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Starlight Inception is out I think? |OT?|

Zafir

Member
I backed for just the PC key but never got round to trying it. Will have to give it a shot though it doesn't look like it ended up being amazing. :/
 
Anyone else trying to play this with the 360 controller? I'm fighting to keep the reticle on static targets, it's like the deadzone is all screwed up.
Yeah getting some weird stuff on vita too.


The actual gameplay is ok and being able to explore the ship between missions is kinda cool.


There's this retarded control thing though in customization. If you were looking at say stealth module and then press O to presumably go back... It buys the thing!

And if you fail a mission if you press start it kicks you back to the campaign menu, you need to press select or something to retry checkpoint.
 

Nekobo

Member
The second stage gave me bad N64 flashbacks. Fuzzy, foggy, and too much draw in. I hope the other non space stage don't look this awful.
 
Is there much in the way of exploration and upgrading your ship? If the game has depth then I can forgive quite a bit.

its not open world space sim. Think wing commander/freespace. voiced story missions with objectives.

Ships have upgrade parts and there is a big list of ship types and upgrades, so there is content.

It just feels like a 90s space game poorly ported to vita, which is kinda neat in its own way lol.
 
its not open world space sim. Think wing commander/freespace. voiced story missions with objectives.

Ships have upgrade parts and there is a big list of ship types and upgrades, so there is content.

It just feels like a 90s space game poorly ported to vita, which is kinda neat in its own way lol.


You're making this sound quite appealing! I know I'm gonna fold and buy this tonight, it's just a matter of time. Anything even remotely resembling Wing Commander on my Vita has basically left me no option.

Cheers for the impressions, very much appreciated.
 
You're making this sound quite appealing! I know I'm gonna fold and buy this tonight, it's just a matter of time. Anything even remotely resembling Wing Commander on my Vita has basically left me no option.

Cheers for the impressions, very much appreciated.

i will restate that the game is offensively bad looking.

So keep that expectations in check. everything else seems ok so far.
 
played the tutorial mission.

initial thoughts,

how the fuck do they expect anyone to read the text of this on a vita?

Bl3-dDgIUAATbOT.jpg:large


its like playing a 90s pc game at native res on today's resolutions and trying to read the text.

is the text legible on the bottom right on the pc version in cockpit mode?

Bl3-hNMIUAAXH1A.jpg:large




Anyhow horrendous graphics aside, the gameplay is solid enough so far. I just wish for a game that is vita lead, shit is way too dark, and the resolution is horrendously low, like this is a psp game or something.

Yeah, looking at this it looks an AWFUL lot like some PSP games I worked on years ago. It reminds me of that and a combo of some military "serious" games stuff I worked on. Like super low art budget type stuff.
 

jack...

Banned
I wish I could just forget that I backed this but they're pushing like 5 Kickstarter updates per day into my inbox to remind me right now.
 
huh, forgot that there will be a ps3 version in the future and if you get the vita one its cross buy.

think ill hold off playing this until that version comes out which hopefully looks a bit better than vita one.

I'm still feeling like the gameplay is ok and is worth owning on vita due to it being the only experience of this type for the platform (unless im forgetting some other wing commander style game).
 

OmegaZero

Member
First impression: it's a space dogfighting game on my Vita.

The lighting seems to have improved from the beta, and the performance in the first level as well. Not that that's saying much with this game's visuals. Cockpit view and HUD icons look like badly compressed jpegs. And the people....

To be fair, that's the ugliest dude in the ship. Even the better looking models look horrible in cutscenes, mainly due to the minimal animation. Everyone just stands with their hands on their sides, moving their mouths a bit while staring past you. Once you're in space, things start looking a bit better. The models are fairly detailed and the pilotable spacecraft have little hatches that open and close, thrust nozzles that open as afterburners engage, and other such animations.

In terms of gameplay, the ships control well enough. You can shoot lasers and fire missiles and activate stealth fields and whatnot, but most of your missions in the main campaign will be spent staring at waypoints as you make your way to them. And when you get the chance to fight enemies, the enemy AI doesn't make the experience any more exciting since most just fly lazily around, occasionally shooting at you if you cross their path. In Chapter 2, you fight an enemy ace pilot at the end of the level. When the dogfight started, he immediately started flying into a wall, letting me shoot him until he died. I've only died once so far, because I crashed into an enemy ship by accident which killed me instantly.

The game runs smoothly overall, except during large battles/scenes. In those situations, I've experienced slowdown so bad that the game ran at almost half speed.

So far, I'd suggest you save your money. Not because of the visuals or performance, but because the game is simply boring to play. If things pick up, or if the other single player mode is way more fun, I'll be sure to let you guys know but I've completed four story missions out of (supposedly) 10 and they've been short, flat affairs.
 
Sad to hear that it's not turned out so great. I tried downloading the demo on the Vita, but my internet connection shit itself and I couldn't finish.
 
First review I've seen.. and it's bad:

IGN 3.8

lol dude commented on ks

That is a genuinely terrible review - seems very biased, and we don't agree with everything said in the review (for one thing, he the reviewer doesn't understand how target assist works) but there are definitely nuggets to take from it that can help improve the game.

We have been hard at work on the first Vita patch, which will include better animations for the characters, a retweak of level 02, some UI retweaks, as well as other responses to bugs and feedback, and we are committed to improving the game beyond these changes. We can only hope that IGN is open to the idea of looking at the game again, once these improvements have been made.

i do like they are improving it though post launch. You don't see stuff like this on consoles often.
 

Nekobo

Member
Here's a list of things they're working on. I'm gonna hold off on playing the second stage until this patch comes out.

EscapeHatch • 20 hours ago

Here is our latest list of items we are fixing:

1) Increase across the board of ship speeds by a factor of
1.5 with regular use, and 3 with afterburners (still testing to find the sweet spot, but this increase really changes the experience of the game). Adjusting cost of the ships to make them more accessible.



2) Adjusting the size and sharpness of the text and elements
in the main HUD to increase clarity.



3) Making vital HUD elements readable while in cockpit view.

4) Adding auto pilot between waypoints if all targets are
eliminated.



5) Making the between mission traversal optional, AND
increasing characters on the ship. 



6) Changing the function of the purchase dialog to use
something other than circle, and to give a confirm dialog before purchasing equipment and ships in game (btw, this uses Command points - the in-game currency, not real currency).



7) Adding animations on the characters in cinematics to make
them less wooden and static.

8) 02 Chicago Level - improvement of draw distance and
general graphical presentation.

9) Y-invert taken into account for Midway exploration.

10) Pilot Hand toggle setting in cockpit; run capability in
Midway exploration.

11) Fix for two trophy bugs (Training and 09).

12) Messages show longer.

13) Adding a brightness adjustment.

14) Make AI harder.

15) Add run capability to Midway traversal.

16) Add confirm purchase dialogs.

17) Change confirm purchase button to triangle (instead of
the back button).

18) Add a Quick Match option to Multiplayer Pick Game Type
Screen.

19) Fixes of bugs and framerate issues where possible.
 

Nekobo

Member
Not sure why they're bothering with online multiplayer considering it was already a ghost town during its launch week lol.
 
Damn

To think that they worked on it for so long for it to end up so embarassingly unfinished

I was really excited for this one too but saw the writing on the wall after the first demo.

That said I hope they learn a lot from the experience and have a better product next time.... assuming they can afford to make more games
 

gabbo

Member
I'll hold off on my PC download (assuming they have the non-Steam servers up) for a bit. Not unhappy that I backed it at this point, even if the beta was occasionally a pain in the ass.
 
So I decided to try this game again to see if I could get it working, and holy fucking shit. At least they fixed the cutscenes auto-skipping, but I'm now at a state where I've completely abandoned trying to get my Saitek joystick to work. The Dualshock 4 I'm using doesn't actually map properly to Xbox 360 controls despite me using SCPServer, so that's also out (pretty much every other game works just fine with this so I assume there's something wonky with their 360 controller detection). So finally I resort to keyboard and mouse. I launch the fighter for the first tutorial mission, figure out how turning works, and suicide right into the side of a capship.

I realized that I gave more money to this Kickstarter than I did to Elite: Dangerous AND Star Citizen (though thankfully not combined). What a disaster.
 
I will preface all this by saying that I feel kind of bad for the people at Escape Hatch Software, who by all accounts (including my own) seem like nice, friendly people. They're exactly the kind of mom and pop outfit you'd like to see succeed because they seem so nice.

That said, I feel honor-bound to return here and give what I think are my final thoughts: don't buy this game. For the love of god, buy Freespace or Wing Commander or Strike Suit Zero or X3 or even DarkStar One before you buy this. This game is not good. It feels like a game designed by people who only had the faintest idea of how video games worked, and set out to reinvent everything from scratch because they didn't know any better. The first-person walking segments are incredibly slow and the mouse/keyboard controls work like no PC first-person shooter ever. The targeting options are abysmal. Basic functions that Freespace had almost two decades ago, like "target closest enemy" or "target ship under reticule," simply do not exist in the game. The game doesn't automatically switch missile bays when you run out of missiles.

You often don't know about escort objectives you may have until you fail them for the first time out of the blue (the ships you're escorting never cry for help and you can't see an indicator of how damaged they are unless you target them directly). This causes you to fail the entire mission, throwing you back to the last checkpoint. CHECKPOINTS ARE AWFUL IN THIS GAME. They often throw you back two or three encounters, even when it seems like you should be able to save at a clear waypoint in between.

Controls are so fucked up that I can't actually access the Controls menu in game because before I can move the menu cursor down to Controls, I get kicked into the Sound menu and can't find my way out with either the controller or the keyboard. Hitting Shift-F12 to take a screenshot snaps control of the game to the keyboard immediately, requiring you to kick back out to the pause menu to reset back to the controller. I can't use my joystick with the game because the button configuration is hardcoded, meaning basic functions are set on joystick buttons that are generally out of reach. And since doing anything with the keyboard immediately locks the joystick out, playing this game like ANY OTHER SPACE SIM OF THE PAST TWENTY YEARS is impossible.

I can go on: about the cutscenes with people who don't move at all except for their mouths (they're like bizarre talking statues), about the fact that the bad guys all seem to be random Arab and Asian countries, about the incoherent narrative, about how your guns run out of juice after ten seconds of sustained fire (if that), about how you can't even charge your guns while firing your afterburners, about how locking upgrades behind CPs are a baffling way to run a military (seriously, I have to UNLOCK good fighters?), about how it would take something like twenty or thirty playthroughs to come close to unlocking everything, etc., etc., etc.

I honestly thought I was going to finish this game so I could at least know what I wasted my $45 on (though fuck me if I'm going to play the Vita version too, no thanks). But the eighth mission throws a ton of fighters at you, and since they can all hit you with pinpoint accuracy and the game barely has any concept of shielding, you die very quickly. After two consecutive ambushes, if you die you STILL get kicked back to a checkpoint well before any of the bullshit happens. What a fucking shit sandwich.

Easily the worst Kickstarter I've ever backed, and easily the worst game of the year to date. I can't imagine what I would play this year to top it, either. And after having a string of decent Kickstarter games to play, this is now the game I will think of as the worst-case scenario when I see future Kickstarter projects. "How likely will this project be to turn into a Starlight Inception?" is now a question I ask myself.
 

gabbo

Member
I'm going to wait and play my copy (I too jumped on the KS for it maybe a bit hastily) only after a lot of patching has occurred, and hope it helps iron out the problems
 
so that crazy huge update is out for vita to attempt to address all the issues people had lol.

will give it a shot. Im all for giving folks a second chance, especially when they seem to be taking feedback to heart.

9564365323143eb56e4070dea89fe776_large.jpg
 
Bought the game day one and have been waiting for for the patch ever since. Can someone in the states please test the patch and let us EU ppl know if it's any good.

Even though the game was completely broken I saw some potential there and them saying that they already started working on a new update makes me want to give them another chance.
 
Impressions post patch please! Just want to see if it's even worth clearing 2 gigs of space for the patch.

I have played a couple of missions post patch, but IMO it feels a lot better, but you have to see it for what it is, it will never compete with the resent big budget titles and as far as I understand it the hardware of the vita seems pretty limited if you haven't worked with it before and are a small studio with big ambitions.

I have some conversations with them on my twitter where you can read what I liked and don't like with the game (damn you vita for not having copy n paste in 2014) and the answers to my questions.

It could be true or placebo:

I think that the AI for both allies and enemies are better.

A greater feeing of progress when it comes to be able to buy new equipment and ships faster.

The fog in mission 2 looks a lot better.

You can now choose to not show the hand when in cockpit-view.

The text in the game is bigger and clearer.

Faster walkspeed when you are on the ship.

I have played mission 3 two times without having the endless death-loop bug ruining the game for me.

Being able to warp direct to the start of a mission instead of having to walk to the ready



some problems that are still present:

I wish that they had made the story a bigger part of the experience.

some animations still look stale.

some textures of the peope on the ship still looks strange (as I understand it they have lighting baked into the textures)

Some parts in some missions contains low framerate.


It is the only game in this genre on the PS Vita so if you like these kind of games and dont have unrealistic expectations and compare it to nostalgic memories that you have of ie wing commander you might find it quite fun. :)


Edit: I see this game as a work in progress and I hope that the developers will keep making changes to it, to me the SP campaign is the interesting part of the game and my hope if that they'll release story based DLC in the future.

Edit 2: sadly I have to tell you that the game still is kinda broken. tried mission 4 and 5 and it didn't go well. the textures inside the cave didn't show this time and in mission 5 I ended up without a waypoint and no way to finish the mission. this makes me sad.

Edit 3: I have continued to play and have realised why the game didn't give me a new waypoint, it seems like I had missed one ship and you have to shoot down everything before you can anvance (makes a lot of sence actually). As I said before I have contiued to play the game and except for the texture looking strange on mission 5 I have not had any problems.

It is very important that you buy equipment for your ship (shield, stealth, etc.) and listen to your objectives as the game aren't that good at explaining some things that are vital to your enjoyment of the game. remember that you can use the d-pad to highlight friendly units as well as enemies and to use the laser scan in some missions you have to cycle between your equipment with the square-button. I think that it takes quite some time to understand how to play this game the way it is supposed to be played and that it is easy to dissmiss if you don't give it that time.

In some of the missions you have to defend certain ships and in my first attmpts I just focused on the enemy ships and suddenly (to me it looked comlpetely random ) it was game over. then I highlighted the unit I was supposed to protect, ordered my two companions to establish a defensive pattern and matched my own speed to the speed of the ships I was defending. this made the game feel like a completely new game.

try and play the game again if you was quick to write it off as a terrible game, because it's not. :)
 

Bastion

Member
I see this game is on sale for $11. Is it worth a shot at that price? I don't read too many good things about this game.

Are there any redeeming qualities?
 
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