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This is the game I've always wanted

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: February 11, 2007
Author: Amazon User

If you enjoy science fiction, space operas, huge battles in space with massive ships tricked out with outrageous weapons, buy this game. But don't stop there, if you want a game with a great story, wide open options to customize and manage your fleet, and top-notch voice acting, again, buy this piece of software magic. It is a steal. Why this game has not won tons of awards is a mystery. If you have been tempted to buy more expensive space combat games with the words trek in them, you'll have far more fun with Nexus.

Solid game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: January 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

On a 10 scale...
Graphics...9
Gameplay...8
Story......8
Replay.....6

This game has no significant flaws. Overall the game is really fun to play but, I would caution anyone who is not a fan of this particular type of game. My affinity for space battles and strategy helped this game score bigger with me than it would for certain others. Rated on just it's strategy alone, it's still a solid game. That stands true even for those not partial to the setting. As for the replay, there isn't much of a reason to revisit the game once complete.

Good game that has a lot going for it, but it's not without its shortcomings

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: September 15, 2006
Author: Amazon User

First of all, let me say that I'm a big sci-fi and astronomy buff. Between the recent debate and decision about what formally constitutes a planet, and all the hype surrounding the impending arrival of Spore, I've been worked into a frenzy over the last few months. So, I've been looking for good space-themed sci-fi games to tide me over for the coming months. I recently purchased Nexus as a way to tide myself over. For the most part, I have not been disappointed.

The basic story of the game is that you play the role of Marcus Cromwell, a war hero that had gone missing for some ten years before being recovered from hibernation in orbit around Mars. Your family has a proud history of space exploration and combat, and your father disappeared trying to pass through a wormhole with a colonization fleet. You start the game working for one of the handful of megacorporations that basically run space travel in the solar system.

Things progress fairly quickly, and that is one of the strengths of the game. You start out with an unimpressive cruiser, but soon discover alien technology and a much cooler ship with lots of neat abilities, which you control most of the game. You also pick up more support ships as the game progresses, and more and greater powers with your primary vessel.

The gameplay is pretty good, but not great. Often, it feels like you're just along for the ride while things just happen. If you don't have the best assortment of weaponry (and trust me, there are a lot of options), battles can take forever to complete. Of course, you can always restart missions, but this entails reconfiguring your weapon and device load-outs. Luckily, this is a mostly smooth process, although I did find one thing that bothered me. Most ships come with somewhere between a dozen and perhaps thirty hardpoints where all manner of weapons, engines, shields, and miscellaneous devices can be attached. However, each hardpoint slot can only be used for certain types of devices or weapons. The problem stems from the fact that some slots can be used for more than one type of item.

So, let's say you're going on a recon mission. You'll want to take that multi-use light weapon/scanner slot and put a data scanner into it. But if you've already got a light weapon in that slot, you can't move it to another dedicated light weapon slot. You have to get rid of it completely, and you get no credit for having it. It just disappears. This is mildly frustrating, but you generally have enough resource points that you can pretty much get what you'll want or need to complete a mission.

The battles themselves are pretty fun, but like I said, it doesn't always feel like you have that many options. It's pretty much attack an enemy's shields, knock them out, attack their hull, rinse, repeat. There are a variety of situations you'll encounter, however, such that you're not always in a straight-up combat situation. This keeps things from getting too repetitive or dull.

Of course, one of the great things about this game is the fact that even when you're just watching battles unfold, you'll be pleased, because the game looks pretty great. The weapons all have distinctive looks and effects, and when lots of stuff is happening simultaneously, things can get exciting. Also, the sound effects are top notch, with a number of really odd sound effects for the weapons, and also for the other bizarre occurrences you'll encounter while travelling the galaxy.

Speaking of sound, the voice acting is surprisingly good. There is a lot of spoken dialogue between and during missions, and thankfully, the actors are almost universally perfectly cast. I never found myself wishing they would shut up. The variety of characters and their interactions create a pretty good dramatic backdrop for the action. The only voices that seemed a little excessive and over the top were one of the more violent alien races, but only just barely. Otherwise, the sound was generally awesome.

The game probably has limited replay value, since it's primarily one large campaign, and half the fun is watching the plot unfold, although skirmishes could be entertaining, in theory. The only issue is that, without a storyline to carry you along, battles might be a lot less compelling.

Overall, Nexus: The Jupiter Incident is a really cool game. I particularly enjoy the fact that it's set just a century in the future, and begins by showing how mankind has make progress with space exploration, but maintains realism, evinced by the fact that you initial journey from Mars to Jupiter takes approximately eight months. As new technologies and more advanced alien races are encountered, however, the technology level jumps significantly. It all feels like a natural progression, of course allowing for the sci-fi elements and the fact that you must suspend disbelief.

Despite its minor flaws, I would recommend this game to anyone who's everenjoyed any of the Wing Commander games, or Freelancer, or even space RTS games like Homeworld or Star Wars: Empire at War. It's somewhere in the middle, with a little for everyone.

Play the demo frist secound and thired

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 6
Date: June 15, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is intresting, play the demo frist is what i have to say. Not just once but take a week or two off play the demo again and then again if you did not get it the frist time. Problem i ran into was its controles are nothing freeformed like Homeworld i started clicking and nothing would happen. But after a few months i cam back to the demo after seeing the game on amazon again and it made sences more. you don't controle the units freely you have to have a target to send them to. Over all i liked the game just wish i could send my ships anywayre i want. Not just way points and guarding ships. Oh well it will wast a few hours

Sweet!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: April 24, 2006
Author: Amazon User

First off, to REALLY enjoy the game you need a big surrond sound system and a big monitor, but hey, what game dont you have to have thoes things? But anyway, this game is awsome. Pretty much, the game says you have to do X things each mission and then sets you free. You decide which weapons to equip your ships with, and more importanly, WHERE to equip them. This game is played in 3 dimentions, so weapons mounted on the bottom of your ship cant fire at targets above unless the ship rolls over or flips around (it does it automatically). It also has some funny dialogue (like commander Sweetwater calling your AI a "cyber pet" and "anal-retentive ignoramous"). The graphics are spectacular, they really took advantage of the space setting to give wonderfully detailed objects and backgrounds.

There are some cons tho, namely there is NO ending! You complete your final objective, you see a little cutscene that ends with your AI saying that shes going to kill gods, and it ends. You never know what happened to most of your friends or anything...guess they all end up killed.Guess this really cane be called a con, but for a while your under the command of Rear/Vice-Admiral someguy, who puts you down every chance he gets, even after you save his life...TWICE! And he does other things that make life much harder for you for a while, but that just adds an interesting part.

DOnt be intimidated by the commands and everything, once you get used to them its aight, and once you get over the lack of sleep from staying up all night and playing this, its aight too.

Good game if you give it a chance

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: March 27, 2006
Author: Amazon User

When I first picked up this game and tried to play it, the intro scene interested me. I go to play the game, and the interface is really really wierd. After a couple hours of trying to get down the interface the game gets very interesting. The story is amazing in it and the gameplay is awesome once you get used to it, but when one first picks up this game it seems a bit overwhelming. Awesome game if you love games that are a little experimental.

Not a Homeworld clone

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: March 23, 2006
Author: Amazon User

When I first saw screenshots of Nexus:TJI, I figured it was just another Homeworld-type game. Since I rather enjoyed Homeworld, I proceeded to buy it. For those that are expecting Nexus to be that, you're in for a surprise, though not necessarily an unpleasant one.

The most notable difference between the two games is that you don't harvest or build anything in Nexus. You're assigned a few ships (I've never seen more than 10 under my command) and can usually configure them before each mission. Oftentimes you don't even start with all of them, but receive the remainder as reinforcements after an objective is completed. Lost ships are replaced automatically, but with default equipment, which is pretty bad if you get in the habit of taking casualties. The weapons available for upgrade, and the number you can add on, are more or less predetermined. Adding points to the main character's engineering raises the amount you can 'purchase,' but I've found this has little impact in general. Resource units don't carry on between missions, so there's really no management aspect to the game.

That said, the lack of resource focus means you'll be far more concerned with the mission objectives, which run the gamut of stealth to all-out war. The missions in general are well planned and remarkably challenging- on the hardest difficulty I actually got stuck about 1/3 of the way through the game. There are some issues in weapon configuration, which can cause you to scrub out on a mission the first time if you didn't know what you needed to equip, and oftentimes you're given few if any hints in this regard. Despite that, the missions are generally fun and fast-paced.

I have to say, though, that at times I wanted to pull my hair out when playing through some of them. You're often put up against massively superior enemy units, and one wrong move can mean your doom (or losing a ton of ships, which is pretty much the same thing). Some battles can drag on forever, with your fleet exchanging potshots with strong enemy warships until someone's shields finally go down. I actually left to eat lunch during some of the longer ones, and came back to find my fleet happily victorious. If you respec all your weapons for each mission you might be able to go faster, but only at the cost of expensive general-purpose upgrades like shields, power cells, and engines.

The game mechanics in general are well done and quite intuitive (despite what others here have said). There's advanced movement controls, but these are generally not needed. You issue basic orders to your ships, and they do their best to carry them out. Sometimes they may seem to take their time, but this is because even your fastest ships tend to be pretty slow and sluggish.

The graphics and sound are both very well done. This is pretty clear if you've seen any screenshots of the game. The campaign is interspersed with full motion video cutscenes, and all dialogue is spoken. Some of the alien dialogue is really irritating, but that just gives you more reason to kill them all. In general, the campaign is interesting and immersive, and the mission objectives go beyond the usual 'kill them all' scenario. As previously mentioned, the missions are challenging, and get more so as the campaign progresses. Perfectionists will be hard-pressed to finish without losing any ships even on easy difficulty.

I didn't have any serious technical issues with the game, though it doesn't seem to like multitasking. Load times were short, and Nexus ran very smoothly on my rather average PC.

If you're the type that appreciates real time combat, sci-fi, and/or 3-D strategy games, Nexus is certainly a good pick. I would say it's one of the only truly difficult real time strategy games out there now, so those just seeking a challenge of any sort might want to check it out.

Best Science Fiction Game Yet

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: March 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

For those of you who love science fiction, this is the game for you. All those trekkies and Star Wars fans out there will appreciate the thrill of being able to pilot a fleet of starships. The game starts out relatively slowly as you learn the basic navigational controls. You're soon in your first battle however, and this is when the real fun begins. Your ship, the Stilleto, has a wide selection of weapons and a wing of fighters at your disposal. The tutorial guides you through the use of the various weapons and their applications against enemy vessels.

You take command of the alien vessel the Angelwing relatively soon after this. Without giving away all of the story, you wind up traveling across the galaxy via a network of wormholes, engaging in heated space battles and meeting many new alien races. These include the violent, warlike Gorg, the mysterious, elusive (but helpful) Ghost, the ancient, benevolent Vardrags, the Locust, and the super-advanced Mechanoids. It is your job to remove the Mechanoid threat from the universe with the help of the Ghost, Vardrag, and an AI being named Angel.

You eventually have command over several ships, some with unique abilities like the all-powerful Seige Laser. Success requires a player to use the strengths of these various ships as a unified whole (This can prove to be quite difficult for beginners: I would recommend visiting gamefaqs.com for strategies).

Problems with gameplay are relatively few, but include:
1. No display indicating number of torpedoes in upgrade screen
2. Difficulty in tracking positions of multiple ships over a large area.
3. Destruction of fighters while returning to their respective ships.
4. Problem with Seige Laser Formation in tracking a moving target (the Formation moves very slowly and must readjust every few seconds to follow a target moving laterally).

The main problem is replay value, which is somewhat low. However, the game will keep you entertained for at least a good twenty hours even on Beginner difficulty. Despite the above problems, this game is worth buying, especially if you enjoy science fiction in any form.

OUTER SPACE IS WAITING FOR ORDERS

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: March 10, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Space strategy games are a very special category of games with a very long history starting in early 80's with the big hit title "ELITE". Since then many things have changed of course but the main concept remains the same. You start the game with few missions more let's say instructional just to get more familiar with the interface. Right after this you will be able to command about 2 or 3 capital ships and about the same amount of squadrons. Things are easy for the moment but as you go on and on with your game you will be in the very interesting situation to manage more than 15 different ships with different specifications something that will challenge your strategic abilities. During the historical space battles you will able to take in real time decisions. For succefull results you got to know all the string and weak points of your and your enemy's fleet. Space bar is pausing the time to give you time to think and decide.
Nexus has amazing graphics and sound that will enjoy even the most difficult gamer. Personally I would expect a more easy game play. I think it will entertain you for many hours.

Got Bored

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 9
Date: March 10, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Tried twice but not much going on. The interface is not straight forward, Try homeworld.

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