Falling in love with space again

[Lord Thag]

Long, long ago, in the Time of Bad Garage Bands and Grunge Music, I had a game called Master of Orion. It was permanently etched into the hard drive of my trusty 486. I played it for several years until I managed to cobble together a rickety pentium 90mhz from extra parts(held together with duct tape, and spray painted black no less) so I could play it's sequel, Master of Orion 2. Between the two, and a little known Windows 4x game known as Stars!, I happily crushed all life in the galaxy under my iron fist, in a nice, friendly, 'I'm sorry, was that your planet?' kind of way. Life was good.

And then, the Powers that Be fell of their collective toilets one morning, and hit their collective eggheads on their collective grungy sinks, and forgot completely how to make a good 4x game. Not that they didn't try, of course. They made galaxy spanning economic simulations that were as fun as watching paint dry (lookin' at you GalCiv), and RTS style games that tried to fake real depth, and spreadsheets with nice graphics that required micromanaging to the point they made accounting seem fun(Space Empires). And don't even get me started on the Galactic Mega-Turd that was MOO3. I'd hate to be THOSE guys when the Antarians show up. Yikes.

And so I plum forgot all about a genre I once truly loved.

Until two days ago. Dunno why I bought Distant Worlds. I've hated everything since Stars! and Moo2. But I did. For some reason. Something about it ... just looked right. Found it by accident after buying the Operation Art of War last week.

[X(]

It was like falling in love again. The music was right. The graphics looked exactly how they should with none of that camera-rotating 3d BS. It had it all. Ship design (finally!), freakin' huge galaxies full of interesting stuff, tens of thousands of worlds to explore, and all of it is superbly managed so that all you have to do is concentrate on what's really fun: exploring, designing, and then conquering everything you see. All of the annoying economic BS is automated too, thank gods. And it had some genius too. The empire management screen thingy. Clicky click and you colonize, build ships, mines and everything, and then get right back to exploring. Finally, someone GETS it.

So I was sitting there, playing, and I got this feeling I remembered from a long time ago. It's the kind of thing that once made me sit up until 5:00am for 'just one more turn.' The kind of feeling that only a few legendary games have given me.

So here it is. Distant Worlds is one of the best games I've played on the PC in a decade. Hell, I stopped even playing PC games about 5 years back.

Nice to know that at least one developer still gets what once made PC gaming so much better, and a tip of the hat to Matrix games for publishing it.

For now the galaxy will tremble again at the sound of my approaching battleships. And life, is once again good. Well, maybe not for the squid-y looking alien blighters on the third moon of Cygnus 12. They're kinda fun to pop from orbit.

Welldone Codeforce. [&o]

[lordxorn]

Welcome back to the fold of us fanatic MOO worshippers, well written preview that I agree with 100% every word you so eloquently expressed.

Cheers! [:D]

[Rebel Yell]

You have been assimilated.

[Data]

so many months later and after the expansion the same holds true
no bug or imbalance could derail this and once these will be fixed and improved upon this game will be mister 4x, king of the jungle, master of the domain
 
a big fat THANK YOU from me also....Elliot and Matrix, live long and prosper

[gmot]

One thing I love is how solid and well-thought this game is. No major design flaws, hardly any glitches, no crashes - it just all works.

A big contrast with the other game I'm playing right now - Elemental from Stardock. A game with great potential and I'm enjoying it - but has some serious work that needs to be done on it (which Stardock freely admits).

[Shark7]

Exactly...someone finally understood what a game should be again.

DW is so close to my 'Dream Game' that its like Elliot read my mind and put it into code. No overly fancy graphics...but still good looking and very functional. The gameplay is what counts, and DW has that 100% correct.

[J HG T]

ORIGINAL: Shark7

...No overly fancy graphics...but still good looking and very functional.

It's never about the sharpness or the resolution of the graphs, It's the style. DW has lots of unique style if you ask me. This is the reason why 2D games will always be great looking. They don't age in the same way as 3D games. Many really old games (amiga and fellas) look great still, even if they are nearly 20 years old!

Oh, and on the topic: DW = WIN!

[gmot]

This thread is turning into a big love in. Somebody please throw in some snarky net nerd comment to bring it back to earth!

[J HG T]

"I'm afraid I can't do that gmot."

[Shark7]

"Open the pod bay door Hal."

[nammafia]

This is the only game I'm playing right now.  I just wonder how well the game is selling so that Elliot and Erik can keep making update and expansion for the game.  I wish them well, of course.  DW >>>> GalCiv2.

[Sabin Stargem]

Distant Worlds isn't quite there for me yet. I think that Galactic Civilizations III, Distant Worlds II, and hopefully a MOO2 remake would hit mark. I think GalCiv2 came pretty close, but I hated the lack of an in-depth ship creation system (MOO2), and I find that it requires a bit much micro-management due to how planets and facilities work. I really liked how MOO2 only required you to build a facility, with no thought to where to place it, and how defenses appeared over time once the correct facilities existed.

Hm. I like Distant Worlds for how it reduces micro-management by having an AI eco-system that can take care of itself, but I often find that some aspects are not yet developed enough. For example, I would like the AI to handle troop management so that my regular troops are automatically replaced by Clone Troopers once the facilities are installed. Performance is also lacking, but I think that most of my issues would be removed when Distant Worlds II is made, simply because the developer would have more experience.


EDIT: I also liked Stars!, and it is a real shame that Stars! Supernova never got finished.