T w e n t y S i d e d

It always bothers me that this genre ends up being called a “space combat simulator”. Okay, “space” is a given. And “combat” is impossible to argue. But sim? These games do anything but sim. A game where you shoot slow-moving orbs of energy at fighters that must continually generate thrust to remain at max speed and that detonate in audible explosions when you reduce their hull integrity to zero is not a simulation of the sorts of things that can happen in space. Fun, sure. But that’s not a sim.

While claiming any title to be the “best” is usually grounds for a flamewar, this genre is small enough that I think I can point to the Freespace series as the high-water mark. The original was actually titled Descent: Freespace. Publisher Interplay wanted the game to have better name recognition, so they tacked on the name of their popular, unique, and totally unrelated first-person indoor spaceship shooter. I mean, both games have you piloting ships in zero gravity. That makes them kind of related, right? Like if Valve had named their zombie game: Half-Life: Outbreak because both games have you play as a person with a gun.

Freespace was tremendous. So good that it stepped out of the shadow of Descent, and has arguably outlived it in the minds of the gaming public. Freespace 2 is said to be even better, although I managed to miss it. It’s still on my list to play eventually. But it’s hard to play games from fourteen years ago when there’s so much new stuff to play. For example: Strike Suit Zero.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Strike Suit Zero”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

This is a game I would never play under normal circumstances. It’s out of my area of interest, it demands skills I don’t have, and it makes references to games I’ve never played. If we were still in the world of $10 “discount” titles then I wouldn’t own it. But this is the age of the Steam sale, an age where you can see something crazy and say, “Sure, I’d try that for three dollars.”

Bleed is a 2D sidescrolling platformer / shmup thing from developer Bootdisk Revolution. Right now you can get it directly from the developer for $5, no DRM. But you’re just going to buy it through Steam because that’s easier and I know how you are.

This is a hard game. Maybe. I’ve said before that the learning curve for games is usually a lot steeper than we realize, and I might be on the other side of that phenomena here. I don’t usually play 2D platformers and I never play the stuff with bullet-hail projectile avoidance like we see here. I put the game on easy, and found the whole game was just barely possible. And this is allowing for the way the game gives you a checkpoint every couple of screens.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Bleed”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.