9 people found this review helpful
2 people found this review funny
Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 6.6 hrs on record
Posted: May 28, 2016 @ 2:59pm
Updated: Jun 18, 2016 @ 9:07pm
Product received for free

This review is a part of Steamified's Community Reviews program and the credit goes to both Steamified & MinMax Games for providing the key for review purposes.

First of all, first impressions plays an important part for me personally to decide whether the game is worth investing the time in and even though I enjoyed my short experience with SPAZ, I have to say that it fail to get me hooked. Now, onward to the actual review.

Space Pirates and Zombies, or SPAZ for short, is a real time roleplaying strategy game developed by the two-man team MinMax Games and was released back in August 2011. SPAZ is generally well-received and the success of the game spawned a sequel with the same name released only recently as an Early Access title.

The game takes place in a distant future where the center piece of the conflict revolves around the discovery of Element 126, or Rez as it's more commonly known. With rumors of the abundance of Rez reserves at the galactic core, you and your crew of space veterans sets out on a voyage to seek the fabled promise of fortune. Of course, things weren't always that easy as the galaxy is in turmoil with the clashes of the oppressing UTA forces and the desperate civilians factions. Not to mention the rising report of zombies incident and the notoriety of the bounty hunters that stalks each system.

The gameplay is done in a top down fashion where you control a single ship while the AI controls, depending on how advanced your mothership The Clockwork is, several others and they will assist you to what nature that you've set them via the Tactic panel. This panel acts as your drawing board for devising strategy on how to approach the situation. The game is paused while the panel is open and you can select units and commands them either to attack, reposition or follow you similar to the conventional real time strategy games. Another unique feature is that while you're in this panel, you can access the hangar menu and customize your deployed ships, whether to change them to a different better-suited hull or switching out ship parts to better adapt to the situation. All of this are done in real time as you close the panel so make good use of the Tactic panel to turn the battlefield to your side.

This game relies heavily on exploration and the game is GIGANTIC! It amazes me of what two people can achieved with the right motivation. Moving back to the exploration part, you'll have to jump from system to system via the warp gate, searching for rare blueprints to outfit your ships better, recruiting vital crew members which provides significant bonuses to your whole fleet, reverse engineering various hulls so that you'll have more options in combat and various others. Based on what you've chose early on, the galaxy can contain to hundreds of system at once and this will lead to potential hundreds of hours of entertainment.

Generally, the game revolves around 4 factions, the United Terran Alliance (UTA), the Civilians, Bounty Hunters and... Space Zombies. Yeah, I'll get to that in a bit. In a system, every action that you take will result in these factions react differently. Anger the UTA too much and you'll have their ships raining beams and missiles on yours and vice versa. To make it worse, in some system where the Bounty Hunters resides, your actions might increase the bounty on your head and collect it too much and you'll have some skilled hunters on your tail. There's also an arena mode held in the Bounty Hunters space station where you can undertake specific challenges in terms of scenarios. Succeed and you'll be awarded with Rez and reputation. I haven't got too far into the game yet but the zombies seems to be the byproduct of a failed experiment and for some reason, it affects ships, or zombies piloting the zombie ships? I don't know but it's pretty whack to be honest but I guess zombies sells.

Now, let's move on to the pros and cons, shall we? I hope this will explain why I said the game didn't get me hooked.

PROS

  • The game is HUGE, even with the least preselected systems generated! Fans of exploration games will love this as there's always the itch to go to the next system, one jump after another. Although I haven't had the chance to tingle with the mods yet (available in the site's forum, if I'm not mistaken), I can sense that the replay value is extremely high, given the interests.
  • The combat system feels tight as every aspect of your fleet are customizable and proper planning and strategy will lead you to victory.
  • For a relatively old title, SPAZ still holds well in the graphics department. It's nothing groundbreaking but each new system and planets are an eye candy to look at.
  • On the technical side of thing, the game runs flawlessly with consistent 60 FPS throughout the game and I've never experience any crashes of the sort. There are also various settings provided from the launcher before starting the game. Steam basic features are all present and functional.

NEUTRAL

  • The initial loading time is considerably long but I guess that would be better than constant loading time in the game.

CONS

  • The biggest thing that annoys me is how floaty the ship's movement felt in the game. I'm not sure if it's stats related or anything but controlling the ship is a pain and I honestly could not get the hang of it.
  • The factions system feels pretty shallow. Each new system has their own relationship meter for you and it doesn't feel like any of your actions are particularly impactful other than towards the bounty hunters.
  • Even though the world is huge and lots of places to explore, I just can't help but feel that almost every system is more or less the same. Maybe I'm just too early in the game but that's how I simply felt.
  • The tutorials, while good, are pretty lengthy and I admit that I almost quit before realizing the the first hour I've played is only part of the tutorial.
  • The sounds in the game in general is very underwhelming. The explosions from blowing up ships are no where near as good to how it visualized. The soundtrack is also forgettable at best. This is a shame since I generally enjoy listening to in-game soundtracks.
  • The UI and text feels too small at times and this is a major problem for players with big monitors.

Despite all the flaws I've listed, SPAZ is a great game, tailored to the niche of the genre and I have to say that they've done it beautifully. Sadly, however, the game doesn't appeal well to newcomers alike and I can only give it a decent 3 / 5.

Like I've said, the game fail to keep me interested from exploring any further, even the previously reviewed Drox Operative appeals more to me. However, if games like this are your cup of tea then by all means, go for it. I'm sure in time you'll receive your money's worth because the contents are just enormous.



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2 Comments
Dr. JustinSane May 29, 2016 @ 9:20am 
Thanks! I appreciate it :golden:
malek May 29, 2016 @ 5:15am 
Nice review bro!