To Infinity and Beyond?
Space Crew is the brand new sequel to strategic survival simulation game Bomber Crew. Captain’s Log, Star Date 2152. This is Space Crew. Its continuing mission: To defend Earth and humankind, to eliminate the extraterrestrial threat and to boldly go where no Crew has gone before.
I didn’t play Bomber Crew so I had no idea what to expect going into Space Crew other than what I had looked up before playing, but even then it wasn’t exacty what I expected. Space Crew is a management type of game where you assign crew members task to keep everything running smoothly, either through putting them to work fixing up the ship or putting them on guns to fend off a deadly attack.
My main criticism of Space Crew is that the controls are incredibly clunky on consoles when selecting these options, I’ve had some instances where the game has actually frozen on an option and I’ve not been able to select anything else. Other times I just felt like I was wrestling with the controls trying to get to the right option I needed, which is far from ideal in a game like this. I hear it’s a lot easier on PC, which begs the question why isn’t it just as simple for console players?
To be fair, strategy games have always had a reputation for being tough to put on consoles due to the lack of precision that only a mouse can provide, while also lacking keyboard shortcuts and so forth. That’s not to say that Space Crew is a bad game, its actually highly enjoyable when it works and it works for the most part, but like I said there are times it just kind of collapses.
The visuals are basic but do enough so you know what’s happening around you. It has a nice art style to it though and while it won’t win any awards for graphics, it still has a certain charm to it.
The Verdict
Space Crew is a decent strategic management game held back by clunky console controls which hold it back from its PC counterpart. When it works, its fine but there are times it just want to work against you instead of with you and that’s a shame as there are some good ideas here.