This was yet another free game on Epic and they even let you have the Spacer’s Choice edition with better graphics and all DLCs included. This was released years ago of course and it can be thought of doing a science-fiction game in Bethesda’s style before Starfield using original IP. Unfortunately this is definitely a B-team effort as the game is unbelievably mediocre. I was already on the fence about eventually getting around to Starfield due to its poor reviews, but I’m definitely all knackered out of the space cowboy RPG after this.

The player is a colonist who is meant to travel aboard a large colony ship the Hope from Earth to the Halcyon system. But the Hope never arrived and the passengers aboard were left in hibernation. Seventy years later, mad scientist Phineas Welles finds the Hope, dodging the corporations represented by the Board that now controls Halcyon, and successfully thaws the player character out. Welles plans to overthrow the Board by enlisting the help of the colonists but he needs more of the specific chemicals to unfreeze them. He puts the player in contact with the captain of a freelancing ship but the player’s life support pod crash lands on the captain. You therefore instantly become the new captain and inherit the ship. You find yourself on the planet Terra 2 in the Emerald Vale and there learn about how difficult life is in the colony. The corporations control every aspect of the lives of the residents, down to the products they must use and the slogans they must quote. Of course there are still dissidents and rebels around, and the player must decide who to side with.

Playing as a character who is unfrozen after a lengthy hibernation period immediately makes one think of Fallout 4 but the look and feel of this game in general is strongly reminiscent of all of the Bethesda titles. The setting is original of course as is the ruleset but elements like zoning in and out of settlements, how your eye level view feels oddly close to the ground, the poor character animations and so on are straight out of all of the Elder Scrolls and Fallout games. In addition, there are aesthetic influences from games like Bioshock, with the little jingle when you interact with vending machines, and art design that favors loud, garish colors and science-fiction staples like moons, asteroids and such exaggerated to ridiculous proportions. Does it look striking? Yes. Does it look good? No, because the design isn’t coherent and is just a noticeable mishmash of its many inspirations.

The thing is everything about this game is like that. The game mechanics with boring perk upgrades and weapons that simply output more damage at higher tiers. The bland companions and NPCs. The very dumb quests and bad writing. The combat is pathetically easy at normal difficulty. At least this means that you rarely even need to activate your special power, the very generic and boring time dilation effect. The story even flails at explaining why you have this effect. Somehow being revived after being frozen for so long gave you this power. You can have up to two other companions accompany you at a time and you can even issue squad-level commands. But again, there’s no real need for it. I struggled to even tell the difference between the abilities of different companions as anyone can equip any weapon or armor and their special powers seem pointless. I guess having different ones around boost different noncombat skills and that’s kind of helpful for some quests.

I decided to forgo one of the two DLCs Peril on Gorgon but I did play through the other one Murder on Eridanos. It integrates poorly into the main story since you’re just invited to solve the murder of a famous celebrity out of nowhere. But the content of the DLC is generally better in every way. The map is big and fun to explore, it’s amusing how the guests and staff of the luxury resort slowly turn to insane monsters over the course of events, and playing at being a detective is a markedly different experience even if the plot is clichéd and everything is so very obviously telegraphed. It’s still a subpar gaming experience but it’s better than the main game.

I try to be as charitable as I can but I’m hard pressed to think of why anyone would play this. I mean I just played the Guardians of the Galaxy and its dynamics of a crew based in a starship are so much better. Even the old Knights of the Old Republic had a more interesting starship than the bland Unreliable ship you fly here. As a combat shooter, this is so terrible, I would rather play anything else, Borderlands maybe. I keep thinking that the only people who liked this must not have played all of these older games and are new to the genre. This one gets a solid thumbs down and I regret even playing it all the way to the end.