Thursday, August 1, 2013

FTL: Faster Than Light is a Game I Have Played


FTL: Faster Than Light, while not the most engaging story I’ve ever experienced, was definitely one of the better games I played this year. It really shined by giving the player a chance to do their own problem-solving. Should I disable the enemy ship by beaming my crew on board and defeating the enemy in hand-to-hand combat, or by shutting down their oxygen systems with my shield-piercing missiles? Should I put out the fires in my ship’s medical bay by opening the airlocks, or should I send in my repair drone and hope it can extinguish the fire before the facilities are destroyed? I enjoyed being able to play the game on my own terms.

The aesthetics also managed to give the game its own life, at least for the first 10 hours or so. The sense that you’re exploring the very frontiers of space begins to evaporate after you’ve saved 10 different space stations from eerily similar problems. But most importantly, it let me live out my life’s dream of being the captain on an interstellar spaceship. And you can’t really beat that.

Originally posted in the comments at the Gameological Society.