategy, new ship design, compensate for high enemy shields but low armour, and back into battle, watch again, you win. I like the experimental nature of the game, I like going "Hey, what if I remove my shields, and replace it all with armour? Wait, oh it's dead, I guess that was a bad idea".
As you may have guessed from the previous paragraph this game just borders hard. It's difficult to anticipate what the AI will do, not because it's a brilliant system or anything but because the slightest change in your ship deployment or strategy will change it completely. Let's say you just lost a battle against a bunch of slow moving cruisers with slow moving missiles and lots of anti shield lasers. Best strategy? A bunch of fast moving ships with not a lot of shields. But that'll backfire at some point, when you find out that the fighters your last fleet destroyed so easily can't be taken down by your new ships, and destroy your entire fleet. It's irritating but it just makes me want to play the game more. It's drawing me in but I want to get out! Damn you indie games and your ability to be different and innovative.
So in summary, I love Gratuitous Space Battles, but like I said earlier, I can't speak for everyone. I imagine a lot of people want to control their ships, not just give them directions on what to do, but I rather like indirect control, it's reminiscent of Seed or Majesty. The one problem I would have to say about Gratuitous Space Battles is that it doesn't change. Once you've found a winning combination you just keep doing that, and it gets boring. If you're not willing to experiment and find as many possible winning combinations as possible, this is not the game for you. But it's like $5 on steam for the game, another $5 for the race packs (which if you want to get this I strongly recommend getting, the other races are way cooler than the 3 including in the straight game) and there is a full expansion pack with extra gameplay coming out soon, or just come out, I haven't got it yet, so I'll look into it later.
Gameplay: N/A. How does one rank the gameplay of a game that you don't really "play"? I could rank it on ship design, but I'm not entirely sure people would consider that to be "play"? I'll leave that to you.
Graphics: 8/10. The smooth graphics and reflecting light are shiiiny. But when put up against modern games with their reflecting water and metal, and their rays, and shadows, it just doesn't compare perfectly. Still, the graphics are nice to watch.
Story: N/A. Once again, apart from race backstory, which really isn't all that important considering it plays next to no part in anything in the game, Gratuitous Space Battles doesn't have a story to it.
How do you grade this game? It'll be great for some because of the need to think carefully about the various combinations your ship and fleet will need, but theres no control over the ships in battle, which I know from attempting to get my friends to play, isn't for everyone. Like I said, I love it, but if you like controlling your army, or if you want to get into the dogfight, it just isn't for you.
Gratuitous Space Battles doesn't really have much of a story. Depending on what packs you buy you'll have various species each with their own background story and appearance, but apart form that there just isn't any story to it.
It's graphics are nice though. When space battles (of the Gratuitous varieties) happen they are played from a top down perspective. It's like an old game in that aspect, the ships line up on either side of the map and after a while they get close enough to shoot glowy orbs at each other until one blows up. That is exactly what Gratuitous Space Battles has, only round and shiny. The graphics are clean and the animations are smooth, but that's what we expect from a game at this day and age. I cannot really describe the graphics, but the backgrounds look realistic enough, the ship designs are smooth and clean, which gives the game a very polished look, and most of all, it's shiny, and being an MMO player, I'm very drawn to shiny things.
First of all I'm just going to say, THIS GAME IS NOT FOR EVERYONE. Personally I loved it, it's well designed and has a nice graphical design to it. But the gameplay, or some might say, lack of gameplay, disappoints some people.
The entire game is based around designing ships, and sending them into battle. Now this is where some people turn off and go and play COD or the new C&C or whatever crap EA is shoving down our throats. You do not control the ships in battle. You can assign priorities and orders, to influence your ships behaviour, but this is not a real time strategy, or a flight simulator. It nearly falls under god game.
Ok, so when designing a ship you've got a few things to worry about. Armour, weapons, shield, speed. Then you have to cram in enough power generators and crew quarters to get the thing operational. This can prove difficult when you have a grand idea about the biggest ship in the game armed with about 20 nuke launchers. It will not be able to move, those things are damn heavy. So you've got to compensate a little, give and take. You've also got to consider how these ships will work well together. Every single ship you have won't need anti fighter defence lasers, the ship next to him has enough. Not every ship will need radiation launchers. Sure melting away their hull and vaporizing their crew is cool, but it's slow, you gotta get some DAMAGE in there. It's a difficult system and it requires careful thought about balancing the individual ships with the fleet.
After you've made a few ship designs, experimented with various combinations of weaponry and balanced your armour or shields problem, you're ready for battle. You select how many of what ships you send into the battle against the enemy fleet. Since you cannot issue orders in battle, you instead issue orders before the battle. There are several orders you can issue, including ship attack priorities (get the big ones first), vulture (attack the ones with less health), keep moving (get in range and circle so you're not a sitting duck for missiles) and keep together (your fleet forms into a massive group and slowly charges the enemy). Then you watch the battle unfold. I find this rewarding. It's great to see your perfectly laid out plan coming into effect, watching as the enemy fighters get blasted down by your giant cruisers, then the enemy cruisers get here and everything blows up in your face! Back to fleet deployment, new strategy, new ship design, compensate for high enemy shields but low armour, and back into battle, watch again, you win. I like the experimental nature of the game, I like going "Hey, what if I remove my shields, and replace it all with armour? Wait, oh it's dead, I guess that was a bad idea".
As you may have guessed from the previous paragraph this game just borders hard. It's difficult to anticipate what the AI will do, not because it's a brilliant system or anything but because the slightest change in your ship deployment or strategy will change it completely. Let's say you just lost a battle against a bunch of slow moving cruisers with slow moving missiles and lots of anti shield lasers. Best strategy? A bunch of fast moving ships with not a lot of shields. But that'll backfire at some point, when you find out that the fighters your last fleet destroyed so easily can't be taken down by your new ships, and destroy your entire fleet. It's irritating but it just makes me want to play the game more. It's drawing me in but I want to get out! Damn you indie games and your ability to be different and innovative.
So in summary, I love Gratuitous Space Battles, but like I said earlier, I can't speak for everyone. I imagine a lot of people want to control their ships, not just give them directions on what to do, but I rather like indirect control, it's reminiscent of Seed or Majesty. The one problem I would have to say about Gratuitous Space Battles is that it doesn't change. Once you've found a winning combination you just keep doing that, and it gets boring. If you're not willing to experiment and find as many possible winning combinations as possible, this is not the game for you. But it's like $5 on steam for the game, another $5 for the race packs (which if you want to get this I strongly recommend getting, the other races are way cooler than the 3 including in the straight game) and there is a full expansion pack with extra gameplay coming out soon, or just come out, I haven't got it yet, so I'll look into it later.
Gameplay: N/A. How does one rank the gameplay of a game that you don't really "play"? I could rank it on ship design, but I'm not entirely sure people would consider that to be "play"? I'll leave that to you.
Graphics: 8/10. The smooth graphics and reflecting light are shiiiny. But when put up against modern games with their reflecting water and metal, and their rays, and shadows, it just doesn't compare perfectly. Still, the graphics are nice to watch.
Story: N/A. Once again, apart from race backstory, which really isn't all that important considering it plays next to no part in anything in the game, Gratuitous Space Battles doesn't have a story to it.
How do you grade this game? It'll be great for some because of the need to think carefully about the various combinations your ship and fleet will need, but theres no control over the ships in battle, which I know from attempting to get my friends to play, isn't for everyone. Like I said, I love it, but if you like controlling your army, or if you want to get into the dogfight, it just isn't for you.
