Game reviewed on an Alienware system

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The survival of the human race lies in your hands, moving from the tried and true dungeon setting into the vastness of space, Chris Taylor brings us Space Siege. Players take on the personage of Seth Walker, a crew member on the Armstrong. Of course it is the only ship to survive an Alien attack on the Earth. (Oh crap I hate when that happens). 

Walker has to fend off the aliens from destroying the Armstrong as well. He does have a little help by way of augmentations to his body with cybernetic upgrades, (Hey anything to help right, even if it's unimaginative.) though the down side is, every time our hero uses a new upgrade, he becomes less and less human himself.  Not to fret though, you have something like a sidekick along to assist you. The side kick is in the form of a robot.  HR-V is it's designation, and HR-V can also be upgraded to deal out some damage on the alien scum. 

The word short can sum it up really, Not only short on imagination, but short on game time too, but that seems to be the norm these days. After all what is a acceptable amount of game time these days? 15 hours? 20 hours? You may fly through this one in about 10 hours depending on you style of play. If you’re a focused…(Read impatient) gamer you may well fly through this adventure. If you play like my fellow writer (wife) Donna who likes to explore every possible nook and cranny that is in any given area because there may be something hidden and worth finding, you will stretch out that gaming experience of course. Even with a game with no holly crap I never saw that coming moments and an ending that makes you wonder if the writer ever heard of closure in a game (Unless it's just a really bad set up for a follow up game.) this one I am on the fence about for the most part. I wanted so much more out of this game and it just did not deliver.

It just feels like for some reason the game was dumbed down, something is missing and I just cant put my finger on it. Maybe I expected more of an RPG game, even with having skills you can spend points in, it really does not seem to be an RPG. It seems more like an action Sci-fi game. There does not seem to be much in regard to branching interaction with other characters, it's all pretty straight forward.

There are some rather amusing PDA's that you pick up along the way, bringing to mind more of a parody to several sci fi films and games out there. So even though I expected something else, is the game fun? That's what it comes down to really doesn't it? So, yes, the game is fun. The two story lines in the game play out pretty close to each other, so there does not seem to be much reason to play one over the other, just a change up in the end story movie.

Getting through the game will require using a little strategy and using the environment to assist in some of the more difficult battles. New weapons, instead of being dropped at random, are dolled out at regular intervals throughout the storyline, which basically eliminates one of the main draws of games in this genre. 

The character system for leveling up is more boring than it really needs to be. A lot of what made some of the past siege games fun was the leveling, class system and skill development, all of this has been jettisoned from this latest game in the Siege series. The only progress see during game play is some allocation of a few skill points, these are added to engineering or combat traits, and then that seems to only take place after completion of the major events in the game. At this point I really do not see much replay value to this the weakest addition to the Siege series. Space Siege may be for those more hard core fans that know that not every addition to a series is going to be a slam dunk blast of an adventure. Or some one looking for something new to pass the time, myself one time around with Space Siege is enough. 

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Edwin Millheim