Back when I used to buy/play a lot of games, I never really followed any gamer news, and just sort of bought what looked good. I ended up with a lot of disposable games and a few gems that I kept playing for years. But there was one thing that always eluded me: a good, all-encompassing space action-RPG, like Master of Orion 2 but from a first-preson perspective. There were some options, but none worked for me; Freelancer was so dumbed down it was retarded (though I did still play it a lot because it was the only thing I could get), I had no way of getting Wing Commander: Privateer to work on my system, and the X games honestly just held no interest for me; as someone once described them, they are hardcore economic simulators with no real life or atmosphere to them.
Then one day I thought I had found it: a game that promised the ability to fight on the ground as a footsoldier or a tanker, or across the stars as a fighter/bomber pilot or even *gasp* a SPACESHIP COMMANDER?! In a realistic space combat setting?! There was no way this could be true! I bought the game without a second thought and rushed home to play it.
That game was, unfortunately, Universal Combat. And having never followed gamer news or culture, I had no idea that Derek Smart was an awful, awful person who released s***ty, incomprehensible games.
I spent six hours trying to do something and accomplishing jack squat. I had no idea how anything worked or what anything did or what I was supposed to do. It was only after six frustrating hours that I realized there was no getting anywhere with this byzantine monster of a game on my own and I would have to consult the manual, which turned out to be 300 pages and useless. Finally, I quietly removed the CD, uninstalled the game and returned to a heavily modded but still laughably simple and stupid Freelancer, weeping silently as my dream of an open world action-rpg ride through the stars shriveled and died.
(By the way, years later I would discover the Frontier games (Elite 2 and First Encounters), but by then I had lost the patience to play a real hardcore space RPG.)
Oh, and one other thing:
Elizander, on 14 January 2012 - 05:08 AM, said:
Master of Orion 3 hands down.
Good lord, this. This was the one game I found out about in advance and waited for with baited breath for almost three years before it came out, only to be presented with a godawful unworkable mess of a game. I was at least able to get somewhere with it, unlike Universal Combat, but I felt like I was fighting the game to do what I wanted half the time rahter than playing it.
Edited by Truck Thunders, 19 January 2012 - 02:25 PM.