Gameplay
Its Red vs Green in this massive domination style space MMO. You are given a basic ship, with a solar powered laser and a few nukes. It's your job to level your ship, acquire weapon upgrades, purchase additional nukes. Each zone has an HQ, where you must defend from the enemy team or waves of NPC pirates. The more zones a team controls, the more resources they have and money they accumulate. On a larger scale, capturing the most territories before the season ends is the primary goal.
As the Captain, it's your job to explore each Zone and harvest minerals from the asteroids. When your ship is full, you are required to deposit the minerals back at the Zones HQ. During this time, waves of enemy NPC Pirates we'll be attacking you. If you or your HQ is destroyed, you must start the entire process over - losing all acquired resources. You can either complete this task solo or request aid from your team. The HQ has a limit on how much it can process - so when your team comes with you, get your mineral harvest going ASAP.
Controlling your ship and attacking is fairly simple. With your left virtual joystick, your screen moves and rotates around your ship. Your right joystick controls your weapons and harvesting systems. Depending on your role, and your ships build - combat strategy is totally up to the gamer. Entering a large scale battle (barely lvl 5), I hugged my medic and kept enemies off his tail. When you die, you spawn back at your main HQ. If the fight is still progressing, you can warp back in after a short delay or your ship finishes repairs (depending on the zone).
Creativity
Pocket Starships did a great job creating a simple portable space MMO. The overall concept doesn't stretch our imagination, but with the perspective of a pickup-and-play - Bravo! You have a basic amount of customization options, and a fair number or weapons. When it comes to personalization, you'll start recognizing a lot of duplicates. In fact, the game itself does seem a bit plain. The zones are empty - without personality, and even the enemy lacks any real connection.
Aside from the artwork, the organization of the game is unique. If they had to option to play with one hand, or vertically then I'd be impressed. What's going to push this game to the top, is two reasons. The amount of Mobile Space MMOs are low, and the quality of the multiplayer experience. With the amount of players, you don't experience any lag - even over carrier. In fact, I didn't have a single issue with in-game functionality (great job coders.)
Value
You have the option to purchase both in-game currencies - Free-To-Download. Which means “potentially” if you drop about $200 you will acquire the highest/rarest items in under a week. Completely unfair - even if they wanted everyone to do that, the level cap scales to high for the worth. I'm not sure if too many people have been purchasing, I have only seen 6 boss players, and they could be beta testers. The boxes are a fair exchange, and should be the only way to play. The purchase of Solar, (diamonds) is going to kill the game.
If you play the standard way, you are able to unlock everything in-game without spending real money. For now, it isn't too much of a deal being insta-killed. But if the community ever grows, you're going to find a lot of upset gamers. This game does have the option for season resets, which could help with balance issues in the future - if handled properly. Overall I find it hard playing this game for over an hour, boredom sets in with the amount of repetition. If wasn't for the strong multiplayer foundation, it wouldn't have made it over a 7.
