Space Siege

I bought this and it's not as bad as some people say. I think some people are expecting too much from this game as they were expecting a huge mmorpg like dungeon siege.
However i think; rather than develop a poorly made mmorpg that people play for a week and then put down and go back to their previous mmorpg like WoW, they made an impressive single player Rpg game that is fast paced, fun, graphically flawless and has a good seperate storyline with tons of missions for playing with friends over GPG.net or LAN.

The controls did throw me to start with, but like with every game, it just takes a little getting used to.

I think we need more games like this, that are mission based co-ops with friends that dont require you to subscribe.

5/5 for Price,
4/5 SinglePlayer,
4/5 MultiPlayer,
5/5 Graphics,
3/5 Controls
4/5 Storyline
-------------------
4/5 overall

Can't go wrong for just 17.99 from Play.com! Thank You Play.com!

I really had high hopes for this. Having enjoyed the previous Dungeon Siege games, I thought Space Siege would bring the appeal of the former games up to date and expand on what they created.

It doesn't. And in an alarming number of ways. I'm approximately 90% the way through it and I'm simply carrying on to see it to the end. The main character is preset - no change of appearance/race/sex here. Simply a small number of cybernetic upgrades which increasingly make you less human, should you choose to have them fitted.

Then there's the HR-V (or Harvey) as he is known in the game. This robot sidekick can be 'promoted' in a number of ways to have better armour, more resistance, more health, etc. He can also carry different weapons that are picked up along the way - but only one can be fitted and used at once.

So you set off on your quest to fight the aliens that have landed aboard your ship. And that's where the first (and main) problem occurs. The control interface is truly awful. As other reviewers have said, it's slow, cumbersome, unresponsive and just deters you from wanting to make worthwhile progress. Clicking on the ground for the character to move often results in him completing his actions and then moving. Annoying as hell when inbound fire is coming right at you.

And Harvey is stupidly dumb. What should be seen as a great team setup - his weapon selection complementing those of the main character, just doesn't work. Being unable to give him any form of tactical control - he will wander in amongst a swarm of enemies, despite being equipped with a long-ranged weapon, for example. The F3 key tells him to come back to the main character - and its this key that I've almost destroyed on my keyboard since installing Space Siege. Harvey is more often than not just pure cannon-fodder - only survivng attack rounds later in the game as I've selected better health and armour for him on the unlock tree.

It is a game that is good to play - but it could have been SO much better. The story is good, if a little unoriginal, but the gameplay gets very repetitive after a short while.

Bizarrely, it was approached, designed and implemented far better in the older titles and I think this will put off a lot of Siege fans. Definitely a more basic point & click affair this time around.

Wait until it comes out on budget, would be my advice.

If your looking for Dungeon Siege 2 in space as I was will be very disappointed, there is an awful control system.
There is no upgrades to the weapons, the plot and story is very linear and you never get off the ship.
I expected more of travelling to new worlds, of upgrading the ship and weapons.
You have only 1 companion which is a rubbish robot, all he is good for is as a shield for 5-10 seconds.
What Happened, wait till it drops in price.

Think carefully before you buy this, it not an RPG, it's a shooter, and not a particularly good example of the genre to boot.

There is no loot system, all mobs drop generic parts that you use to upgrade your weapons and armour. Weapons are fed to you at pre determined points in the game as are cybernetic 'upgrades'. If you're looking for customisable characters, armour sets, paperdoll style menu etc. you aren't going to find them in this game, despite the misleading references to dungeon siege on the box.

There is no AI for either the enemy mobs or your robot sidekick, he will gladly charge into a group of mobs even if he's down to his last HP and does not use any of his special abilities unless you manually select them.

There is a keybinding option screen that is totally non-operational, don't like the default keybinds... tough, your stuck with them.

There are on screen hot bars which are also totally non-operational. You have to drag abilities on to them to assign them to the un-editable keybinds, but you can't select or trigger abilities from the hotbars with the mouse!

The camera angles, (choice of 2), both severely restrict your field of view, even the 'zoomed out' camera only allows you to view a few yards in front of your character. I was getting a sore neck from trying to peer under the edge of my monitor!

Other than that it's a fairly bland and monotonous shooter, waves of mindless cannon fodder followed by the odd boss fight. Even if the issues with camera and controls were sorted out this game would still be run of the mill.

The graphics aren't too bad.

That's literally the only thing I have to say about the game that's even semi-positive.

Space Siege gets literally everything wrong. The camera is shoddy, and the controls are dire, for a start. Your character is cumbersome and unwieldy, his actions are unresponsive. The character progression is badly implemented.
Your robot sidekick is dull, lifeless and, above all, moronic.
The other characters in the game are similarly badly-thought-out.
The game has no plot to speak of, although all the pre-release hype has been about how there are ethical concerns for your character running all through the game.
RPGs are traditionally about exploring areas, deciding where to go and what to do. You NEVER have to do this in this game.

I could go on and on for ages about how bad this game is, but it's not even worth my time. Just buy something else.