Genesis Alpha One a self described "roguelike FPS where you must build, maintain and navigate your ship through a galaxy filled with hostile alien and human threats. Explore, create and survive the militarized space race in order to secure humanity’s future". A Sci-Fi FPS that ticks a lot of the game-play boxes for me. It does what it says it does with a style all it's own. The original trailer had me interested in the game but the deluxe edition trailer even more so....
So after a year as an Epic store exclusive the game made it's way to Steam and GoG with a lot more development behind it. The game version that hit the rest of the PC platforms was classed as the Deluxe version. Which I picked up on sale about a year ago for less than €12 on Steam.
After an initial attempt at the tutorial the game ui/systems proved to be unfriendly for me. It felt complex to 'just do' things, un-intuitive to say the least. I was put off by such gameplay mechanics. Doing anything felt like real work.
Case in point, a player looking in Steam comments on how to 'Help me get through the tutorial'. The answer to reassign a crew member.......Walk up to the computer and hit E to access it.
Hold down the right mouse button and "swing right" so you look right, and there's the personnel assignment.
Click on crew you want to DISMISS from any OTHER module, then ASSIGN them to this module.
Use right mouse button to swing back to the main screen. There's also a "ship status" screen on the "top" (swing up).
That's scratching the surface and is a lot to 'just' assign crew...
That said, once your in the swing of things(pun intended) and the muscle memory kicks in it's a lot better.
There's good in the game. I can't help but feel like the overall aesthetic theme is so much like the Alien/Aliens films. All industrial and clunky computers in space.
A big update in August last year(2020), added and enhanced a lot.
For a single player game I've accumulated a lot of information on it. Almost as much as I've done for both Star Trek Online and EVE Online..... Which says a lot. Both in the games detailed depth of systems and it's complication.
Getting back to the game a second time last December was more interesting. I got to understood a lot more. But like a lot of games where I don't or can't immediately get into it, it sat on the back burner slowly bubbling away; Waiting for a time when I can 'get value' out of it.
Getting back to it over the last two weeks; Even with some extra knowledge from last time was an effort. Getting through the game tutorial was an effort. Different strokes for different folks.
There's enjoyment in the game 'just' by doing things but for me it's massively over the top on the hands on management. In a way that feel's very work for the sake of work. The larger the ship and the more crew you have, the more the workload becomes..... Workload in managing the workload of your crew. Work on work. It becomes exponential. For me it's not a means to justify the ends. Maybe I'm being overly harsh.
All of this is me talking about the default game difficulty setting. It really is a love/hate game. I've been very up and down with it. I've been running around clueless in frustration, then running around in a satisfying coordinated crew workflow ballet. So I can say with honesty that I really like the game and 'get it'; And I can honestly say that I dislike the game and find it intelligibly frustrating.
Intelligibly frustrating when on my first ship assault, amidst the panic of combat, it took a while to figure out how to 'beam' back to my own ship. Hard to read, understand and act when your being poisoned, shot and tacked by something else.
Understanding the games systems on how to do it all is a pain.... Till the muscle memory kicks in.
The auto-save is great but ultimately an extension of frustrations over time. Not just that reloading, retrying and reloading gets old. Yes it's a time saver but it makes failures compound each other. Till you reach a point where you just can't go on in game. By the time you realise you should have done something so much more has happened since and it's just not worth progressing further. Unless your at a stage where you've done so much and 'need' to push on.
The enjoyment wears off quick when the grind of gameplay failures really kicks in. For the amount of time and effort crossed with how quickly things can go south, that effort to reward ratio becomes questionable.
The learning curve is hampered by the severity of every level of failure from small to great. Which all feel harsh. Which is also a weird form of motivation as well; Because as you learn how and when to do things, you get hammered with further failure and setbacks but want to go back and redo things(a bit like/akin to the Hitman game mechanics). You want to progress in better ways but inevitably you start a new run to do it all better. Which in turn leads to one new run after another, no matter how long each run is. Some short, some much longer. So like the never ending and genetically spliced clones you control; You as a player are being changed and reformed to play again...........And again................And again(maybe).
Yet even now, with the game uninstalled I've a niggling feeling to keep playing the game. Almost a compulsion to get back to it. That's why I had to uninstall it. It's a good game with a lot going for it once you can get past certain elements and understandings.
Thinking and mulling it over, maybe the lesser 'journey' difficulty would be better for me to see more of the game from here on in. Journey justification; Enjoyment in the eye of the beholder and all.....
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