Spacelords: Raiders of the Broken Planet Renewed
Be honest, when you hear the words, “Free to Play Forever,” you might not think of something that looks THIS good and if you do, I like your optimism!
If you remember games like Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and Clive Baker’s Jericho, you might be familiar with the work of developer, Mercury Steam. You might also remember seeing another series called, Raiders of the Broken Planet. A game where you could purchase episodes for about $10.00 each. Raiders of course has been completely rebranded as Spacelords, a now Free to Play Forever title and its actually quite amazing. After playing almost 40 hours since its was renewed, I can definitely say its become one of my top favorite games. Its hard to imagine a Free to Play game getting much better than this!
Taking place on an alien world called, the Broken Planet, the game’s leader, Harec, a native of this world, must gain allies from multiple factions — some of which include his own enemies — in order to remove any humans invading his world. Personally, I like the story although I’ve heard some people not really understand it when they hear that Harec’s plan is to find the, “Three Protectors,” who can, “Teleport the humans back to their world with no way to return.” Mercury Steam sets up these cutscenes quite beautifully with fully developed characters — all with their own unique personalities that have quite hilarious interactions with each other considering the serious nature of the game’s backstory involving war, decapitation, immoral experimentation and even genocide. Some of the backstory can be unlocked with currency in the Universe menu. (As shown in the image below.)
The gameplay features primarily a team of four players who pick their own colorful character. They then fight in huge maps involving hordes of soldiers from one of four factions, Locals, (People who are born on the Broken Planet.) Hades Division, Umbra Wardogs, and the Fifth Council. (The last three being invaders from Earth.) Sometimes, matches are only like this but other times, there is an enemy player, called the Antagonist, who can invade the match from the beginning and make life miserable for the team of players. I myself after playing about 40 hours of the game have notice that most of the instances where I do lose occur when there’s an Antagonist present. There is a silver lining to having 4v1 PVP matches in what can be an overwhelming PVE map. If the Antagonist leaves the match, you gain an early victory. Instead of playing through the entire map, if they ragequit, that’s it — instawin!!
Although, the Antagonist does have the advantage. As players on a team, you are given a limited amount of lives. Whereas, the Antagonist has an unlimited supply. Meaning, they are right back into the fray within about 12 seconds. Players are given a set amount of lives until Cortez, an NPC, “Gets more Aleph for the shuttle,” and players are given another set of extra lives. (I’ll mention what Aleph is in a bit.) Once you run out of lives, you must survive a specific amount of time — usually between 35 or more seconds or even hundreds of seconds depending on how many times you’ve run out of lives. If you die within this survival period, you cannot respawn until Cortez returns. If all players die when the Survive clock is running…its gameover man…gameover!
If you think of Materia from Final Fantasy VII than you can consider Aleph to be a somewhat similar mechanic. It functions as both a gameplay feature and a central part of the storyline however there are various differences. Materia can be equipped before battle and the existence of Black and White Materia serve as main story elements. Black Materia casting Meteor which can destroy the planet in Final Fantasy VII and White Materia casting Holy in order to protect the planet from Meteor’s destruction.
Aleph in Spacelords can be obtained by killing Elite soldiers or Antagonists. Gameplay-wise, Aleph gives players a boost to certain abilities — such as Cards you can equip in the Loadout menu before matches begin. You can have up to 5 stacks of Aleph which apply to both players and Elite soldiers alike. Elite soldiers can use them for temporary invincibility boosts, teleportation, or area of effect attacks. However, in some zones, Aleph is used to progress a mission. You might interact with an object once you have a single stack or more of Aleph to overload a generator for example or expose a boss’ weak points. Also because of the way Aleph works, it causes players as well as enemies to be visible if their Stress meter goes up. (I’ll mention Stress in a bit, don’t worry.)
As a story mechanic, Aleph is considered the most powerful energy source in the universe and it can only be found on the Broken Planet. Harec’s people believe if they, “dominated the Aleph,” than they would, “reach the pinnacle of civilization.” That lust for power is was what actually caused the Broken Planet — which was originally structured like any other — to be split apart in the first place thousands of years ago. Its also this lust for Aleph that caused humans to invade, subjugate and even kill the alien people found living peacefully on the remains of the planet itself.
Combat itself is quite fun and depending on the players actions there is a rating system, (Shown above.) which can determine certain outcomes. For example, if you are on the last mission of a campaign and you do not receive a rating of at least 7.0 out of 10 then you do not progress onto the next campaign until you obtain that score. At least, Cortez praises you for getting above a 5.0!
Speaking of combat, Close Quarters Combat or QCQ is extremely vital to succeeding in Spacelords. You can kill enemies quicker in some cases or even execute them in one hit. The system works like so: you may Dodge a Strike, Grapple an enemy for an instant kill but enemies can Strike you in order to stop you and you may Strike your opponent in order to finish them off in 3 to 5 hits. Grapples cannot be Dodged but if two enemies were to Grapple at the same time, whichever button input is read first is the one who wins. Also, taking Cover behind walls or objects restores your health much more quickly. There is also a Stress meter which determines whether or not you are visible to enemies. If you can reach zero Stress then you can remain out of sight.
There is also a leveling system for your account. Your level determines which characters you can unlock as well as what items you can unlock. Players begin with 4 characters, one from each faction. This helps new players learn the differences that characters have in stats based on their faction. For example, if you play one of the Locals then you realize they have low HP but can hide faster because their Stress meter lowers quickly. Certain levels unlock new characters. Shae is unlocked at Level 16, Doldren at Level 42, so on and so forth. Gold is also required to buy characters as well so if I wanted to buy Doldren once I hit Level 42, I would also need 180,000 Gold in order to unlock him. In my case, I only had 80,000 Gold so despite him still being listed as Recruit-able, the time for grinding was at hand. Thankfully, this is balanced out by the fact that you can select maps from the Adventure menu, (You can see it listed as one of the options in the Main menu shown above.) which give high amounts of Gold and even additional Gold as one-time rewards.
I certainly appreciate this game’s approach to microtransactions. You can purchase skins but the best skins I’ve seen for a lot of characters where just given to me for free only because I’m a PlayStation Plus member. These are really high quality skins which shocked me and I thought it was a really nice gesture from Mercury Steam. My favorite skin for Alicia was very well priced so I have plenty of leftover currency for anything else after only spending $10.00. The developers have to make their money but they are pretty reasonable about it.
Now, would Spacelords really be this good if it didn’t begin its life as Raiders of the Broken Planet — which had players pay for certain campaigns? Considering its unique situation, that could be a possibility. The graphics are incredible and very high quality, the cutscenes have that perfect messed-up sense of humor I absolutely love, and the gameplay can be picked up rather smoothly. My recommendation to anyone reading this is try it because chances are, your really gonna love it!
