Near Impact Reviews

more like rear impact hehehe

This game looks like shareware from 2003. The text and UI in this game is INCREDIBLY small at 1920x1080, don't know if it wasn,t meant to be played at that resolution but I couldn't read anything or make out any of the icons... so I have no idea what was going on. Could should asteroids that seemed to just be floating around. Couldn't tell what the goal was or anything.

Tags: Casual - Twitch - Shooter Additional Tags: Delete Local Content & Remove from Library TLDR: Deviant art portrait and primitive engine hybrid of DEFCON/Rail shooter. Take out asteroids. Upgrade cities. Imprecise and amateur. I had an long review explaining the control schemes and binding in detail, but in the end the core mechanics are not clealy executed enough to bother. I would really just rather play something straightforward like Major Mayhem or Xenonauts if I wanted to experience either. https://store.steampowered.com/app/264340/Major_Mayhem/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/223830/Xenonauts/

Hi, So, you are destroying asteroids / meteorites that are on trajectory to hit earth. If one hits a city it can damage and destroy th city and lower your score. Zero, score, earth is lost. There is Survival mode, A mode where you must supply and I think protect a starship, and a mode where the population must take the ship and leave (exodus), Easy 4 difficulties, and a switch to have supplies sent by actual pod instead of instant, so orbital position determines dealy. You can choose one of two Robots. The robot is in orbit, with functioning orbital mechanics. now free flying around, you position your feet (thrust vector) in the opposite direction of the intended direction you want to change the shape of the orbit. So, thrusting away from the earth for say 45 degrees of orbit travel with distort the orbit into an ellipse. You can have part of your orbit in the atmosphere this way, or a really big obit on one leg, etc… You have an autopilot that uses the WADS keys and two others that align you in the important angles with the orbital plane, and you hit Q to thrust. You can disable autopilot and go crazy with orbit shapes. There appears to be functioning gravity and orbital physics for everything, you, your projectiles, asteroids, etc… but the scale of the earth and your orbit distance is compressed. Space swaps between a view that allows selecting cities on earth, or asteroids, you yourself (R) and the mouselook view of the robot. Tactical View (robot) can look in any direction and shoot weapons from the arms attached to the view. There is a rectical. Around the reticle is a ring representing your scanner range. Inside the circle is your tracking range. Objects outside the tracking ring in sensor range show up as orange arrows along the ring. Look toward the arrow to find an incoming object. Inside the tracking ring can still be outside of actually tracking, since you can line up far away object, but you can lock onto object once inside that range, and get various upgrades help with targeting. You can destroy incoming objects with 4 weapons; 1. Rail gun: Long range, fast firing, free ammo, weak damage. Can break apart big object into many small objects, which is challenging. Gravity affect the projectiles, and they can damage earth and the cities. This is run by a crew member out of many that you can pick, and give positive and negative perks that you assign at game start. Crew are on earth in cities, and if that city is destroyed, you have to move him for that station to function - same for every station in this list. The Time Of Flight, Damage, Rate of Fire can be upgraded 5 levels each. 2. Plasma Gun: Short Range, four plasma spheres released per shot, anything they hit and damage enough seems to vaporize. High damage, good for close groups. Uses Ammo. Can’t hurt earth. Upgrade Time, Damage Speed 5 levels. 3. Missiles: Lock onto a Target and the missile will track and intercept the object. I think very damaging. Uses ammo. Upgrade Time, Damage, Acceleration 5 levels. 4. Robot Punch. You can fire your right hand out for a short distance and hit very close stuff. It’s on a cable that rolls it back in. No crew for punch. 5. The Sensor. The sensor is upgradeable for Range, and Speed of lock, and you can add Range Finder, Lead Computing Sight, and Targeting Computer (locks firing angle to lead) The Strategic(?) view allows you to click on cities, hit (R) to lock onto robot, and any objects in sapce. Cities are very important. They produce money for your upgrades and suppliers. You can click on any one and you will be able to: 1. Perform any of the upgrades I mention above. Cost money. 2. Send ammo, and thruster fuel to the robot, instant of by pod. Cost money. 3. Build and deploy outside cities (I think anywhere) Gunships, Missile Silos, and Tanks. Cost money.You can also upgrade these units in similar fashion to your weapons, and it applys to all units existing. The units are not permanent.They un-deploy after a period. I am finding this game very deep and quite challenging. Functioning gravity and orbital mechanics are neat to play around with. I am glad I picked it up, nothing quite like it, and the engine is version 2 of the engine they use for their hard core military simulations. They have complex sensor simulations in the engine if it is even exactly the same as old engine, they do military contract work (sonor for sure) and now we seem to have spherical earth simulation with gravity for weapons and platform to operate on. I hope to see the next great naval combat simulation come from them, but I can see more than that supported by this engine.

This is the kind of game we REALLY need a neutral rating for. I don't want to unequivocally recommend it, but I also don't want to really slam it too hard since it seems like it's the kind of game -someone- could enjoy. I'm mostly giving it a yes to balance out the (poorly written) no review currently here. This game feels like it could be something really great with a little bit of focus. As it stands now though, it tries to do too many things at once. Don't get me wrong, it's exactly what it says on the tin - the "About" is 100% accurate in this case. In the game, you have: * Tower Defense * Space Combat * Real Orbital Mechanics(TM) * Upgrades * A bit of strategy (in choosing your crew) The problem is that it doesn't all go together quite as well as it could. By trying to do too much, it feels like the game ends up not doing any of it particularly well. Other notes: - It's hard to just dive right into the game - you're basically required to do the tutorial. - The lack of tooltips over buttons really hurts trying to figure out what you're doing, especially when you're playing at a high resolution. Even the tutorial isn't 100% clear on things. - Speaking as someone that does spaceflight simming (both KSP and Orbiter,) I find the Real Orbital Mechanics(TM) to be a detriment to gameplay. I appreciate the nod to how real space combat would happen, but I don't want to be figuring out intercept orbits on the fly while I'm trying to blow up asteroids. It basically makes the use of shorter-range weapons opportunistic rather than strategic. Overall, I feel like the developer put $10 per copy worth of work into the game (if you ignore the graphics, but hell - I can't art either.) The problem is that I don't think most people (including myself) are going to get $10 per copy worth of VALUE out of the game. If nothing else, It's worth trying on a 75% off sale... and as I've said elsewhere, I've spent $10 on worse stuff than this.