Nexus Launches In Europe (November 4, 2004)

Cpl Hades

Mr. Kat
A couple of weeks ago we took a first look at a neat looking Homeworld style real-time strategy game, Nexus: The Jupiter Incident. The game is now out, and will be available in stores across Europe tomorrow. Sadly it looks like North America may have to wait a further few months before getting hold of the game, though there is now a multiplayer demo available for download from the game's website.





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Original update published on November 4, 2004
 
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Bought it this morning and will be installing later today. Fingers crossed but all I've seen suggests a postive gaming experiance...

The 2 discs include full modding utilities and a ship viewer.

As a paper model fan, I'm hoping to find someway to extract game meshes (as oposed to inserting them).

If I had a complaint, its the game manual. Very poor. Fuzzy black and white screen shots with zero contrast. Can't tell what you are looking at.

More when I've gotten in running.
 
OK well its running and I've just finished the first 5 missions.

At first I was grinning so mych that the top of my head nearly fell off. Then a touch of "reality check" set in.

Its good. No denying it. But like all games, it has its dowside.

Good stuff first. The Ship models are increadibly detailed. The first ship you command, the stilleto, has B5 Omega Class rotationl sections for gravity, small vernier jets that flare when it changes course. Even whe zoomed in and up close the textures are nearly flawless.

The ships also resemble the 2300AD starships at the Etranger website.

In the last mission I played on Sunday night, you had to navigate your ship through an asteoid field infested with defense platforms under the control of a rogue AI, locate a hostile powers research station, deploy marines to serach and retrieve useful data and then get the hell outa dodge.

When your ships computer says incoming missile for the first time you are blase and thinck "so what?". Automatic defence lasers kick in. And then BOOOOOOM!

Remember in the B5 movies when they set of the multi gigaton nukes to get the attention of the Shadow and Vorlon fleets? Yep THAT BOOOOM. Oh, those sort of missiles! :eek:

I mean this is HOW you expect a nuke going off in space to look. Even at a distance I took 1/4 damage to the hull. Once I could see again!! The flash was that bright. And when you hear "incoming missile" again, you panic!!

So, where's the downside?

Lots I'm afraid. Space is dark and so are your ships. And so are the Asteroids. Even with the screen brightness raised, its hard to see much detail unless you are zoomed in real close and then you can't see the battle. There may be aflickering in the distance. Hey its a space battle taking place. And you can select and zoom in but whilst you do so, YOU are getting pounded by the other enemy cruiser that you couldn't see clearly... Theres no "radar" or map view (such as in Homeworld) where unit movement is more clearly displaid.

As the ships use believable physics, movement takes time. So when you issue a command to head for an enemy ship and engage with medium range weapons, it seems to take ages to get underway.

And you daren't resort to long range artillery. Did I mention the BOOOOOM! You see, allied ships may be in close combat with the target and a nuke is sort of indiscriminate.....

A lot hinges on getting used to the controls and micromanaging ships systems. You can rely on the games AI to some extent - it will respnd according to 4 basic settings "aggresive" shoots at nearby targets using all appropriate weapons, "Defensive" will avoid combat and engage only craft that are threats "stealth" and you ship goes to full emcon and avoids using energy weapons and scans until on top of the target etc

However, you can manually target specific weapons at the enemy and go for specific systems (ie neutralise the anti fighter systems before you launch you embarked squadron etc)

You can get sneaky and set a series of nav waypoints to follow that brings you onto the enmy from behind or slingshot round an asteroid etc. Thats fun especialy if you set the camera view to just behind and to one side of the ship. The enenmy craft is suddenly there in front and you medium range hull buster weapons start to pound away automatically when you are in range. The effect is very cinematic.

Engagements seem to take a long time even when you ship closes to a knife fight range and begins trading blows.

Is it worth it.

I'd say hell yes (with reservations)
 
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