EVE always fascinated me, but at the same time how beginner unfriendly I’ve heard it is + feeling like I’ll probably not last long before I get killed off makes me wary of trying it.
If Outer Wilds counts as AA, then I’ll nominate that next (even if I still need to finish it)
Outer Worlds has no space-based content. Yes, you have a spaceship, but it’s essentially a fast-travel device. One of the locations is a space station, but it’s no different than a large building (e.g. it’s not shaped like a torus or anything interesting like that).
Outer Worlds is a really fun take on the Firefly space western concept, though, as long as you understand all of your activities will take place on worlds/moons with basically the same gravity & atmosphere.
The Outer Worlds is in the same bucket as Starfield, but with fewer space-specific elements. Starfield has light space flight combat, though it’s not very sophisticated, more of a minigame. And Starfield has zero-G FPS bits. Oh, yeah, and you mention The Outer Worlds having fixed gravity – Starfield does have variable gravity. But if you removed that, you could make either Starfield or The Outer Worlds not set in space and it’d basically play the same way. Maybe you’d have to come up with some alternate explanation for alien animals and flora, like bioengineering or something, but lots of games have done that.
I like Starfield, but as you point out, unless “space game” means “space-themed”, it’s really not the same genre as some of the other games in here. It has space combat, but it’s little more than a minigame. It’s not trying to be a space combat-oriented game. It does have some zero-gravity first-person-shooting combat sequences, which is kinda nifty, but
Of course, the same apply to Stellaris – it’s a 4x game that’s space-themed.
I haven’t played Mass Effect, but my understanding is that something similar would apply.
For me, the genre has more to do with games being comparable than the theme.
So, if I were gonna compare top games, I think I’d maybe do space 4x games, space combat games (and maybe subdivide those into Newtonian and non-Newtonian physics), and first-person games set in the far future, maybe a few other divisions (e.g. I’d certainly call Kerbal Space Project a good “space-themed game”, though it’s not a combat game). I’ve enjoyed all those sorts of games, but I’d be hard put to compare a game in one genre to the other…it’s like asking “what’s better, a steak or a banana split?”.
Non-Newtonian space combat flight games
This refers to games where you’re flying something that works kind of like an aerodynamic fighter in an atmosphere, but in space. If you turn, your spacecraft moves like flying in a fluid, and your whole spacecraft’s velocity changes.
This was a really big genre in the late-90s and early-2000s, but it saw a major dropoff over time. It was also big in TV series an movies – stuff like Star Trek and Star Wars.
It’s not really a “hard space sim”, but it has a lot of conventions aimed at making it pretty and exciting. Some conventions in the genre:
Space looks a lot like the kind of false-color photos that NASA puts out (note that other genres are not immune to this either).
Often has “Star Wars lasers”, which are visible, slow, and make sounds going by.
Sound transmits through space, so you get explosions and such being audible.
Fighters play a major role, and combat typically takes place at extremely close ranges (relative to our best guesses at what real-life space combat would look like), in World-War-2-style dogfights. The job the human has is usually in significant part the same as a WW2 pilot would have in a dogfight, lining up the weapons, maybe managing “ship energy” or some other such system. There are likely missiles, but these are used at close range, and don’t have high-off-boresight targeting. There’s typically some kind of CIWS or flare-countering-infrared-homing-missile analog.
Forward-mounted weapons are common, though usually not exclusive.
There’s usually some form of “warp drive” to deal with the kind of distances in space in a meaningful amount of time.
The pilot is usually in an environment analogous to a 20th-century air-breathing jet fighter: there are glass windows looking out on space, and visual identification of targets plays a real role.
Carriers often show up.
There are often torpedoes or analogs – hard-hitting weapons that move more-slowly.
It’s often the case that there’s some form of energy shield which can readily-regenerate and blocks a certain amount of weapons fire.
Tractor beams often show up.
Usually issues like utilizing gravity wells or something don’t play a major role in the game.
It’s common to have some form of engine sound. Engines often look a lot like rocket engines – like, there’s visible combustion products coming out the back and a roaring sound; sometimes you’ll have ion thruster-looking things.
The “space trading” genre is probably a subgenre of this; I don’t know of any “space trading” games that don’t also have space combat as an element.
I think that the genre is in significant part a mix of American cultural elements from the WW2-to-maybe-post-Vietnam era. A lot of the stuff is analogous to carrier combat plus having futuristic-themed forms of weapons common in air-to-air combat in the 20th century.
Those are all conventions developed over time by Hollywood and comic books and video games to make games work and appealing. Some of them work pretty-differently from reality (or what our best guesses are as to likely future space combat). But they’re pretty fun (at least, in my opinion).
I miss this genre, myself – there are a relatively-few games that have come out recently, and personally, I think that it’s people missing games in the genre that drove Star Citizen’s funding. I think that one reason that it was such a big deal in the late-90s was the confluence of cultural elements and the fact that space can be relatively-cheap to render, compared to atmospheric combat flight sims; you don’t need a lot of texture memory to make things look good, and hardware was often kinda limited then.
Newtonian space combat flight sim
This is a bit more of a catch-all, but it generally eschews some or all of the above (particularly the “flying through space is like flying through fluid”) and focuses more on the “hard sim” side.
This is a strategy genre; space isn’t really critical other than in that there are many isolated, habitable worlds to conquer.
Master of Orion and similar fall into this genre.
Space RTS
Not a lot of entrants here, but I think that Homeworld permitting for the use of a third dimension does meaningfully change the RTS genre.
Space sim
I’m not aware of a lot of games in this genre, but I can’t really fit Kerbal Space Project into another category, and it’s undeniably a space game.
Space-themed games
I’m kind of using this as a catch-all, but there are games in many genres that are set in the future and have space as a theme, but play pretty much analogously to games set in a present-day theme. Maybe there’s a bit of stuff that they pull in that wouldn’t happen in a present-day setting (e.g. Starfield’s zero-g FPS combat), but you could basically reskin most of the game and have it play the same way in a present- or past-setting.
There’s also a few “fleet command” games. These aren’t really “combat flight sims” like the above, because the player isn’t experiencing a flight sim from the ship, but like the “space RTS” genre, the third dimension really alters the dynamics. Maybe they’re somewhat-analogous to a naval fleet combat sim.
The only example of this genre that I’ve played would be Nebulous: Fleet Command, but I understand that there are a few more out there.
The idea of Eve was always very interesting to me, but I’ve never tried it. The whole aspect of the massive battles wasn’t what I was looking for, I was just interested in the mining and building end of it. I could never tell if I would be able to do that without getting blown up all the time, and never wanted to invest the time in trying it without knowing. I ended up doing something similar in RuneScape. I spent most of the few years I played crafting and selling products and sometimes going on quests.
Yeah, it’s definitely very intimidating to get into, and I don’t think I could start now just because it feels like it’s too late; already 21 years old as a game.
If you want a space game that is very similar to Eve, but not online, check out Astrox Imperium. Be warned, it is very janky and indie.
I’ve got a bunch of other recommendations, but I’ll save those for my med/small posts, so I can write more about them.
I’m pretty sure I’ve bought Astrox Imperium, but I’ve never tried it. I’ve got so many other games I still enjoy playing that it’s often hard to start a new one!
The EVE Online of today has very little to do with the game that came out 21 years ago. It’s been kept up to date very well, the graphics are really nice and the game has been made a lot better for new players. A new expansion just dropped so now it’s actually a pretty good time to try it out.
As for mining in peace: that’s totally doable if you know what you’re doing. The best advice would be to join a mining/building corporation as soon as possible and have them show you the ropes. The element of risk never goes completely away, and you should always be prepared to lose the ship you are flying, but the risks are very manageable, to the point where you should almost never lose a ship unless you’re actively taking more risk.
Yeah, I still play it. I’m based down in Eldjaerin in Minmatar space, right near losec where I do my capital production.
Occasionally I like to try to bait the Russians in Frulegur and Konora (e.g. Coastal Brotherhood) into attacking my carriers or HAW dreads, but I think they’ve learned not to anymore. :P
Ogame is one of those free browser games with pay to win mechanics. I play it every few years just to get rid of that build and deploy fleet bug.
NMSky was pretty mellow and I enjoyed it, up until all the planets i discovered and named had thier names reverted back. No cursing or anything obvious as to why, most were Donkey themed since I am a_d0nkey.
I’m playing Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge and loving it. Cute frogs, beautiful art style, chill gameplay. Just a really nice way to wind down at the end of the day (and also at the end of a very intense academic year.)
I’m also playing Ori and the Blind Forest when I have the energy. I’d never played this before, but picked it up on sale a few months back, and I’m finding it very challenging even on the easiest difficulty. Visually beautiful though.
Picked up 30XX last night and have been going through it. Very fun so far but the end boss is just a bunch of bullllllshitta. SpiderHeck because I can never fully put it down.
Finally finished the full Red Dead Redemption 2 story. (After putting 450 hours into Red Dead Online and starting the single player over a year ago lol). City of Heroes is always in the rotation. Can’t stop won’t stop (unless they shut it down again).
I've been working on Diablo 3: Season 31 off and on for a couple months now, and I'm kind of over it. I made it all the way to the Conqueror chapter, but I keep getting repetitive and useless legendary drops, even though I'm on higher Torment levels. I'm at a plateau that I'm just not that interested in crossing. I don't know if it's because the class I picked or the build or what, but I think I'll just call it here until next D3 season. It's like a complete polar opposite of the fun I'm having with Diablo 4's current season (which we finally got pets for!).
I thought Kona 2: Brume would be a separate story than the first that I played a few weeks ago, but nope, it picks up exactly right where the first one left off. Story wise this game is a lot more interesting and linear than the first, even though it goes in some weird directions and still leaves unanswered questions. I did feel like I was actually learning the story as I went along, instead of going until the very end to have it all laid out for me. I did have to look at a walkthrough for one area because there was a ridiculous amount of back and forth over and over for that size of a map that I kept getting confused on where to go and what to do.
spoilers?So many unanswered questions! Like does Carl have radiation poisoning now? If not, how did he avoid it? What was up with the meteor? Why did it make people react the way it did? The scientists couldn't make the blue pieces red, but then it suddenly didn't matter because the core was red? How did the guy turn into a wendigo? Was it because of the meteor, or was Carl just hallucinating him as such? The Cree angle kind of felt pushed aside, it almost feels like the aliens meme.
I felt the need to have a FPS after my recent bout of non-shooter games recently, and I was in the mood for F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin. It's been a couple years since I've replayed this for the thousandth time, and it's still a great time. I absolutely love the entire F.E.A.R. series.
Shadow Boxer maybe. It’s an arcade boxing game with the same kind of format as Punch-Out but not as easy.
If you want something a little more realistic, there’s Undisputed; a Fight Night clone currently in early access on Steam. But it’s not remotely like Punch-Out other than being a boxing game.
I’ve played so much Punch-Out, I tend to think of it more like a puzzle game. Especially Super Punch-Out since your opponents don’t even seem to randomize their patterns like they do in the original NES one. 😅
Party based survival RPG with a layer of distrust similar to John Carpenter’s The Thing and a few of the failed premises for morale and what not from the game based off the movie. Would probably need some sort of randomizer or rogue like element to keep the tension of who to trust high.
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