Posted in: Games, Review, Video Games | Tagged: Battlecrew: Space Pirates, Dontnod Eleven, game review, Steam

Battlecrew: Space Pirates Is An Insult To All F2P Games

Published Fri, 14 Jul 2017 07:45:34 -0500

Dontnod Eleven, not to be confused with Dontnod Entertainment, released their 2D side-scrolling shooter, Battlecrew: Space Pirates earlier this week. The game is free to play, but does have a premium membership subscription that nets you some pretty valuable perks. In fact, the amount of perks you get for paying, and just what counts as a premium service, is almost insulting to the entire Free-to-Play genre. Sure, the game is pretty stunningly rendered, but outside of the graphics, the game is riddled with issues that go well beyond freemium service plans.

The controls are a bit odd. Movement is mouse and WASD keys, which works fine. Spacebar being jump is also alright. But E being your interact is a bit strange. The game also has some bizarre powers, like teleportation, the ability to vertically shoot yourself up walls, and random rocketlauncher abilities.

The overall complexity of the game is pretty low. Its a side-scrolling action game. But the game balance is also kind of terrible. You can get matched in multiplayer with any player, regardless of player rank or experience, which means you might end up obliterating a group of new players, or being obliterated as a new player. And there is no PVE content at all, for those who would rather not pay and not play with strangers. So Unless you pay to play with friends and are just absolute garbage, the game is far, far too unsatisfying.

In fact the game doesn't give you many gameplay customization options at all. No keybinding, no look inversion, just resolution settings and sound settings. You can flip the keyboard to AZERTY format, but I don't know why in the hells you'd do that.

The brightspot in terms of gameplay mechanics is the gamepad support. Not many Steam games come with gamepad support, because your average PC gamer tends to dislike gamepads for the superiority of keyboard and mouse. But with PVP matches where some players will have keyboard and mouse, while others are on gamepad, you have an obvious advantage on keyboard. Which is why console/PC crossplay is a pipe dream for anything that involves shooting. It takes much longer for me to pull a gamepad trigger than it does for me to click my mouse, after all. And with a mouse, I have much better dexterity control over my shooting reticle.

More than that, there are glitches all over the place. Battlecrew: Space Pirates is imbalanced, yes, but also pretty damn unstable for a game that has very mixed reviews, with quite a slew of overwhelmingly negative ones. Because some times you just can't load a thing. Other times you are lagging so badly, you may as well not be playing. Or you get stuck in a teleport and just go zooming around the map, unable to tell what the hell is going on.

Trying to play this game with other people is a terrible decision because you will never get anything done. If you can even connect with them in the first place. In order to queue for things with your friends, you need to have paid for the premium service. In fact, to do much of anything at all, you need to have paid for the premium membership package. You get tokens that allow you to play 5 games a day, so the game essentially controls how much of it you pay. I hate timeout locks like this. If I clear a whole day to play a game, and you won't let me play that game, I tend to be pretty unhappy.

And before you go thinking that there are multiple Space Pirates, your choice of character is limited to just four. Four.

That said, the game is visually gorgeous, has nice camera control, supports gamepads, and is a much better SOLDAT-clone than most. But better just isn't going to cut it, because that's about all the positive things I can say about this game. Everything else about it, well. It feels like a game that should still be in closed beta than something that released this week. In fact, there was no part of me that wanted to like this game. Not a single part of the gameplay experience was even slightly redeemable. I'd rather go play a knock-off Arcade version of Flappy Bird.

In fact, I haven't played a game this bad in quite some time. Just, if you were going to pick up Battlecrew: Space Pirates for any reason at all, just go ahead and throw your computer out a window. You'd have a better time of it.

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