Star Conflict

I've been doing a lot of tanks and such lately and I haven't really had time to do writing. So with my creative juices bursting at the seams I'm ready to unleash a combination of words that connect together to create paragraphs and string together some form of cohesive thought.  I've been playing Star Conflict for a day or so now and I'm pleasantly surprised by what it offers.


Dah Looks

Graphically its a gorgeous romp through various space locales but usually you're so entranced in fighting you have little time to admire the atmosphere or lack thereof as the case may be (hyuk hyuk). There were only three maps available to fight on but the game is still in beta I believe so there should be more maps down the pike. All the ships look convincingly enough like ships. I'm not an aerospace engineer but I assume all these ships are space worthy. Let's just assume the rule of cool and figure all the kinks of combat in space have been worked out in the distant future (in which this game takes place). The interface inside and outside of battle may take a moment to grasp but its not rocket science.  It runs very well on my gaming laptop despite it feeling like I have an actual window to space in front of me. It was the game's performance on my laptop which gave me in inclination to make a video showing off some gameplay which I'll have at the bottom of this post if you're interested.


Playan

Ship control feel smooth and you an alter your velocity and move in many directions with various engines placed on your ship. I haven't had time to sample every weapon available but from what I've played so far the starting weapons for all your ships offer different engagement styles with benefits and penalties depending on the situation in which their used. Shooting other people with these weapons can be rather tricky at times as you're fighting with no clear axis for combat so you'll have to have situational awareness to properly combat other ships. There's various missions you'll have but I was usually too busy trying to figure out how to kill people to focus on accomplishing any objectives. The lack of any real axis to reliably tell where you 100% of the time makes navigating maps an exercise in frustration when you're trying to capture a point or defend a beacon- at the very least the game offers you some distinct landmarks ( planets or giant mining lasers) in the maps so if you forget you can look for them to find your bearings. Doing this while being shot at and shooting others can be rather difficult of course...



Should ya git et?


The game is developed by the same guys who put together War Thunder. I haven't had time to play War Thunder but from what I hear its pretty cool.  Star Conflict is free to play and you can download it off steam or from its website that I linked up in the first paragraph. Since it is free to play I highly encourage you to give a try if you have some time. Its only 1.5 gigs worth of space on your harddrive so its relatively small for being a "space mmo" that it claims to be.