Being a punk in space.
Space Punks is a top down shooter from Flying Wild Hog and answers the question of what you would get if Borderlands made a Diablo clone. What follows is a series of instanced missions with up to four players shooting stuff, smashing stuff, spacing stuff, and punking stuff. There are, inexplicably, four punks to choose from at this moment. It’s hard to avoid Borderlands references when your main dude is basically a dollar store Handsome Jack complete with the same clone ability that Jack got in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel.
One of the first things I did upon playing Space Punks was to take the voice acting and put it into STFU mode. Thankfully you can shut off voice acting separate from the other audio, and you are going to want to do that soon. The voice acting isn’t bad in a vacuum, but every character has five lines and repeats them over and over, chiming in every few seconds. My Space Punks has no voice acting in a game that is already quiet. This shouldn’t be an improvement.
Let’s talk about some things I appreciate with Space Punks, like the fact that the game has a universal inventory, doesn’t make you redo the main quest line with every character individually, and has a fame progression that gradually unlocks new features. The crafting mechanic, which I haven’t personally gotten far to, is promised to be more exact when crafting goodies and far less reliant on RNG stats. That’s great, knowing what you’re making when you make it makes for a fun game to make.
The shared inventory is also an improvement over most games since that means you can have multiple characters using the same gear without worrying about finding duplicates or shuffling inventories. The inventory itself is also quite generous, I think there’s 50 slots per gear slot. Characters have synergy skills with one another for co-op play, which basically just buffs their existing skills.
The problem with Space Punks is that it isn’t the kind of game you scamper to the computer to play in sheer excitement. I mostly expect the response to this game to be about as tepid as Quaker Oats announcing a new shade of red for the vignette behind the Quaker Oats guy on the box. It lacks oomph, that certain je ne sais quoi that gets the blood flowing and keeps you excited for playing. It’s the kind of game you finish a session of a think “I sure did spend a time playing that.” There’s not much impact to your hits.
And a lot of that comes down to the repetition. ARPG players are no strangers to repetition, you kill enemies and get gear and kill enemies and get gear and kill enemies and get gear. This may be a side effect of the game launching into early alpha, but the variety of enemies in Space Punks is very slim, leading to pretty much the exact same encounters over and over again as you square up against the same group of 5-10 of the same small handful of enemies. All of this on maps that are mostly a series of linear corridors.
Another problem I have is with the concept of selling cosmetics in this game. Your eyes aren’t deceiving you looking at the screenshots, your character is tiny and is always tiny. So tiny in fact that the differences between the standard skin and the pre-order gold skin is almost entirely negligible.
Space Punks may one day be a fantastic game that people walk away from saying “that was fantastic.” It will eventually be free to play, so if you’re on the bench on this one you might want to hold off and not drop $50 on a pre-order kit just to get your foot in the door on day one. Trust me, it will still be here. Unless it’s not, in which case it won’t be.
Unless you’re really clamoring to get into Space Punks, you might want to let this one bake in the oven for a while longer before dropping some buckeroos on it.
MMO Fallout 