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The more you play, the better it gets

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 85 / 86
Date: April 27, 2006
Author: Amazon User

[last updated 11/03/06]: Note that Space Rangers 2 (SR2) is now available without copy protection [...] Instead, they use the same approach that they use for Galactic Civilizations II. I can only hope this means that updates for SR2 will be released.

By conventional wisdom, Space Rangers 2 (SR2) shouldn't be such a great game. After all, it contains a mixture of widely disparate game types:

-- 2-D turn-based space travel, including ship-to-ship combat;
-- 3-D ground-based real-time-strategy (RTS) combat among robots, with the ability to 'step into' one of your robots and control it personally;
-- 2-D 1980s arcade-style (real time) travel and combat set in a stylized "hyperspace" within a black hole;
-- text-based "choose your adventure"-style quests and challenges, some of which are quite tough.

All of this exists in a setting of sixty (60) star systems, with over 250 planets, space stations, and the like. You play a single character, of a given race (five available) and starting profession (also five available)--and you pretty much take it from there. There are another 50 or so non-player rangers zooming around the game universe in their own ships and pursuing their own paths and inclinations, as well as lots of traders, diplomats, pirates--and the dread Dominators.

And you know what? SR2 is a blast. In fact, as noted above, the longer you play, the more fun it gets. Part of that comes from increased personal skill; part comes from your character's development (not to mention your ship's development); and part comes from realizing that you're not in a "railroad game" (to use the term my friend Wayne Holder coined over 20 years ago), but that you really are free to choose any number of paths and find any number of approaches.

You can trade, gather asteroid fragments, explore planets (simple and a bit dull), hunt pirates, be a pirate, fight the robotic Dominators that are seeking to enslave humanity, or even try to get on their good side. You can trick out your ship, upgrade or swap out components, catch diseases, take various stimulants, pay for military campaigns against the Dominators, get loans, or even get a race-change operation (a good move if you've become too unpopular).

You're also free to suffer the consequences of what you do, which is why frequent game saves are a good idea. It's easy to die; it's not that hard to wipe yourself out financially; and it's even possible to get most of the known universe upset with you, as I did, inadvertanly in one game (the moral is, be careful when accepting a mission to track down and destroy another ship--some such missions are court-sanctioned, but others are simply political assassinations).

I have mixed feelings about the "choose your path" text adventures. On the one hand, it's a clever way of adding a great deal of varied content without having to come up with user interfaces to encompass situations as varied as being in prison, managing a ski resort, racing ground-based pods, competing in an interstellar (and trans-species) pizza contest, and so on. And you're never compelled to do them (except when you get thrown in prison), so you can avoid them if you wish.

On the other hand, I tend to approach new text adventures with a bit of wariness and weariness. Some can be relatively simple, but some can be quite difficult (though I have managed to eventually complete all the ones that I've actually started). And given how gorgeous the graphics are in the rest of the game, the simple sketches and text-based screens can be a bit of a letdown. On the whole, however, I'll take the content over the presentation, and I think SR2 is stronger for having these adventures in their current format than it would be if it lacked them entirely. Besides: they're a good fallback when you find yourself running low on cash and nobody wants you to carry some important object from one planet to another.

I find it interesting to compare SR2 with Microsoft's Freelancer. I had very high hopes for Freelancer and bought it as soon as it came out. Within a day, I had put it down again, and I haven't played it since. Freelancer had better eye candy and a more 'realistic' approach--but it felt far more like a railroad game than SR2 ever has. It is a classic example of the difference that good game design can make.

And that's what SR2 has plenty of: good game design. Trip Hawkins (formerly of EA and 3DO) famously said that a good game should be "simple, hot and deep." And that describes SR2. In spite of the variety of gaming styles--or, more likely, because of them--SR2 is addictive and fun.

SR2's greatest game design strength is, I think, the natural manner in which you can leverage yourself into having greater power and influence without ever losing the sense of your character being an individual. Natural (instead of arbitrary) tradeoffs keep you in line. You never command fleets; but if your leadership ability is sufficiently high, you can pay 1 to 6 other rangers to work for you for a while. While you can leverage up your ship and its components to take on the Dominators, you can still get killed if you get careless or overconfident--and there are still times you need to run away. Likewise, you may find yourself earning larger and larger sums for completing tasks and quests--but you may also find yourself spendings thousands or tens of thousands of credits in repairs and missile resupply after a single battle with pirates or Dominators.

Along those lines, your insystem-speed (including during regular space combat) is a function of the ship's size (carrying capacity) and the compnents and cargo inside. This means that a big, hulking ship, loaded with lots of weapons and other goodies, may be _more_ vulnerable than a smaller, less-equipped one, since the enemy can 'surround and pound' you. (With a fast enough ship, you can actually outrun missiles and torpedoes.)

Full disclosure: over 20 years ago, the abovementioned Wayne Holder and I designed and developed a real-time graphical space adventure game for the Apple II called "SunDog: Frozen Legacy". Needless to say, it was a constrained and primitive game, since it ran in 64KB of memory and fit (along with the operating system and all game data) on a double-sided floppy disk (280KB total). (Note: that's _kilobytes_, not megabytes or gigabytes.) Our vision was of a much richer and more complex game than we could possibly fit within those constraints.

SR2 encompasses everything that we did, attempted to do, or every wished we could do in SunDog, but with 21st century technology. It is for me such a delight, 22 years after SunDog shipped, to finally get to play the game that I have been carrying in my head for all this time.

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PROS (besides those cited above):

-- The game is rock-solid stable. In many, many hours of play, I've had SR2 crash exactly one, and it did so gracefully. This is in stark contrast to many other commercial releases (Civ4, GalCiv2, Battle for Middle Earth II, etc.). In fact, SR2 is very robust when dealing with external interruptions; twice I've had my system drop back into WinXP due to some kind of alert box from another application (unrelated to SR2); each time, the SR2 bar at the bottom of the screen change to read "Click here", and when I did (after handling the alert box), I found myself right back in SR2 where I left off.

-- SR2 does an automatic autosave every time you lift off a planet (overwriting the previous autosave). As noted, you can save your own games as often as you'd like (but: see below under Cons).

-- The user interface is very slick, very attractive, very fast, and works very well. Likewise, the graphics and music make the game very enjoyable.

-- For most actions, SR2 gives you a choice between automated and user-controlled.

-- The ground-based robot RTS battles are quite fun; the ability to take over and directly control one of your units (with a ground-based view) makes them even more so and opens the door to some more intelligent strategies.

-- E-Games/Cinemaware Marquee (the US producer/distributor) provided very useful support when I had a problem with one of the CDs on my original copy (and simply swapped out my copy for a new one). (Thanks, Nicholas!)

CONS (besides those cited above):

-- As noted elsewhere here, SR2 uses the controversial Starforce copy protection system, though I've had indications from the manufacturer that they plan to replace it.

-- SR2 was developed in Russia (and in Russian); some of the text translations are a bit obscure or confusing, though at times that simply adds to the sense of speaking with an alien whose grasp of human languages might be weak. While in prison, I did find one screen of text entirely in untranslated Russian, but it's not a critical screen.

-- The more games you have saved, the longer the save/load game panel takes to come up (though it always has eventually come up). Since I tend to save games often, this can be an annoyance. My solution is simply to delete saved games more often.

-- You can't save games at all while doing one of the ground-based robot RTS battles or during one of your text adventures. However, both of those environments give you the option of restarting should you lose or fail.

-- There are only two graphics resolutions supported in most of the game: 1024x768 and 800x600. (This is probably one of the reasons why the game is so stable.) However, the ground-based robot RTS subgame also supports 1280x1024--and SR2 will automatically switch back and forth between that resolution and whatever your chosen resolution is for the rest of the game. That actually strikes me as a point of possible instability, and so I keep the robots at 1024x768 as well. But I'd like to see the rest of the game suport 1280x1024 as well.

-- Apparently a 1.3 patch exists, with various fixes and enhancements--but it exists only in Russian, and it's unclear if/when it will be availble for the English version.

========================================
A few tips for new players:

-- Save early and often (but delete old saved games on a regular basis).

-- On your internal ship layout display (or on the icon layout of a ship's hull that you're considering buying), there may be a little button (bulge on the icon) on the upper left side, right next to the engine slot. This is an afterburner button; when pressed, it will cause your engine to move your ship at twice its regular (in-system) speed during your next move, at the cost of some accumulated damage to your engine. That button is your friend; get to know it well. If your ship doesn't have one, consider buying a hull that does.

-- When buying ship's components, look carefully at the size. Two components with the same function and quality may have quite different sizes. In one game, I replaced my initial radar and gripper components with other that did the exact same function but occupied 40 units less of space (freeing the space up for trade goods, other components)--all for only 1000 credits.

-- Get to know all the different types of space stations and what you can do at each.

-- In particular, once you have some cash to spare, consider going to a scientific station and having them upgrade selected ship components. Be sure to pay top dollar; if you're going to spend the money, you might as well do it right.

-- Avoid large loans from the business stations; as in real life, if you miss your initial payoff, the interest and penalty mount up very quickly.

-- For the robot RTS game, one poster on an SR2 forum summed it up nicely: advance and hold. Capture one production station at a time, then move up robots to guard it while to attempt to capture the next one. Lure their forces into yours; don't rush out to attack.

-- In the space game, a fast engine, long jump capability, large fuel tank, and strong radar make all the difference.

-- I prefer to fill my weapons bays mostly with missile launchers. This allows me to fire without getting too close to the enemy, and there are few things more satisfying than watching dozens of my missiles hit an enemy ship in quick succession.

-- Save your game and then try something new or different: dive into a black hole, try a quest that you're not sure about, accept charge of an RTS robot battle. In short, experiment and have fun.

Best game since Fallout 2!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 21 / 23
Date: June 18, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Rarely do I give 5 stars in both categories!!! In fact, I've critiqued so many PC games negatively on Amazon, that I felt obligated to give credit where it's due.

I've been a gamer since the C-64 days and I have a PC game collection that dates back to the late 80's. Since I've played dozens of RPG/Stragegy games I'm qualified to say that this is one of the best PC games of all time. Probably the best since Fallout 2. I've heard comparisons between Star Control 2 and this game before I bought it, however I wouldn't have ever believed that these comparisons could be accurate. I was completely stunned! The game is highly engaging, addictive and you shouldn't play it at night unless you want to be up until 5 AM!

While this is less of a RPG than Star Control 2, it does have the same "feel" to it in both the interface and plot. You can control the building and movement of your ship as you could in SC2. You can trade, take on quests (in TEXT format, but crafted so well you won't care), and fight on the ground (Mech Commander style) or in space. It seems that the designers of this game have taken the best elements from almost every significant PC game since Zork.

However, the thing that makes this game unique from SC 2 is its very open-ended structure and the fact that there's a variety of different ways to enjoy it. The game can go on for several weeks before you defeat the final opponents and, if you're a hard-core gamer, you probably wont want to end anyway until you've explored every last nook and cranny of the huge (HUGE Gigantic Tremendous)galaxy that these game designers have invented.

Anyway, this game is truly a work of art. The text quests are truly impresive I also haved to warn people that I think it's of Russian (or Balkan) design. Sometimes the translation of the text quests is sloppy, but never sloppy enough to affect the completion of the quests. I suppose that the lame movie at the beginning will also fluster some potential players. My advice is to skip the opening movie and go straight for the game. Make sure to have plenty late-night snacks.

I want Star Rangers 3 now badly, however, I wonder if the world has a high enough IQ for a game like that?

Space Rangers 2: Rise of the Dominators= "diamond in the rough."

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: June 05, 2006
Author: Amazon User

To begin with, if you consider video games with less than stellar graphics or you are illiterate, don't bother to read on ........ .............. ..............................

For the rest of you out there this is perhaps one of the best games I have played in a long time. It has everything that we as strategy gamers love. The breadth and magnitude of this game is overwhelming. You have so many options for so many varied adventures that it is truly amazing.

I have played many games. I am a fan of games like Sim City 4, Tropico, BF2, Rome Total War, Freelancer, Call of Duty, Halo, Guild Wars, Rise of Nations, Age of Empires etc. Compared to all of these games however Space Rangers 2: The Rise of the Dominators has virtually all of these games wrapped up within. And all of this for $30!

Those with less than suped up machines will be able to load this game up and play, because the graphics surely are nothing to write home about, but they serve their own purpose (in fact I enjoy the realistic renderings of the various planets).

I have searched so long to find a game like this. There is no cookie cutter way to play, you just jump in your ship, fight when you want to fight, run when you want to run, trade, sell, buy, build. There is so much to do 100+ planets to travel to. The mini-games are whole games in and of themselves. Granted some of these are solely question/answer text games, but they make you think. My wife had to do some complex algebra for me to answer a question correctly.

If you like numbers this game is for you. Those Russians know what they are doing when it comes to gameplay.

GET THIS GAME! It is hard to figure out at first, the learning curve is a little steep, but it is well worth it. I am married with three children, getting ready to move to Texas and start a new career, but I can't put this game down or stop thinking how to play my next turn. The game is turn based, but the mechanics make it very easy to deal with (typically I am not a fan of turn-based games).

There are so many nuggets of humor in this game, it makes you want to read all of the text. I can't fully sum up how fun this game is, you need to just go out and purchase it and play it. If you are itching to go to Best Buy, Circuit City, or here on Amazon and pick up a new fun computer game, get Space Rangers 2: Rise of the Dominators. It is a goofy title, but it only scrapes at the surface of a very deep game.

Pros: Money, trade, economic system that is very realistic, faster than normal load times, ZERO technical issues (thus far), very stable, absolutely fun, low tech specs required, multiple games in one, $30!, hilarious, makes you actually use your brain, easy saves, no checkpoints, no cookie cutter game play, non-linear.

Cons: Low res graphics (makes it faster though), inadequate (yet heavy) manual (describes some stuff very well, but leaves other stuff out entirely), some grammatical/spelling errors, as if I don't have any in this review (but there is a butt-load of text so they actually did very well for being Russian), the title (pretty nit picky).

Overall: You are not a fan of PC gaming if you do not own this title. Don't rip it off either. We need to let the industry know that they need to put out more quality games such as this, rather than some of the mind-numbing, time wasting, hard-drive filling, crud that they have been putting out.

Easily overlooked, but definately addicting and replayable.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: November 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I don't know where or how I found out about this Russian game. I think there were a bunch a rave reviews about this seemingly indie game about a month back or so. Played the demo and it was ok. Nothing special only because you can only play the demo for a timed period then it advertises itself and exits. The gameplay intrigued me enough to scope out the price on Amazon.com. I was shocked to see a good review by an actual game creator for this old AtariST computer game called Sundog: The Frozen Legacy, which I used to be completely addicted to. This guy claims that Space Rangers is everything that he wished he could have done with Sundog.

After that, I was sold. Bought it the next weekend and I've been playing religiously for about a month now. The majority of the game is a 2D, turn-based space adventure. You can fly to different planets and trade to build up cash. Planets usually have quests ranging from FedEx missions to "take down this Pirate in such and such star system". Some will even offer a text adventure! Yes, these are the old-timed text adventures of old and are quite fun, even if they can be oddly translated sometimes. There are even black holes you can fly into and have yet another game that is more arcade like that anything where you fly around with the WASD keys and shoot anything that moves.

When you are not flying around, interacting with other ships, trading with other planets, buying and re-fitting your ever-changing ship, you will have to occasionally fight the nefarious Dominators. Dominators are evil robots with the intent to completely wipe out all organic life. Dominators are usually fought in the 2D space, but if you land on a planet in a recently liberated star system, you will be asked to assist in wiping the remaining dominators off the planets surface. If you agree, prepare for a not-too-shabby RTS game.

So there you have it. With all these game types, and the sheer addictiveness of constantly bettering your ship and skills by doing missions and trading, its very hard to put down. You won't be blown away by the graphics really, but the fun factor and freedom to do what the hell you want anytime holds the key to this game's victory in my book. Ive put more hours into this game than Oblivion or any big name Role Playing game out there to date. Check out the reviews at Gamespy, IGN, MetaCritic, or G4. This bargain title scores high 90's all over the place. Its worth checking out.

Game contains StarForce

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 12 / 17
Date: May 11, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I was excited to play this game. I'd read great reviews of it and couldn't wait. I finally got it, installed it and it wouldn't run. After playing around with it and looking online I found that it uses the dreaded Starforce protection software. For those of you who don't know, this is a driver that is installed on your system without your consent that opens security holes and degrades performance of your CD Rom and DVD Rom drives. Don't believe me? Look it up and see.

Do Not Buy!!! Has Starforce, which damaged my DVD drive!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 14 / 22
Date: May 31, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I had purchased a new computer barely 8 months ago. One of the reasons was to play Silent Hunter 3. It is an HP Pavillion a1130n with dual DVD drives. I like to make compilation CDs from my CD collection and had made a couple after I purchased the computer. Everything worked great!

After a couple of months got around to installing and playing Silent Hunter 3, which I love. A few days later, tried installing another game on the regular DVD rom drive with no sucess. I was able to install the game with my writer drive, which took an abnormally long time. At the time I thought it was just the game.

Another week later I was making another compilation CD and it took literally almost 2 hours to burn the CD. Now I was concerned! I went to work to try and find what was wrong. After about a month it became clear that it was Starforce that was the problem. I can't tell you how angry I am!!! I feel like Starforce should pay for new drives for my computer.

Without thinking I purchased Space Rangers 2. Played it one day and liked the game very much. After a couple of days, I routinely check if Starforce was on my computer(having gone through the removal procedure previously with sucess) and low and behold Starforce was back! It is on Space Rangers 2!!!

I have learned my lesson. I no longer purchase a game until I know for sure it does not have Starforce. Not only has Starforce hurt the games that have it but I feel Starforce has hurt the industry as a whole

(edited June 26th 2006)
I have heard that there is or going to be a version that does not have Starforce. If this is true then I would whole-heartedly recommend Space Rangers 2. Please make sure you do not buy the version that has Starforce.

Sorry to hear this game contains starforce

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 18 / 37
Date: August 03, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I had read great review of this and I purchased it from BestBuy, but I figured I better do a quick search to see what copy protection the game housed. I was very sad to learn that this game contains Starforce, so this means I will be making a trip back to BestBuy to return it. So sad publishers decide to use this copy protection.

mark

If you like addictive "just one more mission" space sims, you've found it here

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: April 14, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Space Rangers 2 is an RPG, stats and all, that plays out a lot like Sid Meier's Pirates! in a space setting. It borrows elements from old school games in the genre like StarFlight and Star Control and updates the experience with more accessible gameplay, better graphics, and a myriad of new gameplay options.

One of the first things you realize when you first jump into this game is that it creates a dynamic world where hundreds of NPC ships go about their buisness and planets go through cycles of growth, decline and political change. Battles are fought and ships are destroyed even when you aren't in the area of interest, so you get the sense that things are happening in areas far from your own current position. And because the game randomly generates the star map at the start of each game, there is a sense of discovery - and high replay value - in each jump to a new system.

Like Sid Meier's game, Space Rangers 2 offers serves up several different game engine concepts, all of which mesh well together. There is the primary space flight engine, which allows for trade, combat, and exploration on an enormous 2-D map featuring dozens of star systems across numerous sectors. Everything here is turn-based, so you can pause and issue commands whenever you need to. You can also take on wingmen, engage in piracy, escort liners, seek out bounties, or even mine asteroids if you so need to.

The other game modes are quite varied, moreso than can be listed here. There is a land-based RTS-style engine that lets you duke it out with robots. There is an arcade-style shooter mode that you can optionally engage in while in hyperspace. There is the well-realized trading engine, which allows purchase and sale of goods across different planets with their own fluctuating economies. And those of the truly old-school will appreciate the dozen or so text-based missions that can optionally be selected as well - these are Choose Your Own Adventure-style missions that are a lot more fun than I thought they would be.

There is also a sort of strategy element to the overall game - Space Rangers 2 is played out in the context of a larger galactic war where two different groups are vying for control of various star systems, and you can choose to enter that fray, helping to liberate occupied systems. You can also help finance and even operate bases in star systems to bolster their defense.

The great thing about this game, too, is that there are clearly-identifiable goals, even within the non-linear structure. The game has a working plot, which you can advance in whatever way you want. The game also keeps a score of your accomplishments and compares it to other NPCs, which is a useful benchmark for your progress. This progress, though, can be effected in a variety of ways, from physical force to bribery.

Presentation-wise, the game won't win any awards but it is respectable. The game is pretty - the artwork for planets and races are quite nice - but the space travel is rendered in 2-D, so fans of the recent 3-D sims should take note. The music is varied and is ambient without being annoying. There is no voicework and there are some minor textual errors in translation (the game was originally Russian), but in general the localization is pretty good.

One other note: this version of Space Rangers 2 comes with two added bonuses - Space Rangers 1 and a nice-sized poster. The first Space Rangers is a good game in its own right and helps set up the storyline for the second game. Between the two games, and the high replay value of each, this package is highly recommended to anyone who likes RPGs and/or space sims.

Tried but True

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 8
Date: August 09, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The land battles are a unique and flying around in a small universe is real cool. Trying to figure out how to finaly win and finish the game was not as easy. There is a unique look at life in different professions. This game is a real challange in thought and use of weapons. Its replay value is off the chart. This is worth the money. Prepair to spend a lot of time playing and fighting.

fun unique game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 12
Date: June 24, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This is a gem of a game. high quality all around.

a couple of points

-this version of the game is v1.3 same as UK version (DVD)
although the disk says v1.0 (its an oversight)

-ignore all the starforce rants. starforce may have been problematic several years ago, but I had no troubles at all with the newer versions of starforce.

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