3030 Deathwar Redux - A Space Odyssey, known from here on in as Deathwar, is a game of many parts. Some of these parts are good, like the jam in a sponge cake. Some of these parts are bad, like the rest of a sponge cake. Let's run through what makes Deathwar tick (and I'll ditch the cake analogy - for now).
First up, flying around in space. Here you'll pilot a 2D ship through 2D space, beautifully rendered in 24 caret sci-fi themed pixel art. There's combat, junk busting, cargo collecting, exploring, missions, and possibly a few other things I've forgotten. It works well, runs smoothly and has a few quirks and perks along the way to keep things fresh (pilots randomly offering to help, or to sell you illicit goods).
Then there's the on-station portion of the game. When you need to stop off and stretch your legs, you dock with a space station and get around in a side scrolling, adventure style UI. Pretty much all stations look and play the same (with art changes on the bar area and different styles of background, but fundamentally it's the same makeup every time). You can go to the bar and talk to the patrons; interesting for the first few dozen times but after that you'll start ignoring all but those required to fulfill your current mission. There's also a mission computer and a market/ship/parts computer. Pretty run of the mill, you take various kinds of missions to make money and sometimes advance the story. Ships get bigger, faster, better, have more storage etc, depending on how you want to play. You can play the market and be a trader, but I found the mission route was far more lucrative and only went to the market for fuel and to sell the crap I found on salvage missions (more in a second). Very occasionally you have to fight someone with your pistol while on the station. The shooting part worked about as well as pasting head-shots of your new girlfriend over the face of your old girlfriend on the pics you have hanging over your fireplace. Actually I'm not sure that analogy works, but I spent five minutes dreaming it up so it stays. Stations play a valuable role in the theme and feel of the game, while the shooting part felt shoehorned in, slapped over the top for the hell of it. It was just one more thing they tried to jam into an already crowded game - one thing too far. I mean, now I read that statement and compare it with my girlfriend analogy, it's painfully clear how crap that analogy is. Moving on.
Salvage. When encountering a hulk you have the option of conducting a salvage run. This was pretty cool the first 10 times, zipping about in your space suit, zapping aliens, collecting cool stuff and looting the dead meat popsicles. After that magical 10th time it kind of waned in entertainment value, which is a shame. You weren't forced to salvage but it could be a lucrative income stream. I'm not sure what the developer could do anything to improve things without an overhaul; the mould was cast and each salvage mission played out like like the previous ones. Float, dodge, shoot, grab, escape. Never once did I feel particularly threatened.
Now take these parts, smoosh them into a single game, and what do you have? Is it coherent? Like the proverbial sponge cake, you have some good parts (the jam center), some okay bits you can tolerate (the cake), and some parts you sort of ignore or flick off onto your plate (cream, half priced fruit the baker added in a failed and misguided attempt to jazz things up). I loved the first ten hours of Deathwar. Zipping here and there, zapping this and that, getting into the game loop of making money, exploring a bit more, getting a new ship, upgrading that ship, taking on new missions. Repeat. The story was ok. I could ignore the dull bits and it just sort of progressed on its own time-frame. Then, once more akin to the majestic sponge cake, it all stopped being fun and became a chore. The words "rinse, repeat" spring to mind.
If Deathwar was the only game I owned, I may have persisted. I mean, it's not bad - in fact, it's quite a good game - I just don't love this sort of game enough to persist and push through. Like every gamer these days, my collection is frighteningly large and half of them remain unplayed, or with a play time still shy of the single digit hour mark. Therefore, I dropped it. Right or wrong, fair or not, I felt I'd played though all the cool content, seen what there was to see, and future content was all going to be variations on the same themes. However, I can definitely see that if you do like this sort of game, or love the art style, then that'll be enough for you to plow on and see the end credits.
With all of that said and all of the caveats and the hand wringing and the fact I dropped it after 13 hours, it is with only a tiny amount of hesitation that I recommend 3030 Deathwar. It was a game I loved, then played casually, then dropped like an old sponge cake I just found at the back of the fridge in an orange Tupperware container.
VERDICT: Layered like a sponge cake, no wait...damn it I should have used layer cake as an analogy. Anyway, like a dessert option with more than one component, Deathwar is greater than the sum of its parts and can be enjoyed as one big, messy whole. Definitely worth playing on the cheap, or worth playing anytime if you love this kind of game (Space Pirates and Zombies comes to mind as something similar).
Final Word: It's a decent game with lots of parts. RECOMMENDED
(game link)
(shit, I forgot to say the music was cool. Hey, the music is cool!)
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