‘Space Pirates and Zombies’ Review – A New Frontier Of Gaming
Space Pirates and Zombies (SPAZ) is MinMax Studios’ first title and has been in development for nearly two years. Combining RPG elements, space combat, arcade action and strategy into an epic space opera; SPAZ appeals with its old school sensibilities and great modern graphics. Don’t be fooled by the rather odd title, there is an incredibly deep and rich game here that will suck hours and days out of your life.
SPAZ is set so far into the future that the Earth is uninhabitable due to over-pollution, and humans have consequently colonized the galaxy. This galaxy is not the one you will be familiar with though, instead each galaxy is randomly generated at the start of a game. Having to start the campaign in the Sol System, you play as a ragtag group of Space Pirates who plan on becoming rich by traveling to the core of the galaxy and scoring some REZ (a valuable resource and currency). Your band of wisecracking misfits has managed to scrap together a Mothership so that they can warp between star systems and start their quest.
The gameplay in SPAZ is incredibly rich and addictive, surprisingly so you might say for a top-down space shooter. The majority of the time you are left to control the Mothership’s fleet to collect resources, complete missions, and destroy enemies. This type of action gameplay has been around since Asteroids, but SPAZ adds layers of strategy and RPG elements on top of this and to a great result. Perhaps the greatest sample of this brilliance is the tie between ship building and the action. You are fully responsible for designing and building every ship in the fleet – you can choose the hull, weapons, and modules of their ships and then send them into battle. By destroying other ships, you will acquire new hull blueprints and research data. This research data can be used to upgrade and acquire new ship components to use in your designs.
With hundreds of stars to explore, SPAZ can tend to be a little grinding and time consuming. Eventually you enter a rhythm of entering a new Star System, playing a few missions that will improve your relations with one faction or another and then attack or bribe the warp gate guards to proceed on to the next star. My only complaint about the game’s rich gameplay is that you have a tendency to get stuck pursuing the main missions of the game. You usually have to spend some time grinding away at other repetitive missions in order to acquire the bribe or technology necessary to overcome the obstacle. Luckily this is worth the time and effort as the main campaign missions are much more varied than the random system conflicts that pop up. However, it is a shame that these roadblocks and repetitions detract from the experience.
Taking SPAZ at face value, I think most people would agree that the graphics are excellent. Every star system location has a great level of detail with fantastic looking nebulas, clouds and debris. Of course, a game like this all comes down to the explosions and combat, at least on a visual scale. If a comparison was to be made, the space battles in SPAZ are on a smaller scale, but they do rival indie hit Gratuitous Space Battles.
The real time nature of the battles in SPAZ brings a great level of excitement; there’s nothing like getting all of your ships destroyed only to redesign and rebuild them to crush your enemies. Obviously you are trying to avoid that and will most of the time be blowing up enemy ships, in which case, it is immensely satisfying to see a ship jettison its crew and explode into bits of Rez and other collectibles. Explosions are nothing without the accompanying sound though and SPAZ certainly knows how deliver on that front as well. What gives SPAZ its character though is the excellent radio chatter that you will hear during gameplay. Some favorites include, “Anyone know of a good strip club? I need a job” and “I wonder if your eyes really explode in space?” This banter is subtle and adds some great humor and character to an otherwise typical space opera soundtrack.
Besides some of the mission repetition, my biggest complaint about SPAZ is its title. Personally, I am fed up with the zombie game fad and hate that indies are cashing in and proliferating it. Luckily, the “zombies” in SPAZ are more like an organic plague than the actual walking undead. They remind me more of Halo’s Flood than the cliché we find in all of the other games today.
While I don’t particularly like the game’s title, you shouldn’t let that turn you off to an incredible indie sci-fi adventure. The game is utterly immense and contains hundreds of hours of gameplay by combining my favorite elements from great indie games like Gratuitous Space Battles and Starscape into one of the best PC sci-fi games I have played since Star Control 2. If you’ve heard of and enjoyed any of the games that I have compared SPAZ to in this article – you will probably enjoy SPAZ as much as I have. This two man Canadian team knows how to make games.
For more information on SPAZ or to make an overdue purchase, please head over to the game’s official page. You can also grab SPAZ on Steam, if you so wish.
Review summary Pros:
Great graphics, rich experience, hilarious radio chatter
Cons:
Can be a bit grinding, some repetitive missions
Rating: 93%
