REVIEW : SPACEBASE STARTOPIA (PC)

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REVIEW : SPACEBASE STARTOPIA (PC)

REVIEW : SPACEBASE STARTOPIA (PC)

“Six pints of beer – and soon, please. The world is about to end.” Here, re-reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is the best way to embrace the atmosphere of Spacebase Startopia. And, in fact, the original Startopia was dedicated to Douglas Adams, released in the now prehistoric 2001.

REVIEW : SPACEBASE STARTOPIA (PC)

The Realmforge game is a remake-bar-sequel to that classic of strategy, and in fact, it looks quite similar: it is, now as then, to build and manage a space station, constantly visited by crowds of alien tourists in look for imaginative ways to have fun and spend. Said like this, there seems to be nothing particularly original: in reality, Startopia was characterized by two interesting design choices – the introduction of a small military component, to be managed in RTS style, and the comedy tending to the absurd, a version space of the hilarious nonsense of Theme Hospital and the more recent Two Point Hospital. Spacebase Startopiait reconstructs the gameplay of its predecessor, slightly expanding the war dimension and trying to recover the ironic inspiration, with overall good but not entirely satisfactory results.

REVIEW : SPACEBASE STARTOPIA (PC)

As for the mechanics, Spacebase Startopia will immediately appear familiar to those who chew management. The main game mode is the campaign, which includes a dozen missions with different objectives – accumulate a certain amount, heal a certain number of aliens, discover some technologies: we will therefore find ourselves faced with a more or less space, in which build the infrastructure necessary for the need. At the base of everything is the hostel, which meets the needs of food and nutrition, and the robots responsible for cleaning and maintaining our space station. From here on, the possibilities to expand progressively: the station includes three bridges, the service one, the entertainment one and, higher up, the bio-bridge.

REVIEW : SPACEBASE STARTOPIA (PC)

The service deck houses the hold, the factories, the laboratories, the recycling centres and everything needed to make the shack work. On the entertainment deck, you can build discos, hotels, arcades, as well as a wonderful cafĂ© populated with space cats: pleasant places, in short, aimed at extracting money from visitors. The bio-bridge is the most original element: it is a sort of hydroponic greenhouse whose landscape can be modified at will, choosing between different types of soil. Each of them allows you to grow certain varieties of plants, which can then be transformed into resources – for example, medicines for the infirmary and minerals for factories. The economy of Spacebase Startopiarevolves around energy, which functions as a universal currency: aliens pay for our services in energy, to be crammed into the central reactor and then spent to build and operate new structures.

Things to do in zero gravity

Of course, all our efforts would be in vain if we didn’t have to entertain our alien clientele. There are eight species, each of them characterized by particular interests and preferences for this room or that type of terrain. In addition to providing us with the coveted energy credits, however, the aliens can above all be hired as workers. The Tigers, for example, curiously resembling anteaters, are needed to run the recycling centres and prevent our station from being overrun by waste; the Gresulurians, in addition to having a frankly embarrassing number of letters in the name, are the typical Grays of UFO mythology, and therefore employ their experience with vivisection in the role of doctors. Now, in the design of the Spacebase aliensStartopia differs from its predecessor more than in any other field: the species are almost all new and, in my personal opinion, even less inspired.

The original Startopia, to say, entrusted the cultivation of the bio bridge to bizarre purple Rastafarians with four arms, a fun parody of hippie culture; the new Spacebase has replaced them with the Dryads, certainly prettier plant-women, but not so emblematic. Not that the new aliens are bad, mind you: just less absurd, and therefore less comical, than the old ones. The new graphic style is, in hindsight, more “toy”, characterized by soft lines and pastel colours, where the previous title offered a more metallic glance, and more suited to the sci-fi setting. Here, if I had to summarize the problem I would say that Spacebase Startopiait offers adolescent humour, perhaps a bit coarse when compared to that of its predecessor. However, the voice of our electronic assistant, artificial intelligence that follows us step by step sarcastically commenting on our progress, contributes to elicit a few laughs. Again, the lyrics are typical of the more classic sci-fi parodies, but nevertheless, add some brushstrokes to the atmosphere.

REVIEW : SPACEBASE STARTOPIA (PC)

Time is an illusion

Accumulating the resources necessary to solve some missions can take a long time, and this is precisely where the consequences of an unfortunate choice are felt: there is no control over the speed of the game. Said it seems like a small thing, but believe me, it’s a big annoyance. Spacebase Startopia predicts a lot of downtimes when, after building the basic infrastructure, you find yourself waiting for the economy to take off. Here, there is no way to speed up these moments. And it is not even possible to read a book in the meantime, because some missions require that some opponent or a bomb appear randomly so that we will have to be alert to prevent any damage.

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review-spacebase-startopia-pcSpacebase Startopia is a management software that knows its stuff. Fun to play and enlivened by that touch of irony that doesn't hurt, it can be defined as a successful operation. Of course, the low production value and an uninspired campaign prevent him from aspiring to the Olympus of the genre but the result remains above average. Seen as a remake of the original Startopia, some style changes seem superfluous, and perhaps repeating the old ideas more faithfully would have been a better choice. Nothing, however, that could disturb an overall pleasant experience, albeit not cheap, considering the 45 euro fee requested.

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