SPACE!!!

Isn't it cool?

You might have seen how last Friday I discussed video game aliens. Well today I thought that I might as well take that topic to it's homeground: space. For a long time space-bound science fiction was my favourite genre of fiction, so you can imagine how many spacey games I've played in that time. For one, I used to be an ardent Star Wars fan and it wasn't for the glow sticks. I loved the star ships and space stations that the Star Wars universe provided, and I loved any game that allowed you to explore that space. Heck, I played the The Old Republic just because the player's home hub was a spaceship. That's how obsessed I was.

Nowadays, Science fiction isn't quite the be-all end-all for me anymore. At some point I became infatuated with high fantasy, although that took quite a blow after how Game of Thrones ended. (But I suspect that love affair might flare up again pretty soon after watching the trailer for Netflix's 'The Witcher'!) However, I never forgot my old favourite genre and have always come back to it in those times when I needed that extra layer of escapism. Afterall, what says 'disconnect from earthly troubles' like being off the earth all together? And yes, It is healthy to hide from your problems in a fictionalized simulation of space. (I may need a psychiatrist.)

Speaking of simulations, one can hardly go on about Space games without bringing up that one sub-genre that all the most hardcore space gamers talk about: 4X. Which stands for: Explore, Expand, Exploit and Exterminate. (Feel like someone messed up the acronym there...) To be fair, 4X games don't necessarily have to take place in Space, but all the best ones do. This sub-genre covers games like: Stellaris, Endless Space, the Civ games and Sid Meyer's Alpha Centuri and those games are characterized by their reliance on strategy. In these games, players are typically put in control of a race of people and told to help them grow and prosper in a competitive environment against other races of people. What ensues is a competition of wits, diplomacy and, inevitably, who has the bigger gun. Space games capture this genre so well because they allow players to push the limits of humanity to ends that we can only dream of, vividly sparking the imagination. Winning usually requires players to engage critical analysis and to find a way to solve problems that precludes brute force. Most of the time, anyway. I can only imagine what one of these games must be like in multiplayer; fun, but a good way to strain a friendship.

"But what about the actual simulations", I here you ask. "I want to be in space, I want to fly my own spaceship, I want to be the captain of my destiny!" "Or maybe I just want to be a space trucker." Well for folk like you, and me, we have the space-flight simulation games. There was a time when I couldn't sleep soundly without a good hour session of 'Elite: Dangerous' to put be in the right mood. I know, a game with a name like 'Elite: Dangerous' hardly sounds like the most relaxing thing in the world, but trust me when I say: that game is true zen. Or at least it was the way I used to play it. I'd imagine that career bounty hunters might have a rougher go of things. And that's the beauty of Space flight simulators like Elite, they allow you play at your own pace. You can spend your time hunting down enemy ships, smuggling illegal products or, if you're me, cruise around space as an intergalactic courier. On those nights I would turn off all the lights, sit back in my chair, and just jump from star to star losing myself in my own head. Bliss.

Of course, Elite: Dangerous isn't the only Space-flight Sim. Just the best. (In my opinion.) There is also the infamous: No Man's Sky. A game which promised the sky and delivered space. A lot of it, but not much in it. Even now, with the game having been lovingly supported and updated by Hello Games for 3 years straight, the whole thing still feels pretty barebones. Luckily for me, barebones was all I was looking when I picked the game up last year. Yet again all I wanted was to cruise around space, only this time I listened to podcasts. (Maybe I just need a holiday.) There isn't much to the game from a gameplay perspective and the story starts with an intriguing hook but meanders into pomposity by hour 5, but I only really stick around for the exploration anyway. So I enjoyed the game.

That's all the space flight games I can think of. No more come to mind for me. Oh, there's the old Elite games, Star Raiders and Trade Wars, but they're all from the first age of space Sims. Still great games, but all too early and unable to take advantage of modern computing, unfortunately. Don't forget 'Wing Commander', those games were great! Mark Hamill even showed up in one of them. What's that? I'm forgetting a game? One of the most successful kickstarters of all time? And it also has Mark Hamill? Well, could be that I just don't want to talk about Star Citizen right now. It's not that I'm one of the people unluckily enough to be aboard the hype train for this long overdue project, or that I'm scared of all the defenders still suffering the effects of their sunk-cost fallacy. Star Citizen just really pisses me off. That topic really deserves a whole blog dedicated to it, so I'm going to leave it alone with my stern disapproval for now.

Onto less contentious topics, would you believe that I am currently playing through a space game right now? For the past few weeks I have been playing,and enjoying, Double Damage Games' Rebel Galaxy. It's a decently fun western-themed space game with simple, easy to grasp controls and some fast paced action. This may be the only space Sim in which I actually don't just go around exploring. Though I suppose that isn't really a valid way to play for this game, anyway. Rebel Galaxy makes the whole 'Space genre' feel like the high seas by doing away with the 3D maneuverability of space and having everyone travel on the same elevation, making mid-space collisions actually possible. Also the game's music sucks. But hey, you can't have everything.

The future holds some titles that promise to explore space, as though the great black has come back in fashion of late. Borderlands 3 has ditched the world space of Pandora and Sanctuary to emigrate to a space station from which you travel to you mission spots. The Outer Worlds also features several worlds and allows for ship travel between them. Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order's gameplay trailer seems to tease the chance to fly your ship to new planets; though I suspect that will just be a cutscene transition. And then there is the most intriguing of all, Bethesda's mysterious: Starfield. A game we know next to nothing about, except for what fuel the space ships will be using. But that's enough to get me thinking about Skyrim in space, so I'm happy.

Finally, I want to bring up a game in which there is no Space at all. So how is it relevant? Well, it isn't. But I'm just distraught that I forgot to include it in my Alien's blog. X-Com: Enemy Unknown is a strategy game about defending the earth from extraterrestrial invaders that have come here for the sole purpose of ruining humanity's day. You control the X-Com military initiative as you struggle to manage your budget, resources, your soldiers and the goodwill of your funding nations. Gameplay consists of turn-based tile combat which is all about positioning and luck. And the aliens come from space, so there's that.

The exploration of space is one of the last great adventures that man has yet to truly conquer, that and the sea, I guess. We can only dream about what it is like to soar amongst the stars and to exist as a race of space nomads. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that we will quite get there in our lifetimes, but we may just hit Mars in the coming decades, and that's a pretty big step. Until humanity is advanced enough to shake off their earthly bonds and take to intergalactic travel, we have the world of gaming to give us a glimpse of what we can expect to find, and who we can expect to meet out there. But maybe I'm wrong and we're closer than I think. Maybe we can all look forward to a future in the stars in a handful of decades. With the unpredictable growth of technology and the understanding behind it, it is genuinely impossible to predict how far humanity will evolve in how short of a time. I do know one thing for sure; if I'm going up into the endless dark, I'm gonna need to bring a heck of a lot of Podcasts with me.