PROS
- Backgrounds that look better than space itself
- Tons of customization
- Zombies
- Procedurally Generated Galaxies
- Tons of missions
- Infinite replay value
- Continued support from developers
CONS
- Combat can become repetitive
- Mining can be an annoyance
- Lengthy distances between some story missions
Not Recommended For:
Gamers who dislike a challenge and gamers with little free time.
Recommended For:
Everyone Else.
SPAZ, or Space Pirates and Zombies is a game in space, the end.
What, you actually wanted a review, is space not good enough for you? Well then you either need to play Portal 2 or you have expectations which are way too high, but fine, whatever you say.
Space Pirates and Zombies is a game about Space, Pirates, and Zombies. In game you control a single ship within an expanding fleet, while having the overlord-ish ability to hop between them at anytime, as well as to pause the game and issue orders. While the game mostly has a fast paced, action feel to it, it has a very nice underlying strategy system. One thing I love is that the tactics are optional, while if you don’t use them you won’t do as well within game and will die more, you don’t need to understand what everything does, since the AI tends to handle itself fine on its own.
Tactics Screen
The game is basically a hybrid between mission based and open world exploration. You can freely fly between systems, but then you need to choose which mission/station/planet to warp to. When you aren’t in one of those places, you are at your mother ship, which serves at a mobile base between systems. While the game does have an overarching story, you tend to forget what it is after playing for a few hours, since while you do have goals pertaining to it, there isn’t really anything story related outside of it, since the game gives you so much freedom you just tend to do missions while doing your story ones along the way. But basically, you and a group of people created a giant ship, with the hopes of traveling into the depths of your universe to become rich bastards.
The open universe is nice, there are tons of random missions which can help you progress with either experience, Rez (The games currently), or with new blue prints. I really like how the game goes about giving you new ships, you can’t simply go to the nearest station and buy them, you have to kill a certain number of that ship and reverse engineer it, which makes getting bigger ships a challenge, since the bigger, the stronger. As far as ship customization goes, it is diverse and works well. Each ship has a certain amount of turret slots, device slots, missile slots, bomb slots, etc. and you can choose what to put in each one, and as you level up you can put on even better items. While there aren’t too many different turret/main weapons, each weapon is different so that not having too many differences isn’t that big of an issue. Each ship also has a build cost, which is how much it costs to rebuild once destroyed, if you aren’t a player who enjoys mining for 30 minutes every hour or two, then you need to be careful not to make the most expensive ships in the galaxy!
Each galaxy in game is procedurally generated, which means each time you play; it will be an entirely different world to explore. The developers did a good job of bringing these galaxies and systems alive; each game has two warring factions, the military and the civilians. You need to choose which one to side with, or just not to take a side at all, and many of the missions in game help please one of the factions. And depending on which faction you choose, will depend on if they give you access to their station or not, which can have items for sale, allow you to bribe guards, or allow you to mine. There are tons of random missions which can pop up, some connected from earlier ones, which helps give a sense of…life to the systems, though it would be even better if there were neutral factions such as bounty hunters and merchants, who could reward you with rare items or money for helping them, which would in turn get others of their faction to like you.
A Rather Large Galaxy
The combat itself is very in-depth, action packed, and fun, though also challenging. One thing the developers did very well is balancing combat, while it does feel hard at times, you simply need to try a different strategy, if small missiles aren’t doing the trick, fit all your ships with large slow moving missiles and try that instead. I love how the game allows you to refit ships in the middle of combat, so you can completely switch strategy, with nothing but a small build time in between. There are many strategic approaches to take such as cloaking devices, drones, bombs which stall enemies, and many others, allowing the player to choose how he prefers to play, since there isn’t one “win it all” combination.
Combat in an Advanced Ship
My only complaint is that after playing for a while, combat can get repetitive. Because about 10 hours in, it boils down to “Shoot with missiles, fire laser, get hit by gravity bomb, sit here and get shot at, die, rebuild, repeat”. Because I came to a point in which I needed to travel halfway across my galaxy, and since to unlock new systems you have to destroy blockades (or you could bribe the guards, but shooting is easier) and some of them were at a level too challenging for me, I had to do other missions to level up while also killing blockades, which were mostly the same fight over and over again, with needed mining in the middle. I understand that the bigger you make your galaxy, the longer the game takes, but if they could’ve simply condensed missions and not have made some of the story ones so far away, it not only would have helped speed up the pace, but it would’ve been less repetitive. Speaking of which, I wish exploration was a bit more rewarding, I would have liked if some random missions involved finding wrecks of rare ships to reverse engineer, some rare ship equipment, some mission which involved moral choices which had repercussions (which also would add to the ‘alive’ feel of the galaxy) but instead it is mostly a mix of mining and shooting.
Now there is one thing that does change up combat, and that is zombies. When fighting zombies you really have to take a different combat approach, which is a welcome change from the usual dodge and gun. If a zombie spore reaches your ship, your whole ship will be zombified and be taken control of by the zombies, so you need to make sure you keep your distance, but the ships still have weapons so you can’t be too defensive, which makes zombie combat much for interesting.
Zombies
All of the SPAZ ships look very cool and differentiated, along with the systems and asteroids, all the art smoothly works together. Now the backgrounds are…just amazing, easily the best space backgrounds of any game I have played, since they are multilayered and dynamically animated. The sound is also good and fits in with the game.
So ultimately SPAZ reinvents gameplay you’d expect from more retro games, mixes in some RPG elements along with procedurally generated galaxies; which all forms together into one hell of a game. This game honestly has nearly endless gameplay, and while it is challenging, it is balanced, and above all else, fun to play. It also has good progression as you play through the game. You can check this game out on steam with their demo, or get the full game for $15. You owe it to yourself to buy this game, since it isn’t just an Indie Gem, it’s near Indie Perfection, and one of the best Indie Games I have ever played…hell, it’s one of the best 2D games I have ever played. The developers clearly put a lot of hard work into this game, and they are going to continue to do so with additional content in the upcoming months. The only thing that would’ve made this game better was if there was a mobile version so I could play a mission or two if I’m bored for twenty minutes.
Saturday, October 27, 2012 at 8:47PM 
