Space Rangers HD Review

PILOT: "Prepare the gripper, engage autopilot." SHIP: "The contract is complete, the Faeyans are transferring the money." PILOT: "Great! Let's listen to our favorite song." This game is many things so let's start with the basics. "Space Rangers HD" is an updated version of "Space Rangers 2", not the first game.

It also includes all the content of the expansion and some stuff added just for the HD version. They also don't sell the original games in the West anymore. As it turns out, the original developers used the mp3 codecs illegally. So... you likely won't be seeing these any time soon.

Yes, this is a Russian game. That means witnessing weird shit like this sometimes. But the tone in "Space Rangers" is light-hearted, bordering on downright silly. This is a very far cry from a game like "Pathologic". Because, unlike "Pathologic", "Space Rangers" is a sandbox game for children.

To get started you just need to choose your race, your profile image, your personality/occupation type, your starting skill bonuses, your starting equipment, the options, the advanced options and whew, list goes on. I wasn't kidding about this being a sandbox - you can tweak nearly anything.

After that, you get the story, and I'll give you the short version of it. There's a Coalition of races fighting a powerful machine enemy known as the Dominators. They're broken up into three warring factions, which is the only thing slowing them down.

It's up to you as a space ranger to stop them. Or not and join a pirate brotherhood. Or explore uncharted worlds, work as a merchant, work as a mercenary - the list goes on... This game lets you do whatever the hell you want and it gives you a mountain of tools to do so with.

That said, if you try to jump right in, you're probably gonna get lost. Despite all of its options, it doesn't have any UI scaling, so all the menus will be very tiny. Thankfully, there's a very well-organized in-game manual. So, if you do get stuck trying to figure something out, there's probably something to read.

So you fumble around, until you learn how to take off, and then... Hey! Hey, this is some good music! I'm very music illiterate, except for bass clef, so I don't know what exact genre this is. If I had to pick something I know, I'd describe it as being new-age music.

Generally, most of the tracks use synths and other electronic sounds, with an undercurrent of a piano or drums sometimes. I find it really pleasant, and it has a lot of energy behind it. Then all of a sudden you're playing "Red Alert 2" "New robot: Completed" I was mainly referring to the music, but I guess that works in more ways than one.

Let's talk more about the presentation. While the music is exceptional, the sound effects are okay. The soundscape is very simple and a lot of the effects are just stock sounds. Nothing is standout, but nothing is poorly produced either. It gets the job done.

*boom* *pew-pew-pew* *pew-pew* *explosions* *pew-p-* *explosions* *explosions* *pew-pew-pew* *explosions* *pew--pew--pew* The visuals in space have a nice variety. Star systems have a lot of backdrops to keep things fresh, and there's always a new starship or space station to see.

Stations and planets also change dramatically in style. In fact, the whole game changes dramatically. It's to the point where it's difficult to talk about the visuals. See, here I'm in normal space, but I just need to go into this hole here and... Now it's an arcade shoot-'em-up game.

Now it's a text adventure. Now it's a probing exploration game. Now it's an RTS game. But if I click this, now, it's a third-person shooter. The question shouldn't be "What is space Rangers?" The question should be "What isn't it?" Something like this is very difficult to organize your thoughts on, but...

I'll try. To make it easy, I'm gonna break it up a bit. Let's start with the space of "Space Rangers". We'll get to suicide by brick later. The gameplay in space and most of the game world is turn-based. Every turn is a day, and your ship can perform actions like fighting or moving per day.

You can preset actions like fighting or traveling, but pause it before the next day at any time. This is useful for if something pops up when traveling. It can also give you the best result in a fight if you want to think things through. You'll learn from the beginning that combat is still fairly simplistic.

You choose which weapon to shoot the bad man with, scroll for some maneuver options, and then you let it play. Most of your tactics will come from maneuvering: keeping enemies within your weapon range and planning out intercept courses. You do have a few other options, like using electronic warfare, cloaking devices or afterburners, but maneuvering is still at your core.

You can also team up with other pilots. That'll help even things out. Ultimately, your biggest factor for success is gonna be your equipment. You have your regular ship equipment, but then you could upgrade the ship equipment, but then you could just buy new ship equipment or buy micro modules to install on a ship equipment, which is different than upgrading it.

Equipment, equipment... Wait, no, this is an equipment! In the black hole you get artifacts, which are different but also go on the ship. Then you have the skill system where you can use the XP from missions and killing people to also upgrade... *Mandalore losing it* Okay, so the combat itself isn't particularly in-depth, but everything else around it is.

What makes space so interesting is the sheer level of simulation that's going on. This is an actual living galaxy. Here's what I mean: The Dominator war isn't some background story element... It's happening. They're invading! You go to pick up a mission, and oops - they just blew up the mission station.

Pilots are screaming for your help, they're occupying planets, and that's all being done dynamically. You enter a new area and it's just... debris. Dominators will spend a lot of the game just living up to their name by murdering you. They're an actual threat, and the galaxy's trying to research ways to stop them.

It's something you can actually contribute to. You could salvage Dominator technology and turn them in to the researchers. This actually helps the Coalition. Or you could trade it or sell it for stuff. Fund a military operation to retake a system, invest in fleet manufacturing, or build a station.

Upgrade military bases as you see fit, or you know what? Forget the war! Go to the evil space bank and commission an illegal pirate stronghold. Start robbing the transport ship network! If they say no, you fight them until they do want to let you rob them.

And then you haggle it out for what they're gonna give you. Then you just shoot them anyways and start doing drugs. Just all the drugs! Keep changing your DNA to hide. Get urine therapy to treat your new disease. Yeah, I got your whole race addicted to crack! I am the greatest drug runner you've ever seen! Dr.

Doolittle?! Hang on a minute. I'll... I'll be back... Okay, so I think you understand now, that the amount of stuff you can do is just... bonkers. It's like you're a pilot living inside of an insanely complex 4X game. And the game keeps changing it up! Did you know all the factions have a galactic tech level? And that's how new equipment and ships pop up, because each race is actually technologically advancing based on their...

No. No, I'm not... I'm not doing this again... I think you have a proper inkling of the sheer scale of simulation, that other space sims of the time can only dream of emulating. So here's where some issues begin. The HD version added pirates as a fully fledged faction.

It's a good idea, but they're relentless. The pirates are usually a bigger problem for the galaxy than the Dominators. As technology advances, so do they, and they usually win against the Coalition. In an ever-changing game, pirates being pretty overpowered is a constant.

You'll be mostly better off joining them. Mostly... You can try to neuter them in the options, but you'll still need to be proactive to slow them down. If you don't, the galaxy will still become the space Caribbean or... Somalia. The way the economy works is also strange.

Missions payout more based on the more money you have. If you don't know that, you could feel stuck tire spinning, because the missions aren't paying out more. They might even pay less. When you figure it out, and know your drugs, you can easily break the game.

But it is fun to break! The aforementioned UI is still my biggest problem with the game. There's so much that's convoluted. For example, the hangar has buttons to repair and refuel your ship. Convenient. However, over time, your ship's equipment wears down.

That needs different repairs in a completely different menu. It's a lot of little stuff like that, just all the time. My last issue is mainly a warning for certain people. The game has lore and a story, but I didn't find it compelling. I'm only referring to the main story.

There's some good stuff on the side. The main source of fun is making your own story and experiencing all the dynamic events. If you're looking for something gripping, with deep characters, I think you've come to the wrong place. If you want bizarre side stories and strange references, then I'll take your coat.

"Congratulations, we would like to honor you with the 'Mario Brother'." What does that mean? I found out much later that it's a human medal of honor. Fashioned in the honor of the great Mario. I thought internet people said he was a fraud or something, or...

Always bad, I don't- I don't remember... Here's a fun fact: the humans of this game are basically Space-Russia. In gameplay terms, it just means all the human planets will buy your alcohol. "We hope you're not addicted to drugs," "but if you are, they're pretty cheap over there." "Help us defeat the ancient Windows virus!" Got it! "There's an engine that says 'Made in China' polluting space!" "These programs follow 'CopyRight' law, meaning they're 'copied right'." I like that.

These are fun and silly but it's just the tip of the iceberg. The time has come! The time for reading. There are a lot of text adventures and they get intricate. One of them I spent nearly two hours in. Some trigger randomly, some from conditions, some from missions.

In this case: landing on a planet when the leaders hate you. Instead of serving a month in prison, I released prisoners, murdered guards and I escaped. Of course, this isn't just some side minigame - this will affect my standings in the overworld. When I got imprisoned on a different planet, the cops pressured me into being a snitch for them.

I agreed, but the guard wasn't a smart cookie. He was just baking. I spent a fortune throwing prison parties to piss them off. My skills were also helping me out here. All my standings and info was still being tracked. These missions can be anything from logic puzzles, to random games of chance, to even a pizza tournament.

My favorite was the election. You need to win voters among multiple alien races by describing policy in detail. Once again, you have a staggering amount of options. For some reason, when I said that if I ruled, all the journalists would be lined up and shot, they gave me a very low ethics score for the campaign! What better campaign tool than t-shirts? The logo will be: A man in a Hawaiian shirt with a golden chain at the back of a luxury restaurant.

Perfect! And for the slogan: "Bread and circuses!" Even better! As it turns out, everyone hated it. Except the Pelengs, who said only a real tough guy would do that. Abu Linkoln called the Maloqs an inferior race... All the other races agreed. I go to bed.

You can tell it's all translated, but you understand what's going on. I have no complaints. There's a good variety and a lot of content. So let's move on! When you first play the arcade game, it starts on auto-pilot. I'm not sure why, so I'll turn that off.

Well... it's very simple... Really, this is just something to break up the regular space combat a bit. I guess, it's serviceable? I don't have much to say on it. It looks trippy! I think I understand why this starts playing itself. Okay, last section.

The planetary battles are an RTS game of Robots vs. Robots. Sometimes it's a 1v1, sometimes It's a four-way free-for-all. You build robots from a factory and capture points on the map to get more resources. You can fortify these by building turrets on them.

What's cool, is that you completely customize the robots you build. Switch out a gun, and then switch out everything else. Your primary goal is to fight your way to the enemy robot factory and capture it. There's no tech trees or unlocks or anything like that.

It's very simple. You can choose to assume direct control of one of your robots. I really dig the look of them and, all in all, this is a really fun idea! There is a small issue... You can't save designs between maps, only flip through the ones you've made.

It's a shame! Still, building a custom robotic army is great! Ohh, that's right! I forgot something. The AI cheats like a Vegas-Junkie, then, sometimes, the AI just gives up. Sometimes, the enemy just pushes you out of the way and you lose. The pathfinding is...

Oh my god, the pathfinding... Sometimes, for no reason, units can't shoot other units, and they just sit there and miss every shot. Now imagine playing all this on a gigantic map, with multiple enemy factions. By the way, your control units by using these buttons down here.

Clicking enemy units barely works. If you control a unit, it gets buffed and the AI doesn't know how to deal with it. So you can win some maps by cheesing really hard. To put it in technical terms: This is the worst! It looks like a fun RTS game, but it's not.

This is barely functional. Instead of adding more maps, the HD version should have fixed this. It's ridiculous. And to make matters worse, these missions pay out a ton of money in the game! Want to go lobotomise yourself for some cash? "What the hell are you two doin'?" I despise it and I hope I never see it again! Unless they fix it.

There's an in-game, in-story option to never see these missions again. They know it's horrible! You bet, I never want them! So that's horrific, but the rest of the game is pretty great! If you don't mind a lot of reading and some awkward menus, I think you're in for a really good time.

There's a ton of stuff to do that's well worth the low price. You can get it for cheap on GOG or Steam. You too can become Ranger number one! And discover the secret of the royalty-free music ship. The next video is a medieval fantasy game with co-op.

Thank you to everyone making this possible! Now time for some questions: vCount: "Did you try the new Call of Cthulhu game?" vCount: "Would you make a video on it?" I haven't tried it and I've heard some mix things on it, but I'd like to play it at some point, and probably make a video on it, too.

Undead: "When is the mystery of the Druids vi-?" Stop that! Andrew Boyce: "Are you planning to prioritize 'Vampire the Masquerade' now that the sequel has been announced?" I had actually been planning for it in October already, but I'm actually not sure if I should shift that around now.

I haven't seen the video yet, but I know that Grim Beard made one on... uhhh... on the first game, so that'll probably be good. I'll probably watch it right after I'm done with this. Pagan Butler: "What's your favorite Elder Scrolls game?" It's "Morrowind".

It does have a lot of problems, but I love it anyways. If we're talking modded, then "Oblivion" is probably better than "Morrowind" in that regard. If you haven't heard of it, you should look into openMW. Looks great. Ramlod: "Do you feel covering lesser-known games is more rewarding than covering more mainstream ones?" Yeah, it does surprise me who watches it.

Whenever I do a fairly newer indie game, I usually get contacted by someone from there. It's even happening with older games, which is pretty surprising to me. I know the "Stronghold" developers watched my video, "Pathologic" people... uhhm... the "Arx Fatalis" guy...