While the mouse is supported to operate your ship, there is no cursor in the menus, and the options list is very short. The entire game runs at a low resolution and in a 4:3 aspect ratio, really making you feel like you’re playing something from the previous century.
BATTLE FLEET REVIEW MOD
It’s seriously baffling and makes you feel like you’re playing a cheaply made mod or a joke project.
All of the text, such as tutorial and story bits, is read aloud by a text-to-speech program. The sounds of the guns, missiles and explosions are basic and the same every time. Some of the space backgrounds may look nice, but the low resolution textures are unable to render their artistic potential.
BATTLE FLEET REVIEW WINDOWS
The developers opted for realistic style of visuals which leads to the game looking like an old Windows XP 3D title. Let’s just say this is a game that would have looked dated in the early 2000's, let alone in 2017.
Along with the bland gameplay you must also deal with very dated presentation. There is not a lot of content, fun or depth, especially for a $10 game.
BATTLE FLEET REVIEW SERIES
There's a third person and a cockpit view, which can at least be somewhat cool.Īs such, the space combat is unsatisfying and awkward to control, and the game itself is a series of escort missions. When flying close to enemy ships, you can still miss them at point blank range since you have to aim somewhat under them to score a hit. Somewhat confusingly there are two reticules – perhaps one is for closed range combat while another for long range? Either way, neither really satisfies because shooting enemies is very imprecise and ineffective with the cannons. The shooting doesn’t feel particularly satisfying – you’ve got limited lock-on missiles that take time to reload but are highly effective, and a set of typical laser cannons on the front that have a much faster rate of fire and need to be manually aimed. You can even command them to either guard the fleet or cover your flank, but there was no noticeable gameplay difference from either option. You’ve also got a few friendly AI ships, but they are seemingly just as shallow as the enemy AI. The action isn’t particularly fast, but in the largely dark outer space (and poor quality visuals, that we’ll touch on later) it’s not always easy to see where the foes are – thankfully there is a radar that helps orient you. So, you fly around in the vicinity of your friendly fleet and try to take out enemies. There are a few different enemy ship types, but they are largely the same in function, much like your own ship selection. They don’t seem to focus too much on the player, and the AI is very basic, simply flying in the area and taking shots at the nearest ship. This is very much an arcade game – your ship turns instantly, you can’t collide with enemies (though you can crash into the large friendly fleet), and your ship/the fleet remains on the same plane so you’ve always got a sense of which way is down (you can’t truly fly free-form, for example as in the COD Infinite Warfare space combat).Įnemies soon begin to spawn and attack the fleet. Using a keyboard/mouse or a controller, you can turn your ship and fly in any direction. The control options include simply hovering in place, flying normally or accelerating forward. Though, because the action is taking place in outer space, there’s little indication from the backgrounds that you’re actually going anywhere, other than the fact that if you hover in place, the fleet will move away from you. The refugee fleet is always moving forward, so you need to stay with them as well as deal with incoming enemy forces. Over the course of the game, there are some unlocks for new ships and upgrades, but it’s largely basic.Įvery mission begins with you choosing between a couple of different space vessels – having different stats such as speed, rate of fire, shields, and health – though the differences are negligible during the gameplay. There is an icon that represents how much health each ship in the fleet has remaining, helping you stay focused. You may assume there’s some strategy to defending the fleet, but there really isn’t – the attacking AI seemingly targets all ships in the fleet with about even ferocity, and thus they lose health at about the same pace. Each mission has a target goal for how many times you can die, and if any of the fleet ships are lost, it’s game over. The reason the story is rather thin is because each mission is largely the same – you’re literally just defending the fleet of ships from incoming attackers, for most of the game’s 15 or so missions. The story is fairly barebones, as you’re given a task of defending a series of large refugee ships, as they travel across space in search of a new planet to call home. You’re in space, guarding a fleet or large transport ships.
Derelict Fleet is a third person space combat game where you pilot a ship around an open 3D environment.