First off, yes I know I haven’t been writing much … I have been stuck in various games since about July 2010 – Grand Theft Auto 4, X3 Terran Conflict, and Skyrim (yeah no posts on those).
I have always been a sci-fi fan, what with me being a Trekkie and all. I know SWTOR was released, but I’m not as much of a Star Wars fan as I am a Star Trek fan. Star Trek Online has released a new expansion-cum-makeover called “Season 5 – Call to Arms” where the skilltrees have been revamped and crafting practically overhauled. Mission progression from Ensign to Vice Admiral has been streamlined. All these are done to prepare for the Free-To-Play launch on 17 Jan 2012.
But, this post is not about those. This post about a new little game I discovered on Steam. It’s called SOL:Exodus. It’s made by a small independent company, hence it is labelled an “Indie game”. Indie games doesn’t necessarily mean “sucky games”.
As I mentioned before, I have always been a sci-fi and space combat fan. X3 is an open-ended game where I will NEVER be “finished with it”, hence my savegames are still there waiting to be reloaded and continued. However, Sol Exodus is a linear game, much like Wing Commander (anyone still remember that?) series or the Freespace series.
In the game you are a combat pilot, and the missions are linear – you finish one, the story brings you to the next encounter immediately. There is no trading, exploring, flying around aimlessly like you can do with open-ended games like X3 or Freelancer. Controls are pretty much intuitive for the most part. However I did have to get used to not having a “strafe” mode… in its place, there is a “slide” mode where you disengage all your X and Y axis and rotate to face a direction while going in another. This allows you to, for example, fly AWAY from enemies, while looking back and firing on them, all the while flying AWAY from them.
The graphics are pretty, and they use the Unreal 3 engine (usually used for FPS games like the Tom Clancy Splinter Cell series). Hence you can be sure of some pretty eye candy. However most of the time your attention will be on trying to stay alive and killing the bad guys, the “Children Of Dawn”.
Voice acting in the game is decent, and doesn’t sound stiff. Pretty good for an indie game actually. The in-game computer persona that is part of your ship is called “Cassi”. I would even go as far as to say, if you have played Mass Effect 2 before, she sounds a little like EDI there.
Anyway let me just show you a video clip of the actual gameplay. No it’s not a video capture from me – I found this on Youtube.
It just got released today actually, 25 Jan 2012. Well in US it is 25 Jan 2012, but over here it’s 26 Jan 2012.
It’s only US$9.99 on Steam, and it is worth it! I haven’t had such a mindless blast-everything-that-moves space combat game since Freespace 2. Hmm I may even reinstall Freespace 2 again one of these days and re-play the whole game… I kinda miss it..
Related articles
- Space Combat Sim SOL: Exodus Launches on Steam January 25 [Video] (kotaku.com)
- SOL: Exodus Launching Fighters This Wednesday (escapistmagazine.com)
- Further Spacebiff: SOL: Exodus (rockpapershotgun.com)
