SOL: Exodus (X-Wing / TIE Fighter / FreeSpace fans take note)

[Wrestlevania]

For fans of space shooters, the start of the 21st century marked the beginning of a long, dark decade.

The 1990s had been a boon for PC gaming of all kinds, and the advent of faster processors and enhanced control interfaces like rudders and flight sticks made it an especially exciting time to be a space sim junkie. Flying around in space ships, blowing things up – in space! – had never looked, sounded or felt as good. The possibilities seemed limitless.

Then the bottom fell all the way out.

High-profile titles that had been poised to trumpet a new era for the space sim genre, instead turned out to be its swan song. Tachyon: The Fringe. Starlancer. Freelancer. FreeSpace 2. Games considered to be the pinnacle of the genre failed to make money, lost audience to other types of games and withered on the vine. The game, for space sim junkies, was over.

Ten trips around the sun later, a burgeoning indie development scene and the resurgence of sci-fi in other forms of entertainment has led many gamers to wonder: When will there be another great space game? Turns out one group of veterans has been asking that very same question.

Better still, they’ve been making one…

You can read the full in-depth Seamless Entertainment interview – some of whom worked on FreeSpace 2 and Tachyon: The Fringe – over on The Verge.

Being a huge fan of TIE Fighter and the original FreeSpace, I'm cautiously optimistic about how this might play. It's been designed primarily to work with a gamepad, but it also includes keyboard and mouse aspects to the controls as well (if you want to). Sure, I'm nostalgic for my old Microsoft Sidewinder joystick, but then I'm nostalgic for actually having a decent amount of time to sink into games. ()

Anyway, there's a decent-looking SOL: Exodus demo on Steam, and the full game's £6.99/$9.99 if you wanted to just pile on in. I'm downloading the demo now...

[ysbreker]

I was all excited for this game until I read the Wot I think on RPS

[Jayel]

It's refreshing to see a space sim again with none of that buy-low-sell-high nonsense, but giantbomb's quick look didn't really excite me. I am a big fan of x-wing/tie fighter/wing commander games, but I'm beginning to suspect that what I like about these games is what happens between missions, not the actual space combat.

[Lechimp]

Yeah, the Giant Bomb quicklook made it like pretty meh but at least space sims seem to be picking up in popularity again. Evochron: Mercenary appeared on Steam around the same time and it's a pretty decent X/Elite style game.

[Erwin_Br]

I'm more of a Wing Commander guy. Wake me up when Chris Roberts is doing another game.

[Forbin]

This is exactly the type of space shooter that doesn't interest me. Which is a shame, because it's mostly the style that people make.

I'm not sure exactly what made the X-Wing series special, but I believe it was more than the license. The license was definitely important, and I think it reigned in a cool style where it's easy for low budget sci-fi to produce abominations in ship design. Also, all star wars games continue to benefit from the movie score.

I really enjoyed the shield/speed/lasers energy management system and customizing what laser firing patterns to use. Most games just seem to ignore those options. There are maybe too many controls by today's standards, but that piece of management should still be achievable.

Cockpit view I think is a must, and honestly I would prefer less bullshit on the HUD. I'm not interested in chasing fluorescent shapes in a black void. To that point, I think you just need to straight up steal the double radar system to make targeting and distance in space make sense.

And in terms of mission design, I think they really had amazing pacing. Some missions were just hectic dog fights, others were slow paced space ship duty stuff like picking up containers, or flying in formation with Darth Vader. And the escort missions were actually fun. It was amazing to get lost in a dog fight with fighters attacking your convoy, finish them off, and turn around to see you were kilometers away from who you were supposed to be protecting. Again a low budget sci-fi game is very likely to have terrible writing, and it's hard to give a crap about their nonsense story, but you can still have the player doing more interesting things than killing everything that moves.

Man I miss playing these games.

[Kolzig]

I'm more of a Wing Commander guy. Wake me up when Chris Roberts is doing another game.

That's going to be a long sleep.

I loved Wing Commander and X-Wing/Tie Fighter space games. I was always too scared to play Elite. Chris Roberts was really great with cinematic games in an era when computers had really limited processing power.

I watched my brother play the first one on Vic-20/Commodore 128, I don't remember which was it and got too scared because it looked so confusingly awesome. Then I tried Elite 2 on Amiga and never could do much in it as that was a "don't copy that floppy" from somebody and I didn't have the manual.