Sol: Exodus Review

[viranimus]

But I too am a little resentful at yet another opportunity being taken to try and scapegoat religion. Really im not even a religious person, but its such a worn out tedious trope that really is just as hypocritical as what it is supposed to be rallying against, But i digress.

I really can't understand this. Look at the world around you. Pay attention to the news, certain extreme political speeches, terrorist propaganda and the like. Do any of these accurately reflect you, your beliefs or those of the people you know? Then why would you assume that the antagonists of this game are modeled after your beliefs and not the very real extremists I just mentioned?

Its really simple. Its the way that the gaming industry portrays religion. Consistently religion as a whole is portrayed as nothing but religious zealots bent on death and destruction to all who oppose their system of belief. There is also the reoccuring theme that religion is inherently corrupt monstrosity preying on the desparate and ignorant.

Honestly, its sort of like Iran getting pissed off because they see Battlefield 3 implying that Iran is nothing but terrorists who want to chop other peoples heads off and blow up shit with RPGs

Seriously, when was the last time you saw a game try to portray religion (even its own fictional made up ones) in any light other than negative?

 

[Scars Unseen]

But I too am a little resentful at yet another opportunity being taken to try and scapegoat religion. Really im not even a religious person, but its such a worn out tedious trope that really is just as hypocritical as what it is supposed to be rallying against, But i digress.

I really can't understand this. Look at the world around you. Pay attention to the news, certain extreme political speeches, terrorist propaganda and the like. Do any of these accurately reflect you, your beliefs or those of the people you know? Then why would you assume that the antagonists of this game are modeled after your beliefs and not the very real extremists I just mentioned?

Its really simple. Its the way that the gaming industry portrays religion. Consistently religion as a whole is portrayed as nothing but religious zealots bent on death and destruction to all who oppose their system of belief. There is also the reoccuring theme that religion is inherently corrupt monstrosity preying on the desparate and ignorant.

Honestly, its sort of like Iran getting pissed off because they see Battlefield 3 implying that Iran is nothing but terrorists who want to chop other peoples heads off and blow up shit with RPGs

Seriously, when was the last time you saw a game try to portray religion (even its own fictional made up ones) in any light other than negative?

When's the last time you saw an action or story driven game focus on the positive aspects of anything. Ultima IV is one of the few I can think of. As for minor aspects of games, Shenmue let you pray at the Buddhist shrine in your home. The Castlevania series is all about the triumph of Christianity(and whips) over evil. In many 4X games you can utilize religion for poisitve or destructive purposes. What about clerics in the Baldur's Gate series? And then there's the Jedi. In Dragon Age 2, the Grand Cleric was all that kept Kirkwall from falling into chaos. There's more if you want to actually look for it.

The positive is there if you want to look for it. If you want to see everything in a negative light and take on a persecution complex, that's on you, but in no way has anything to do with the developers of Sol.

 

[Telperion]

One thing though the developers are really on the case with tweaks and patches. In fact I'm downloading the latest patch which adds more joystick support (so maybe it'll work now).

Hm...I'll have to consider it. I'm not buying this game, if it doesn't have XYZ-axis support for my joystick. Actually, I'm okay with just XY, but having Z really makes it easier on those "slides" Greg talks about.

 

[GrizzlerBorno]

Eh I think I'm going to take TotalBiscuit's verdict on this game since it doesn't seem like his first impression was particularly far off from the rest of the game. There really doesn't seem to be "much" in this game in the way of content. Only 8 missions, only 3 weapons and only 1 not-very-clever gimmick.

 

[Alexnader]

This would be great if it didn't decide to make me and mine the villains. (by which I mean, religious people in general and Christians in particular)
For a rough analogy, atheists in the audience, imagine how you'd feel watching a movie in which a crowd of bloodthirsty videogaming killers (justified in-universe by the popular perception of violent videogames as psychologically affecting) were the villains.

In general, though, I hope the resurgence of space combat games continues. Let's bring the age of Freespace back with a vengeance!

It's an easy choice story-wise to make some fanatical religious people the bad guys but I don't blame them. The easiest way to create a legion of humans who are somehow against the survival of their own species is to stick religion in there. I'm hard pressed to think of any other plausible motivations.

 

[Riddle78]

Starfighter game. Target lead indicator. Using a fighter to take down capitol ships. Screw Battlestar Galactica! I see a LOT of Freelancer in there! But,shamefully,the length is pushing me away...I like a meatier experience. Yes,I'm a glutton. So sue me.

 

[viranimus]

Snipalotapus anatinus

Ok, I see where your coming from its not all bad of course dependent on your perspective. But my problem is not that positive takes on religion do not exist. Its the sheer ratio of negatives vs positives as well as as the industry bending over backwards of portraying the negatives in grossly over exaggerated levels of unmitigated evil. The point I was making is that its like a joke that has long since ceased to be funny.

Spoiler: Derailment, please ignore

Dont want to derail this thread off topic too much. I do want to say a few things on this though before the derailment gets out of hand.

Now as for the suggestions.. I cannot comment on Shenmue or Balders gate because I did not play either of them. However castlevania is a zero sum matter because it might be focused on the triumph of good over evil, but its also a direct stab at christian mythos because without hell there are no demons from hell and abominations of the devil such as vampyre.

I would point to to dragon age 2.. because both it AND DAO are manifestations of a world where the religious right uses their overbearing acolytes to oppress resistance to the ideologies of the church. So in DA2 the one good cleric does little to negate all the atrocities committed under her watch.

But again Im talking about the ratio, because you can point to basically any military FPS centered around terrorism acts as a stab at islam. Most games that attack christianity are also indirectly attacking Satanism as well because they are interlinked and essentially contingent on each other, but a good example of a purely satanistic hate would have to be Doom. What about Dantes inferno and the whole plot there, Darksiders where you go up against the evil forces of hell because the war of Armageddon finally obliterated mankind. The binding of Issac is all about the evils of an evangelical mother killing and discarding her unwanted children in her basement all at the behest of "god", Assassins creed makes it a point to bend over backwards to show you just how evil pious people are. Final fantasys consistent theft and perversion of hindi Gods and ideologies. Xenogears/Sagas laser like focus on the abrahamic religions dead center on Judaism, but also throwing blowback onto Christianity. Final fantasy legend sends you out to beat up mockeries of Jesus and his apostles and in essence has you killing God at the end which is also a fairly common trope. Final fantasy X is all about how religion springs up perpetuates the ruin created by SIN, demanding blood sacrifices and shunning knowledge. Ogre battle 64 where it is you against the church. Basically any game with a templar in it. Fallout where the cult leader tries to turn the land into super mutants. Then there is Kotor and really technically anything involving Star wars, that the mysticism in "the force" acts as the principle cause of discord in the galaxy. Bioshock for Andrew Ryans view of christianity standign in the way of progress. Quite literally I could go on for hours and even developers acknowledge that it is an all too commom theme

I dont contest what you said, basically anything you can point to you can see negatives in it, but with religion developers fall back on the negatives even more than they fall back on zombies as enemies anymore.

Anyway, getting back on track. I know its a smaller, more indie game and honestly the genre is not back in form, but before last year, what type of space combat games were we getting? the X series? Project Sylpheed? So really even if it is a baby step, its absolutely a step in a direction I would gladly throw money at. I would throw especially large amounts at a new colony wars for that matter, but thats prolly never going to happen.

 

[Joccaren]

But I too am a little resentful at yet another opportunity being taken to try and scapegoat religion. Really im not even a religious person, but its such a worn out tedious trope that really is just as hypocritical as what it is supposed to be rallying against, But i digress.

I really can't understand this. Look at the world around you. Pay attention to the news, certain extreme political speeches, terrorist propaganda and the like. Do any of these accurately reflect you, your beliefs or those of the people you know? Then why would you assume that the antagonists of this game are modeled after your beliefs and not the very real extremists I just mentioned?

Its really simple. Its the way that the gaming industry portrays religion. Consistently religion as a whole is portrayed as nothing but religious zealots bent on death and destruction to all who oppose their system of belief. There is also the reoccuring theme that religion is inherently corrupt monstrosity preying on the desparate and ignorant.

Honestly, its sort of like Iran getting pissed off because they see Battlefield 3 implying that Iran is nothing but terrorists who want to chop other peoples heads off and blow up shit with RPGs

Seriously, when was the last time you saw a game try to portray religion (even its own fictional made up ones) in any light other than negative?

Umm. Quite often. Many games have religion as a positive, RPGs and 4Xs give special magic powers to religious characters (In fantasy ones) That either buff them up, or allow them to take down evil easier. Not necessarily make them able to take down other neutrals and good easily - look at Holy Light in WC3, healed any living, killed any undead. When it doesn't do magic stuff, it is reflected in games like Civ IV to provide HAPPINESS bonuses to your people. There is no unhappiness from religion, only happiness.

Religion is an easy target to pin stuff on thanks to the way that many religious people act. Many don't sit back and be quiet, but will openly attack those who aren't religious, and sometimes those who are. I'm not just talking Westborough here, but other literal fanatics too. These people generally are given more publicity than the good religious people as they are controversial. Someone saying 'We should all understand that religion is a choice, not a necessity' whilst being religious is not going to get as much coverage as someone saying 'All you atheists are blasphemers, and need to go to hell! Believe in god or suffer the consequences!', and is screaming that around town. The former generally is quiet, and what the mind of most people is - not too interesting - the later is going around declaring stuff to the world, and is highly controversial in their message. = more views for whatever news show/magazine.
This is why religion gets a bad name mostly in these cases, with fanatical leaders and such. This (Hopefully) minority who is rather vocal at times, and sticks in everybody - theist, atheist or agnostic - 's head as being annoying and somewhat villainous. It is these people that things involving Religious fanatics are usually based off - the fanatics. You don't want to get grouped with them, show people you are different. You don't have to do anything special, hell, doing nothing at all is preferable. People will accept you as you, and not a fanatic. Of further help would be getting people to actually shut the fanatics down, but that would end up as even more trouble overall.

Besides, there have been games and movies that target pretty much everyone as a villain - atheists largely included. Hell, pop culture is in movies and games that religion is good. How often do you see that evil monster being the good guy, and the priest with the sign of the cross as the bad guy in a horror movie? Not often. In shows like the Simpsons, is going to church not portrayed as a very good thing to do?

The 'attacks' occur on both sides. Personally, I prefer shows that take a fair stance on religion, and not just praise it or criticise it.

 

[Chrono212]

Now...I have a very, very, very srs question.

Spoiler: Do I need one of these:

You hold the destiny of £6.99 in your hands, Escapees!

No you don't it works with mouse/keyboard, and Gamepads too. In fact my Joystick doesn't work with it

One thing though the developers are really on the case with tweaks and patches. In fact I'm downloading the latest patch which adds more joystick support (so maybe it'll work now).

This is a fun game, and well worth the £6.99. Combined with the amazingly quick tech support on their forums then I'd say this is a great buy.

But is it more fun with a joystick?

 

[thenumberthirteen]

Now...I have a very, very, very srs question.

Spoiler: Do I need one of these:

You hold the destiny of £6.99 in your hands, Escapees!

No you don't it works with mouse/keyboard, and Gamepads too. In fact my Joystick doesn't work with it

One thing though the developers are really on the case with tweaks and patches. In fact I'm downloading the latest patch which adds more joystick support (so maybe it'll work now).

This is a fun game, and well worth the £6.99. Combined with the amazingly quick tech support on their forums then I'd say this is a great buy.

But is it more fun with a joystick?

Flight games generally are. I have fond memories of myself as a young boy sitting in my room gleefully playing away with my joystick clenched in my right hand pumping the throttle and jiggling it about wildly playing X Wing. Good wholesome fun.

 

[Chrono212]

Now...I have a very, very, very srs question.

Spoiler: Do I need one of these:

You hold the destiny of £6.99 in your hands, Escapees!

No you don't it works with mouse/keyboard, and Gamepads too. In fact my Joystick doesn't work with it

One thing though the developers are really on the case with tweaks and patches. In fact I'm downloading the latest patch which adds more joystick support (so maybe it'll work now).

This is a fun game, and well worth the £6.99. Combined with the amazingly quick tech support on their forums then I'd say this is a great buy.

But is it more fun with a joystick?

Flight games generally are. I have fond memories of myself as a young boy sitting in my room gleefully playing away with my joystick clenched in my right hand pumping the throttle and jiggling it about wildly playing X Wing. Good wholesome fun.

Well played.

 

[Christopher Stockman]

We are adding more content very soon!

 

[deathbeforedecaf]

the whole layout looks a lot like Hawx 2 but in space to me.i was disappointed by hawx,but ill buy this anyway though, games like this need to be encouraged.

 

[Telperion]

We are adding more content very soon!

Sweet. I went and bought the game today. While there are some issues with the game generally speaking I though it well worth the 9.99?. I played through a few missions, and I didn't find the whole hacking minigame too offensive. Heck, Triple-A games have much more annoying and intrusive minigames than this thing. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but it's better than just loading up Missile Type X to kill Enemy Type A. The three weapons are nice, and the retro feel of the game certainly doesn't hurt. Okay, you could do a little better with collision detection, because on several occasions (having only played four missions) I have gone right through a big ship. At first I thought, I needed to be really close for hacking, so I kept colliding with enemy ships - this is where I noticed the collision detection bugs.

 

[Christopher Stockman]

I want to thank everyone that has not only supported us but this genre.

I'll be the first one to admit we stumbled a bit upon release but we have taken ALL criticism to heart and have since released 4 patches that not only drastically changed core gameplay (and in some cases missions themselves) but also fixed a number of issues that our customers have identified.

And we're not done yet. Not by a long shot. We're hard at work on additional content, DLC, and more.

We want to bring space shooters back into the mainstream by making them accessible and fun to play. And our team (all 6 of us!) are dedicated to making this happen.

In the coming days we'll be releasing a demo and you can judge the game for yourself to determine it's worth the asking price.

P.S. Totalbiscuit's review (along with almost everyone else's_ was based on an outdated build. Much has changed since.

Thank you,

Chris Stockman
Seamless Entertainment

 

[omicron1]

This would be great if it didn't decide to make me and mine the villains. (by which I mean, religious people in general and Christians in particular)
For a rough analogy, atheists in the audience, imagine how you'd feel watching a movie in which a crowd of bloodthirsty videogaming killers (justified in-universe by the popular perception of violent videogames as psychologically affecting) were the villains.

In general, though, I hope the resurgence of space combat games continues. Let's bring the age of Freespace back with a vengeance!

It's an easy choice story-wise to make some fanatical religious people the bad guys but I don't blame them. The easiest way to create a legion of humans who are somehow against the survival of their own species is to stick religion in there. I'm hard pressed to think of any other plausible motivations.

Or, you know, malthusians, radical conservationists, nihilists, or just plain madmen.
And that's assuming you have to make self-genocide the goal. Political-economic war is a perfectly feasible explanation which doesn't step on the toes of half the world's populace.

 

[Christopher Stockman]

This would be great if it didn't decide to make me and mine the villains. (by which I mean, religious people in general and Christians in particular)
For a rough analogy, atheists in the audience, imagine how you'd feel watching a movie in which a crowd of bloodthirsty videogaming killers (justified in-universe by the popular perception of violent videogames as psychologically affecting) were the villains.

In general, though, I hope the resurgence of space combat games continues. Let's bring the age of Freespace back with a vengeance!

It's an easy choice story-wise to make some fanatical religious people the bad guys but I don't blame them. The easiest way to create a legion of humans who are somehow against the survival of their own species is to stick religion in there. I'm hard pressed to think of any other plausible motivations.

Or, you know, malthusians, radical conservationists, nihilists, or just plain madmen.
And that's assuming you have to make self-genocide the goal. Political-economic war is a perfectly feasible explanation which doesn't step on the toes of half the world's populace.

We're just telling a story. Our bad guys happen to be ultra-fanatical but don't necessarily belong to any common religion that exists today.

We felt they made a good antagonist based on the overall design of the game.

 

[ascorbius]

I think Tachyon: The Fringe did the "strafe sideways without losing momentum" thing quite well... It also did the Big Ships stuff that only Freespace had managed previously.. I remember being impressed by the sheer size of some of the ships. On top of that, it had Ash doing the voice for the player character (For the younglings: Not Ash from Mass Effect, Ash from Evil Dead - Bruce Campbell) [link]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyon:_The_Fringe[/link]

I've been getting back into Space shooters lately, I got me some X3 action over Christmas in the Steam Sale. Might get this too.

 

[Christopher Stockman]

I think Tachyon: The Fringe did the "strafe sideways without losing momentum" thing quite well... It also did the Big Ships stuff that only Freespace had managed previously.. I remember being impressed by the sheer size of some of the ships. On top of that, it had Ash doing the voice for the player character (For the younglings: Not Ash from Mass Effect, Ash from Evil Dead - Bruce Campbell) [link]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyon:_The_Fringe[/link]

I've been getting back into Space shooters lately, I got me some X3 action over Christmas in the Steam Sale. Might get this too.

I actually worked on Tachyon, as a level designer, during my time at Novalogic. Had a lot of fun with that one.

 

[ascorbius]

I think Tachyon: The Fringe did the "strafe sideways without losing momentum" thing quite well... It also did the Big Ships stuff that only Freespace had managed previously.. I remember being impressed by the sheer size of some of the ships. On top of that, it had Ash doing the voice for the player character (For the younglings: Not Ash from Mass Effect, Ash from Evil Dead - Bruce Campbell) [link]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyon:_The_Fringe[/link]

I've been getting back into Space shooters lately, I got me some X3 action over Christmas in the Steam Sale. Might get this too.

I actually worked on Tachyon, as a level designer, during my time at Novalogic. Had a lot of fun with that one.

Awesome - I loved that game. I still have the chart somewhere with all of the ships on it.