Starpoint Gemini 2 Review

Reach for the stars …

Space sims aren’t exactly ten a penny nowadays, so I jumped at the opportunity to try this Xbox conversion of indie PC title Starpoint Gemini 2. But with a relatively hefty price tag, is it worth your time and cash?

Story:

You can either play free-roam, or there’s a traditional campaign, which throws up story reasons to travel across the expansive galaxy. Told mostly through voiced text or very simple in-engine cut-scenes, the budget/ indie nature of the game soon becomes apparent. Your father’s ship gets blown up early into the game, and then most of the following missions seem like an excuse to try and get you to take part in the various gameplay elements like repairing stations, mining asteroids or boarding enemy ships and stations, whilst also crossing the stars.

The actual plot to find your father’s killers is pretty bloated and easy to skip, as there’s not a huge amount to the background universe worth reading.

Gameplay:

Finding what happened to your dear old dad, however, is something that many potential buyers may never find out. In fact, many players could conceivably give up within the first five minutes. Whilst this PC sim has had its controls reasonably well translated to a controller, Starpoint has no tutorials, and expects you to rely on either the options menu (with a tiny picture of the controls) or to use the digital manual (hidden in the awful, lethargic, Xbox One help app) to work out how to control your ship. It’s the worst first impression to a game I’ve played in the last 15 years, bar none.

Some 30 minutes of cursing and time wasted reading the online help later, I finally had some control over my ship (advanced things like replenishing healing consumables into the quick menus I’ve still been unable to find hours of play later). Hilariously, once you’ve worked out the controls, flight is actually very simple, with the throttle controlled by the triggers, and directions by the sticks. You can also use the options button to divert power between your three main systems, engines, weapons, and shields.

You can even have the AI fire weapons for you in combat, which is a fairly slow-paced, Star Trek style affair, with beam weapons and torpedoes being the order of the day, and four banks of shields (for each quadrant of the ship) making your positioning and angle of attack vital. It’s like naval combat with a Z-axis. Once you break the back of the initial complexity, there’ plenty to like about SPG2.

The galaxy is large and well-filled (although the travel options are limited and time-consuming), the missions and economy seem well-balanced and offer plenty of variety; there’s also enough ways to make your own fun outside of the campaign or freelance missions for sandbox fans too, and there’s certainly a lot of content if you have the time and patience to reach it. Ships and systems are highly customisable, and you can pilot anything from small attack ships to cumbersome freighters. Starpoint Gemini 2 is one of those games that rewards you the more you put into it.

Presentation:

I always love the looks of a good space game; it’s pretty easy to get the universe looking ‘right’, with colourful nebula, exciting light effects from starlight glancing off asteroid belts, and interesting ship and station design. SPG2 has most of these elements down, and it can be a fine looking game when it wants to be. It’s not without issue though; hitching when loading into new map hexes is severe, whilst pop-in can also be distracting on occasion.

The voice acting betrays the game’s indie roots; the collection of accents on show is hilariously bad, with a continual barrage of poorly acted space Russian, German or Jamaican blasting out during missions. There’s a certain charm to it from time to time, but mostly it’s just plain bad. Thankfully the score is actually decent, with some nice high-tempo classical pieces that really kick in at important points.

Conclusion:

Starpoint Gemini 2 has about the worst possible start a game could have. I can see many purchasers abandoning the game within 5 minutes. If you can be bothered to read through the Xbox One’s abysmal help system, the game underneath is often confusing, rarely transparent, and definitely only for those willing to put the time into it. But, it can also be charming, tactical and deep, leaving me in two minds about it. It’s from a different era, but so are many fans of the genre. And if what I’ve said sounds enticing enough, there’s nothing much else like it available on consoles. Buy with extreme caution!