Developer: Fishlabs Entertainment
Publisher: bitComposer Games
Platform: IOS, Android, MAC, PC
Release date: August 12, 2012
Price: $19.99
Originally released for mobile devices Galaxy on Fire 2 was ported to MAC and PC platforms back in 2012, with enhanced graphics that looks great. But how good is the game and how does it play compared to it’s mobile counterpart? Let’s find out!
Story
Just like in the previous game you take the role of Keith T. Maxwell, after a battle with space pirates your ship is damaged and a hyper drive malfunction takes you not only to the other side of the galaxy but 31 years into the future, far away from your home planet and stranded with nothing but a almost in shambles ship you have to find the way home.
A new threat known as the Void has arisen, not much is known of their origin or reasons why they attack other species but it’s up to you to put an end to their rampage across the galaxy.
Gameplay
A space simulator if you want to call it that , you can play it in different ways, either by mining or hunting pirates you can choose a passive or agressive way to make money, this includes raiding and destroying allied ships if you decide to become a pirate and obviously the most wanted in the galaxy.
Stations can provide everything you need, based on their technology level of course. In their Space Lounge you can grab missions, in the hangar you can buy new and powerful ships. Once you get a new ship your old one goes away, sadly you can’t keep them. On the plus side, you get to keep all the weapons and technology you own and use it in your brand new ship.
In the Space Lounge you can also hire wingmen (recommended for certain missions) buy weapons or blueprints to aquire new technology, to be honest most of the items you can create from them are not a must have (except the Khador Drive, that is a must have!). There are several ways to gain money and standing from the different races;
-
-Taking care of space pirates, including finding their hideouts, defending stations and freighters from their attacks.
-Transporting people to different stations and planets.
-Finding documents or certain items people are looking for.
-Mining ores and minerals from Asteroids.
-Destroying Junk near orbital stations.
-Finding spies among the allied fleets.
Take on missions in the space lounge, funny… i’m hiring myself, time paradox!
I totally hated mining, usually something I enjoy in other games but here it was a real chore, at least with the first drills you obtain. They are so hard to handle it makes mining asteroids unworthy, at least until you obtain the third or fourth drill in the final stages of the game, avoid mining unless you want a free headache with a bit of frustration.
Aside from mining the rest of the activities will keep you entertained for a while, especially if you want to obtain a better ship to complete the main storyline with less difficulty, taking in mind the campaign is not really that long. What will give you many hours of game play is all the side missions you get to do all over the galaxy.
The campaign would be extremely short if you rush through it. Mind you, it’s not the best story and it feels like there was room for more, lots of wasted opportunities to add extra missions and content to the game, but that is not the biggest letdown Galaxy on Fire 2 HD has in store for the player i’m afraid. Unless you are a completionist and want to get some missing achievements and medals to get a 100%, once you finish the campaign there’s nothing else to do…
Controls are quite good, especially if you pick to control your ship with the mouse, feels organic and natural. Turning and flying your ship feels easy and smooth, on PC this is the way to play it!
Audio
Cheesy dialogs, not so great voice acting.. but hey, at least they decided to give us a fully voice acted storyline, that is fantastic, i’m grateful for that, having voice acting and not plain text was a good choice!
Graphics
Here’s something to praise, unlike many other indie developers out there, these guys did an HD version that looks great, the skydome looks awesome with stars, planets, jump gates and space stations around you. Pure eye candy, it’s great to see indies put so much detail like this into a game.
Ship models look very detailed, it’s hard to believe they cared so much to add all the details, especially coming from a mobile platform. My personal favorite is the Aegir, reminds me of the Gradius ships, kudos to Fishlabs! But.. here comes the worst disappointment on this regard… sigh…
Downsides
So what’s the biggest disappointment of all? I’ve commented once you finish the campaign there’s nothing to do, mobile devices and MAC got add-ons but not PC. It’s truly sad to finish campaign to find out you can’t obtain some of the beefy and amazing looking ships or buy your own base… so i will never obtain a Ghost or a Specter because there’s no DLC.
I can understand they decided not to release any add-ons for PC, based on bad Steam sales, but i firmly believe holding up the add-ons for entire months when they promised their fan base they were releasing these add-ons for PC hurt their sales a lot. In a sense I think they did shoot themselves in the foot by doing that.
If they don’t release these add-ons, at least give the fans a well deserved patch to let them get some of the features (if not all) of these addons, heck, why won’t you allow someone to mod these for free via Steam Workshop? Adding Steam Workshop to this title would give the PC version new life, enhance replay value and cheer up the fan base. The game has a huge potential but without the add-ons there’s no point in roaming the galaxy at all, unless you could crash your ship into the sun (We can’t). If the add-ons are free on Android why not for Steam?
Pros:
+Great gameplay
+Beautiful graphics
+Nice amount of side missions
Cons:
–Campaign way too short
–No add-ons, like a burger without cheese and bacon, ermagerd, that’s a nono!
Overall
Galaxy on Fire 2 HD is a great addition to the fans of the genre, sadly it will not give you any joy once you finish the campaign, there is room for improvements and if a third game is created and ported to PC hope we can get the same add-ons the rest of the platforms did, as a respect for your customers.
I enjoyed the game greatly, it’s a delight to play but there’s room for improvement. If the developers could integrate Steam Workshop it would boost sales by tons, imagine custom campaigns, ships and new galaxies! I hope someday we get those add-ons on PC. Due to this i have to lower the original score.
We give the game 6.8 out of 10
