Others say...

"Icarus is right: could have flown, but sinks like a stone"
A wasted opportunity. "It could have been a champion."

Pro: Amazing potential

Con: Provox hired a incompetent and zero-experience novice to do the high-level game design, destroying the game in the process.

It's just criminal to take a game with so much potential and just torpedo it in such an obscene manner. What's really amazing is how much effort went into the game on the basic stuff -- engine, art, etc. -- and how little effort went into directing this to a great gaming experience. In the grand scheme of things, it takes relatively little money to hire a good writer/designer, compared to the rest of the investment. If only they had done that, this game would absolutely sing. As it is, it sinks like a stone.

The game really does not play well. There's a lot of unpolished and apparently untested aspects of the game. For instance navigation is very difficult/tedious. You cannot set waypoints or ride in tradelanes, autopilot doesn't work, and it takes like 5-10 minutes (in real time) for the jump drive to recharge. So traveling from point A to point B is about as tedious as sitting there watching a large file download from the internet.

It's difficult to believe that the game was betatested before it was released. The assumption would be that the publisher rushed the game towards the end, but that doesn't explain the horrible choices they made about the writing. Being rushed doesn't imply that you'll hire somebody who is horribly underqualified and incompetent.

They hired an incompetent 19-year-old student with zero experience to do the entire mission design and writing. He did even worse than you'd imagine. Here's the mission outline for the first two missions of the main campaign:

Mission 1:
Perform a dogfight against two ships. (highly difficult)
Perform a "scan" five times in a row. (highly tedious)

Mission 2:
Perform a dogfight against one ship.

Yes, that's it. Zero thought went into this. I'm not even going to get started on how bad the writing is. As another reviewer said, "A Saturday morning cartoon looks like Hamlet in comparison with the story." (Brett Todd -- gamesradar.com)

There's no tutorial of any kind, and learning how to deal with the command interface is awkward. And even once you get good at it, it's still awkward. For instance, every time you tractor in some goods (from a kill), you have to go to the inventory menu to select which ones you'll keep. There's no way to select "take all" by default. So every single kill essentially requires a tedious menu to deal with.

Some may believe that a patch will fix major problems, but the major problems are so major that this is exceedingly unlikely. They would have to rewrite the entire campaign, for example. That's not something one can simply patch.

The game is badly balanced. On discussion boards everywhere people are complaining that it's really difficult to win the very first battle. This is because the developers didn't try to make the game playable, let alone enjoyable. (From a game-design point of view, the first mission is supposed to show you how to play the game; it's not supposed to be a highly difficult trial.)

From a "bare simulation" point of view, the game is playable, and a patch might even make it enjoyable in a very limited sense, although the stuff that *badly* needs fixing will never be fixed by a patch.

But even if the game becomes playable, I recommend boycotting the game. Developers need to learn that it's not cool to destroy a game with so much potential. -- That post-purchase concerns like "fun" are as important as pre-purchase advertising. The writer needs to be fired immediately. And the person who hired him needs to be shot at dawn.

Do not even consider buying this game until you have tried the demo! You'll easily see from the demo how badly the game is designed.

"Just doesn't cut it."
Wow, here I am taking my flight test, and wham, who would have thought... pirates appear. So, where's the troll guarding the bridge? You couldn't have thought of something actually original?

And man o man is it that hard to find people that speak English clearly and can give the thing some sincere emotion?

After sitting through a horrendous intro movie...

The game runs fine, no glitches, no problem at all with all settings on high. Unless of course I take into account actual visual content... because no matter how much MIP mapping, vertex shading, or how many anisotropic milkshakes you throw at a cow, it is, unavoidably just a cow.

The `blurry radar' I don't like at all. One of the primary functions of a HUD is clarity and the communication of absolute situation awareness. The radar pips are blurry, unclear and having to switch between modes to distinguish between ships and buildings is silly. When different colors or icons would do. Instead of those ball-lighting blobs.

The textures on some of the buildings is horrendous. The bump mapping is WAY too high. It looks as if the buildings were exposed to 3000 years of meteor bombardment. Space age modern tech doesn't require stone bump mapping, sorry.

The voice acting is the worst I've ever heard in the genre! get some professional voice actors, ones that can actually give a sentence more inflection and emotion than R2D2.

The character visuals are no more than plastered image of a pilot, totally devoid of any lip & head movements. Heck even Wing Commander had more life-infused people in the game.

The trading system is horrible, no real value in trading since I can just blow up pirates, sell the goods, rinse repeat.

Missions are poorly written, simple go here kill that and activate satellite 1, 2,3, fun... NOT!

I want to turn off all the radio chatter, I want to shut down the stupid robot chick that is constantly talking to me, I want to use widescreen graphics with clear type.. unfortunately I can't do any of this.

Docking... oh wow... 1.) approach base 2.) When icon appears hit 'Enter'... Geez, that is way too difficult for me! GIVE-ME-A-BREAK!

Provox released a demo reel that contained fantastic visuals... too bad I see none of that while in the actual game.. oh well.

No other piece of software has let me down as much as this in my 20+ years of computer gaming experience. Now I appreciate all the other space game titles a lot more!

So, in spite of what some FANBOYS would like you to believe about Spaceforce.. DON'T!

"Not up to par with others of the genre, UGLY GRAPHICS!"
Wow, here I am taking my flight test, and wham, who would have thought... pirates appear. Jesus guys, where's the troll guarding the bridge? You couldn't have thought of something actually original?

And man o man is it that hard to find people that speak English clearly and can give the thing some sincere emotion?

The children running animations, well, honestly, look like they were done by someone learning 3D Studio MAX that grabbed a canned motion file.

The texturing on those kids faces turned me off completely. I struggled with that, got over it and thought to myself, so "OK I turn off the intro, who really cares if the rest works."

Sure, the game runs fine, no glitches, no problem at all with all settings on high. Unless of course I take into account actual visual content... because no matter how much MIP mapping, vertex shading, or how many anisotropic milkshakes you throw at a cow, it is, unavoidably just a cow.

And speaking of which... I'm not too happy with the graphics level presented. The 'blurry radar' I don't like at all. One of the primary functions of a HUD is clarity and the communication of absolute situation awareness. The radar pips are blurry, unclear and having to switch between modes to distinguish between ships and buildings is silly. When different colors or icons would do. Instead of those ball-lighting blobs.

The textures on the buildings is horrendous. The bump mapping is WAY too high. It looks as if all the buildings were exposed to 3000 years of meteor bombardment. Space age modern tech stone bump mapping, sorry.

It has it's good points...
I found the flight model adequate its a relief to not have to use a joystick.

The sound is good, music perhaps a bit too upbeat, considering the many hours spent in this type of game... toning it down would avoid having to turn it off as I've had to.

Back to the bad points since they tend to remain in memory longer...
The voice acting, well, honestly, is the worst I've ever heard in the genre! get some professional voice actors, ones that can actually give a sentence more inflection and emotion than R2D2.

The character visuals are no more than plastered image of a pilot, totally devoid of any lip & head movements. Heck even Wing Commander had more life-infused people in the game.

When playing the game the words that comes to mind are 'UGLY' & 'BLURRY'. High tech machine should present a pilot with crispness and clarity... at the moment the dash in my SUV is clearer.

First this I do when I have time is return this game.