Space Force 2 apparently got picked up by publisher JoWood (of Spellforce fame), and they've retitled it, "Space Force: Rogue Universe" (I'll refer to it as SFRU from now). Well, that's a mouthful. Not to mention "Rogue Universe" kinda sounds Star War-sy. The website can be seen here: http://www.spaceforce2.com

I'm kinda worried though. For one, there doesn't seem too many ship models. Okay, so that's a minor point. All the screenshots seem to be of the default first-person view (cockpit mode); what, no chasecam (a la Freelancer) view? Darkstar One was already a huge disappointment in that regard. I freakin' hate FPS games, and I will only tolerate that kind of camera view so far. What's the use of buying shiny new ships when all you get is the same stupid look-out-of-the-window view?

Then the writeup about the various races. Okay, I understand Provoxx is a Croation outfit. Still, reading the summaries is cringe inducing. Couldn't they have just ran it by a proofreader if they couldn't afford a pro writer who was fluent in English? Considering how much devs spend on artists for game art, you'd think they've learned by now that presentation is more than flash graphics. Look at Darkstar One for example. Even it's cutscenes couldn't compensate for the blah delivery of the rest of the game. Contrast that with Freelancer's campaign.

Crud, there's a storm brewing and I gotta disconnect. Anyway, overall it looks like it's another small sandbox game like Darkstar One was, not the open-ended styl e of the Elite games or the many REAL factions like in Freelancer. Hell, for all it's age and simplicity, Freelancer was a great game to fly around in. There were a lot of ideas in it that should've been expanded. On the other hand, Darkstar One was pretty much a disaster all around, a lot of ideas in it were too simplistic.

Damn, and I was really looking forward to a great space sim.

Edit: Alright, where was I. Right, factions. In Freelancer, you could actually ally yourself to the various factions, by how you acted towards them (ok, so most of the interaction was in the form of blowing ships up...). Say you attacked a criminal faction. Other criminals would also hate you, and law enforcement would like you. On the other hand, there were many factions, not just the simplistic "merchants, pirates, police, military" of the old Wing Commander (Privateer) days of yore. So for example there were rival criminal factions, and helping one made you the enemy of another.

See, there were many alliances to balance. Darkstar One on the other hand, merely relied on the stupid monolithic "bounty hunters, pirates, police" stereotypes, falling into the cliche trap like so many other games. Freelancer may have sold short on the space sim part, but at least where factions were concerned it did a decent job (which, of course, could be expanded upon).

Back to the FPS-like view, I'm also afraid SFRU may be as arcade-y as Darkstar One, or another older game in the genre, Tachyon: The Fringe (which also elicited a tepid review from me). On the other hand, I don't need space sims to be ultra realistic - past experiences with such games, e.g. Starshatter: The Gathering Storm, gave me mixed feelings, like the anal-retentive landing procedure (simply slowing to a stop within a "target" landing area should suffice dammit, I don't want to be a real pilot). There's a mix between realism and simplicity, and so far I've not really seen any game I'm really comfortable with except Freelancer, and Freelancer is too simple.

I'm not too sure about the trading aspect; frankly I've always been a proponent of gunboat diplomacy in these kinds of games simply because it was more immediately rewarding. I believe there should be more returns to be reaped by trading than just watching your bank balance grow - that's not much incentive (for me) to haul cargo around. Perhaps if they tied it to your diplomatic handling of faction relations or something.

The random mission generators could also use heavy tweaking. I can't believe we're still doomed to "kill X ships at mission waypoint Y for $Z". Graphics have progressed from simple 2D sprites to full 3D with lighting and other special effects; surely missions can be more complex now than stupid fetchquests which have been around since the days of King's Quest (yes I know those games didn't have random missions, but each game was basically a predetermined succession of fetchquests). That's the problem with developers who race other devs to see who can put out the best-looking game, they don't put any thought into the other details and it freaking shows.

I don't want a stupid fullscreen 64xFSAA 120fps state-of-the-art engine; I want to play something with some goddamn DEPTH, not something that a 6-year old can master in seconds by simply pointing and clicking at targets. That's the crux of my complaints, really, with games nowadays. I'm a gamer with a brain, not a twitch reflex connecting eyeball to mousehand.

Well, there's still a chance SFRU won't be as bad as I suspect it may. Prepare for the worst, maybe you'll be surprised by the best. Gotta run, picking up some hardware - gotta replace a mixer, and pick up a keytar. The stock ones always look terrible, I'm getting one custom finished so it doesn't look like a dork's sawed-off keyboard.