| |
| Advertisement |
 |
|
|
|
 |
Space Hack Review - Page One |
 |
Space Hack is a budget-priced action role-playing game. Now, I’m not sure about anybody else,
but when I see the words “budget-priced,” I don’t expect a lot from a game. From my experience, the
words “action role-playing game” usually don’t augur glad tidings, either. And so, suffice it to say,
I wasn’t expecting a lot from Space Hack, and it didn’t fail not to deliver. Space Hack
doesn’t have any bells or whistles. It doesn’t even know what bells and whistles are. The game
doesn’t include voice acting, an interesting plot, a slick 3D engine, or even a personality. And
yet, Space Hack is strangely playable, and that’s enough to save it.
In Space Hack, you take on the role of a soldier-type guy named... Space Hack. The game isn’t
big on providing any sort of background information, but apparently you did some soldier-type stuff
on Mars, and some people like you or dislike you because of it. At the start of the game, the colony
ship that you’re on is swallowed by a “black nebula,” and all of the aliens living in the nebula
decide to attack the ship so they can scavenge useful parts from it, or perhaps just so they can
eat the humans on board. Since you’re a soldier-type guy, and since just about everybody else is
dead, you’re sent out to deal with the threat.
As you might have guessed, Space Hack doesn’t have a complicated plot. The colony ship is made
up of a big engine and 15 “biospheres,” but you don’t have any control over it, and so you have to
make your way through the ship to the “mother module” where the escape pods are. This sequence might
be the tutorial for a better game (yes, that’s a KOTOR reference for those of you playing along
at home), but in Space Hack that’s the entire campaign. The good news is that there are
something like 10,000 nasty aliens inside the ship, and so you have to do some serious space hacking
to win free.
Space Hack uses a classless system. You have to play as Hack, meaning you have to play as a
male character, but everything else is determined by your four attributes -- strength, dexterity,
knowledge, and constitution. If you want to use melee weapons (like swords and axes) you need to
build up your strength. If you want to use ranged weapons (like slings and “saw throwers”) you need
to build up your dexterity. And if you want to use high tech items (like energy weapons and
holograms) you have to build up your knowledge. Constitution simply adds hit points.
However, unlike most other games that have a classless system, Space Hack doesn’t allow you
to become the master of everything. Each time you gain a level, you receive five points to spend on
your attributes, but the equipment in the game has attribute restrictions, and so if you want to use
melee weapons, for example, you really have to concentrate on your strength so you can eventually
use the good stuff. If you try to cover everything you’ll just end up as some alien’s lunch.
|
|
|
|
|
| Article Details |
| Reviewed Space Hack
Reviewer Steven Carter
Published 01/28/06
Pros Stable, easy to play, inexpensive
Cons Too long, too repetitive, too basic |
|
|
| |
|
|
