That's because while both the ships and the camera can sort of move up and down a bit, you are basically tied to the X axis, and everything occurs across the plane. You'll notice I said "faux-3D" earlier, too. The vast things that float around you in the cold awesome of space really mean nothing, and quite a lot of the action occurs within UI circles in which you can build some space stations and maybe tap into the infinite resource wells. However, the sense of wonder diminishes when you realise how small, and how tied to the linear scripted events these areas actually are. It's certainly one of the most beautiful games I've played lately. It is quite the eyeful, and it gives Ancient Space a visual kick that few games manage.
ANCIENT SPACE PC SERIES
The action occurs in a series of arenas, framed with asteroids, huge mysterious structures, gigantic warp gates, and then more distantly by immense rock structures and glowing nebulae. We know who did this, long ago, and no one seems to have been able to quite manage to replicate that trick. This, then, is a shame, because it seems like the game had the opportunity to inject a bit of class into the genre. It's bizarre, in a world where there is so much incredible richness and variety of sci-fi literature, that it is so hard for that freshness to be picked up by games. The reality is far closer to the genre norm, however: embittered voice-over man, corporate/governmental interference, big bad, robot advisor, etc. The proposition, hell even the name, Ancient Space actually gripped me: a vision of a dark and distant space ruin, explored by intrepid folk in big functionalist starships. But nothing sticks, and it all sounds like filler. Yes, it's all dark matter this and funny named spaceships that, and I say that as a man who knows the name of far too many imaginary spaceships across a wealth of movies and videogames. That said, the initial feeling that this is going to be an interestingly atmospheric sort of game soon fades. It's beautifully presented, and instantly comprehensible to anyone who has laid their fingertips over the mouse and keyboard of a real-time strategy in the past ten years.
This means that the bulk of the action is to be had in the campaign, in which you build and blast your way through a series of tricky missions to unfold a story about something or other happening in space. So Ancient Space is this: it's a faux-3D real-time space strategy with a number of resource management vectors, a bit of resource gathering and building, and a severely limited skirmish mode. There's your three word summary.īut I can say more. That's not to say Ancient Space is a terrible game: it's actually not ever bad in any dramatic sense, it just doesn't do anything particularly exciting. The RTS meanwhile still pines for Homeworld, and while there are a number of games on our space-radar, nothing has yet to really spool up our jump drive and push into the next sector.Ĭould Ancient Space take up this critical astro-gauntlet? Jump past the break for a trailer.Space games are having something of a renaissance of late, but it's only in the fly-and-shoot genres that we're seeing much concrete promise (specifically with the rise and rise of Elite: Dangerous).
ANCIENT SPACE PC PC
No official release date has been established for Ancient Space, but barring catastrophe Paradox and Creative Forge plan to launch the game on both PC and Mac this Fall. To that end the developers have enlisted a cast of sci-fi genre regulars to populate the game, including John Billingsley of Star Trek: Enterprise and Dina Meyer of Starship Troopers. Unlike most real-time strategy games, which are split equally between a b-movie singleplayer campaign and an online multiplayer component, Ancient Space focuses entirely on the former. Specifically, an area known as "The Black Zone." Though objectives vary throughout the game, the core goal of Ancient Space is to build an impressive interstellar fleet that can survive attacks by aliens, space pirates and things that exist only in nebulous regions of the cosmos. Paradox Interactive and developer Creative Forge have unveiled a game called Ancient Space that the duo describe as "a new story-driven real-time strategy game."Īs its title suggests, Ancient Space takes players to the edges of the universe.
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