A strange and unique experience awaits…
Some key points that this game offers:
- New Game Plus
- Multiple Endings
- Sandbox experience
Gameplay & Controls:
The controls for the game are fair and easy enough to make use of. The game handles pretty decently as well. Whether you are on a planet fighting off attackers or crawling through your shafts clearing out infestations.
Combat is pretty average, to be honest, and not that well balanced either. Your favourite weapon will be the pistol since it doesn’t run out of ammo and is far easier to make use of. The game is a mixture of ship building, exploration and simulation elements. As you explore planets and debris, you upgrade your ship to accommodate more crew members and gain access to newer technologies to make surviving easier. You don’t really manage your crew, they go about their own thing, food, water, and all those needs are non-existent, which is a let-down.
Everything you do off ship has the potential to bring back unfriendly visitors. Whether it’s the tractor beam beaming resources on board, or the landing party bringing back harvested materials. If resources brought onboard houses a stow away it will either attack you, the ship, or the crew. Or it lays eggs that lead to infestations that will grow and spawn alien enemies as long as the infestation is alive, it can also spread creating more infestations. If left unchecked they will hatch and attack whatever is closet being crew or the power nodes of your modules.
If power modules are badly damaged, they will fail and destruct, losing everything contained within, including crew members and other modules attached to them. The infestations are like the biggest mechanic of the game, if you didn’t plan your ship build properly you will easily get overrun by hordes of aliens or find yourself on board a dying ship. Proper planning needs to go into ship building, there are 7 levels that you can build on allowing you to properly build and equip your ship so it is easy to manage infestations and other hostile boarding parties.
DNA is the biggest resource in the game, as you gather enough samples you can create new species to add to your crew, as long as you have breathable atmosphere for them, you can sustain them, this is done in the greenhouse where you plant flora that creates specific air types such as O2. If a crew member dies you clone a new one, if you die, you start with one of the clones in your crew.
The entire goal is to sustain yourself while improving your ship and crew up and until you find a suitable planet to start a colony. That is the winning condition of the game. Once done you start all over again with some newly unlocked benefits if you unlocked them during the initial playthrough.
Graphics:
It looks beautiful but upon closer inspection, you will quickly note that looks are quite deceiving. Not nearly enough attention to the finer details were invested. The majority of objects barely received any attention making them look outright ugly and out of place.
Character models are fair at best but due to limited rendering, the game isn’t really capable of producing beautiful visuals. The variety of planets we visit all pretty much look the same except for some basic changes such as different atmosphere colours or flora that inhabits the planet if there is any.
The game doesn’t look outright ugly, the framework is there and the created structures are all present, the delivery just isn’t what a game of this generation ought to be.
Sounds:
The soundtrack is pretty decent though, enjoyable and quite entertaining, and most of the time it’s what keeps the game going.
There isn’t any really scripted voice over work except for a few cutscenes. These however were done pretty decently.
Replayability:
The game is all about replaying it. Once you completed it you start again with unlock bonuses. New Corporations are unlocked as certain conditions are met, and even higher tier ones.
During your exploration you will also acquire artifacts that you can take into new campaigns with you, making the new playthrough unique and somewhat easier.
MGR Gaming’s Conclusions:
Spoilers Ahead:
The game is fun but it can be so much more! There is enough potential here to make an incredible game. From RPG mechanics to defensive all the way through to crew management. The game has all the basics, they should have just been developed further and better implemented.
We are left with a game that struggles to define itself because it doesn’t have a single mechanic or feature that is fully executed. Everything lacks more refinement. The planet explorations, for example, touchdown and harvest resources that’s literally next to the ship. Fend off a group of attackers that appear every now and then, rinse and repeat.
I really loved the infestation mechanic and they could have gone so far with that if they just gave it more meaning, turning it into a secondary defensive game would have been amazing. The game has a lot to offer, and I really hope to see that they take it a step further if there is a sequel. Even a DLC that expands the game whilst bolstering what there is currently will do wonders for this game.
The Official Trailer for Genesis Alpha One Deluxe Edition.
By: MGRza
Date: 4 February 2019
Additional Info:
Platforms: PC: PlayStation 4: Xbox One
Genre: 3D: Action Roguelike: Base Building: Building: First-Person: FPS: Horror: Management: Multiple Endings: Open World: Post-apocalyptic: Procedural Generation: Roguelike: Roguelite: Science: Sci-fi: Space: Space Sim: Survival: Survival Horror
Censor Rating: Blood and Gore: Language: Violence
Age Rating: 17+
Developer: Radiation Blue
Publisher: Team17
Release Date: 29 January 2019
MGR Gaming Steam Curator:
https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32364038/