![]() ![]() Bring friends and the issue goes away, and the developers are to be credited for a decent set of in-game reporting tools.įractured Space is in a good place as it leaves Early Access: the core game is strategic, rewarding, and quite unlike anything else you might play at the moment. But hostility and blame-spewing is a sad inevitability when you’re playing an online team game, and although Fractured Space isn’t at fault for this it might affect your enjoyment. ![]() Plenty of games pass in silence, and once or twice I’ve encountered genuinely friendly and helpful teammates. Other upgrades can be tweaked before a game starts: it seems like a strange omission that your crew can’t.Īs with any game of this type, in-game chat can be hit and miss. This makes it less appealing to build a specialised hand of cards unless you know exactly what role you’re going to fill, which is fine if you’re playing with a group but a problem if you’re flying solo. It’s not a perfect system, however: you have to select your crew before you queue for a match, but you don’t pick which ship you’re going to fly before the game starts. There’s loads of voice work, too: your officers regularly make specific and useful call-outs, helping new players track details they might otherwise miss. Effectively, crew cards fill the role that account-wide power boosts and cosmetic voice packs would fill in another game, a novel combination that I’ve not seen before. Each is a person with their own background and voice work, and the crew you bring with you directly effect the barks (and taunts) you hear in-game. While the stat side of things is pretty dry, Fractured Space does a great job of investing these cards with personality. The free to play model also extends to crew cards, which are unlocked via booster packs and can be assembled into hands that apply percentage boosts to things like turn rate, firepower, armour repair and so on. There’s loads to discover in this deep roster of ships, and getting attached to a few favourites helps to take the sting out of the grind. I admire but am useless with the Paragon, a massive starborne aircraft carrier that requires deft micromanagement of multiple fighter squadrons to be effective. Personal favourites include the cloaking Ghost and the Equalizer, a lightning-fast utility ship that’s great at slipping past the enemy to disrupt their back line. Another heavy defender, the Destroyer, works very differently: preferring to set up at the back and keep the enemy at bay with devastating long-range firepower. The Colossus is a heavy defence ship, and fulfills this role by placing its bulky armour between enemy fire and vulnerable friendlies before moving in to tackle the foe at close range. Although they fit into broad roles-defense, offense, support and so on-there’s laudable variety in the way each ship is designed. There are just north of 40 ships available at present, which three made available after the tutorial and the rest unlocked through play or payment. This is a minor quibble, ultimately, and in some senses the compressed nature of the game works in its favour: it’s like getting a few seasons’ worth of TV sci-fi space battles in the space of 20 minutes, without all of the talking and bottle episodes. When massive warships are lined up and going at it, Fractured Space looks and sounds spectacular-but there are moments when it doesn’t quite work, such as when a 2km juggernaut bounces off a space-rock like a wayward bumper car. These are strategically vital but it’s worth noting that the ‘full’ feeling of space can chip away at the fantasy from time to time. Space is packed with cover-massive asteroids, hunks of rock, towering pillars of obsidian. It’s like getting a few seasons’ worth of TV sci-fi space battles in the space of 20 minutes, without all of the talking and bottle episodes. 5 online strategy, but none that make me feel like Admiral Adama. I’ve got lots of options for competitive 5 vs. It’s not the only game that achieves this in a multiplayer context, of course, but it’s the only game I can think of that marries it to such a potent, under-served fantasy. As you start to invest thought in the nitty-gritty details of missile flight paths, probable enemy hiding spots and bomber wing attack vectors, the game’s tactical breadth-and therefore its longevity-opens up. This is a slow-paced game, which some may find off-putting, but the more time you put in the more the game’s qualities reveal themselves. It takes a little while to get to grips with Fractured Space’s nuances, despite the decent tutorial.
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