{"id":3710,"date":"2009-12-17T03:00:31","date_gmt":"2009-12-17T09:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamingwithchildren.com\/?p=3710"},"modified":"2009-12-17T03:00:31","modified_gmt":"2009-12-17T09:00:31","slug":"game-review-gratuitous-space-battles-pc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/17\/game-review-gratuitous-space-battles-pc\/","title":{"rendered":"Game Review: Gratuitous Space Battles (PC)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Gratuitous_Space_Battles.Title\"The name says it all. This is a quality budget title that takes an idea and breaks it down into its core gameplay, making that gameplay all it can be. You\u2019re presented with a battle against an alien fleet. Given limited resources (basically cash and a number of pilots), put together a fleet of ships to challenge the aliens. Once you\u2019ve assembled your fleet and given them the barest of strategy advice, hit the play button, sit back, and watch the battle unfold in all its glory. Don\u2019t look for any plot here, Gratuitous Space Battles is a fun little diversion for anyone who likes smashing things together to see how they hold up.
\n<\/p>\n

If it were just picking ships and placing them on the map, the game would be reasonable but not memorable. However, much of the tinkering around with the game comes in the ship building portion. You can custom-build fighter, frigate, and cruiser ships. Each ship type comes in several flavors for each available race, with each race and ship hull having different small benefits. Outfitting a ship revolves around balancing crew, power, and space issues with space at a premium. Each hull type has very limited numbers of two types of sockets, one type for weapon-related items (lasers, missiles, point-defense, etc\u2026) and the other type for general support structures (engines, power, armor, shields, etc\u2026) New ship hull types, new weapons and gadgets, and even new playable alien races (with their own minor benefits and special hull types) can be unlocked as you play the game. While each weapon and weapon type do have differences, their overall effectiveness is fairly similar. This can be good or bad. On the one hand, it means everything is fairly balanced, but on the other hand it can sometimes seem as if changing weapons around has only a small overall effect. I expect that learning the subtleties of each weapon and defense type is at the heart of long-term enjoyment of the game.<\/p>\n

\"Gratuitous_Space_Battles.BattleScreen\"<\/center><\/p>\n

That brings us to what is going to make or break the game. Upon successfully completing a battle, you are rewarded with honor points. Those honor points can then be spent to unlock the various ships and features. However, you are not simply given a set prize for a given battle. Instead, you are rewarded honor points for how far \u201cunder budget\u201d you built your fleet. For most battles, it is fairly easy to spend your entire budget and handily defeat the invaders (even on the hard or expert settings.) The trick is to build the cheapest fleet that can still defeat the enemy, even if you end the fight with a single ship remaining. Gamers who love to tinker and optimize can quickly be drawn into a cycle of trying a battle again, just one more time, in order to see if they can squeeze out a win with a slightly cheaper configuration. There are diminishing returns, as if you win coming under-budget by 2,000 and then win again later coming under-budget by 3,000 honor points, you are only rewarded points for how much you\u2019ve improved (1,000 points.)<\/p>\n

\"Gratuitous_Space_Battles.DesignScreen\"<\/center><\/p>\n

To add to the game\u2019s depth, you can build your own enemy fleet (as well as some minor situational modifiers \u2013 such as no fighters, or half-powered shields) and then issue it as a \u201cchallenge\u201d to other players. Players can then take on your fleet to see how well they do. A final gameplay mode is a \u201csurvival mode\u201d where players build a single fleet and then see how many waves of enemies can be eliminated before one\u2019s armada is defeated. <\/p>\n

The single-player challenges would make a good budget game, but having the survival mode as well as player-designed challenges available for download makes this title a very good value. I highly recommend the game for anyone who loves tinkering around with ship construction. The visual appeal of the battles is very rewarding. In some ways, it reminds me of the feel of a high-end iPhone app, easy to pick up and play for short bursts trying to better a past score. Gamers looking for an action-packed game should look elsewhere, but for thinking planners there is much to enjoy and even more to watch.<\/p>\n

Kid Factor: <\/strong>The game is simply a bunch of planning followed by very pretty space explosions. My preschool-aged son loves watching the battles, since they\u2019re in space they look pretty. Even those uptight about the abstract loss of life can be consoled by the tiny lifeboats that race away after any ship explosion. There really isn\u2019t any backstory to speak of, so other than the fairly sanitary space battles, there is little to be concerned about. While younger kids might enjoy watching the battles play out, I would expect the game is best enjoyed by teens and older.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The name says it all. This is a quality budget title that takes an idea and breaks it down into its core gameplay, making that gameplay all it can be. You\u2019re presented with a battle against an alien fleet. Given limited resources (basically cash and a number of pilots), put together a fleet of ships […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3710\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}