An action role-playing game with firearms and a science fiction scenario sounds like a licence to print money. But the open beta has us worried.
I don’t know how you spent Easter – peaceful egg hunts and cosy afternoon coffee with the family were not the order of the day for me. Instead, I went with my better half and my best buddy to the distant future realms of Space Punks.
As a purple battle-axe, mine-throwing giant insect and nanotentacle lady, we questioned robots galore, looted kilos of crates, endured sandstorms and played the new action role-playing game by Polish developer studio Flying Wild Hog (Shadow Warrior 3) in detail for you.
Among my friends, we were looking for a game with plenty of group action anyway, so the opportunity to take a look at Space Punks before the start of the (Open Beta) came just at the right time. After all, the trailers looked promising too: A quirky troupe of heroes in a stripped-down sci-fi environment, making a racket thanks to synergy effects and a range of interesting abilities.
To me, Space Punks seemed like a mix of Lost Ark and Diablo mechanics coupled with a dash of Borderlands 3 and a touch of WildStar. The optimal combination? Theoretically, yes. Theoretically.
Four heroes, one path to glory
The hero selection at the start of the game already looks promising. You can either play as the grenade-shooting loudmouth Duke, use drones and mini-guns with the tech-savvy insect engineer Bob, beat up enemies with battle-wielder Finn’s fists or wield the nanotentacles of the cyborg Erin.
You play the character you choose at the start of the game exclusively for the first few missions and gain experience with the corresponding abilities. Only later do you collect enough reward crystals from completed missions to unlock further heroes.
Let’s go to the Devil’s Gambit space station. There you start missions, use the bank locker, increase your heroes’ abilities, craft new equipment, switch to another character and distribute ability points. In isometric perspective, the fixed and non-zoomable camera follows all movements of the heroes controlled with WASD keys.
All characters in your account share the bank account, resources and crafting recipes as well as the “Road to Glory”, on which you gradually unlock new game options by completing missions and gaining experience. You can repeat completed missions in “Get a Job” mode on a higher difficulty level and receive better rewards for doing so.
However, each hero has to be upgraded separately: After completing the starting missions with Erin, I could not repeat them with Duke, but only play them as a much more challenging “Get a Job” variant, where it is impossible to continue without support from friends. Due to the masses of enemies, the missions are quite challenging even in their basic version, especially when you are travelling alone.
Rich Robo-Rambazamba
The first mission took our quirky squad to the red desert planet Stopan, where greedy mining corporations mine valuable crystals. With one melee and one ranged weapon each, we slaughtered (or shot) our way through smaller and larger groups of enemies in several missions, in addition to rattling off a few simple targets.
Sometimes we rebooted an industrial plant, sometimes we recovered important data, sometimes we eliminated a giant robot that had gone berserk. Some variety was added by short conversations with NPCs, crane driving, destructible barricades and mini-games for picking door locks.
But basically all the missions delivered the same thing: lots of brawling with the same three enemy types over and over again in very similar looking areas. Abilities like Erin’s nanotentacles or Bob’s turret are quite fun, and the synergies are also interesting. Finn, for example, can use Erin’s activated tentacles to pull enemies towards him and punch them in the face. But as soon as the three of us were on the move with miniguns, the abilities only served as decorative accessories. Continuous fire was simply enough to finish off our opponents.
But even with the miniguns we had no guarantee of victory, as their cartridge reload rate is very slow. If you are surrounded by many enemies, it is rarely healthy. All heroes protect themselves against damage with a rechargeable shield. However, when the shield energy dwindles due to attacks, the life points are used up.
If these are also used up, the heroes end up on the ground. If the others in the team fail to revive within 15 seconds, the entire mission fails and you have to start again. If this happens at the end boss, there is no real joy – not at all. This is where the fact that you rarely get healing packs to replenish lost life energy in Space Punks really took its toll.
Loot is only available at the end of a mission or when looting crates that are standing around. Those who, like me, are used to the motivating pling-pling-pling of Lost Ark or the colourful rainbow of loot from Borderlands when enemies slap the ground will be disappointed by Space Punks. After all, you’ll be thrashing around most of the time with no visible return.
The crates are also anything but generous, usually there is some money, more rarely healing packs, sometimes a weapon or a piece of equipment. And without better equipment, you won’t get far in the “Get a Job” missions – you can also make new weapons yourself, but the resources needed for this are naturally scarce, especially at the start of the game.
Squishy heroes, empty world
Little variety and lack of depth are currently the biggest problems of space punks for me. These problems are encountered in many corners of the game: the rocking soundtrack deliberately alludes to Borderlands 3, but offers few interesting tracks and quickly blurs into the sound background as a guitar hodgepodge.
Besides dusty red sand, crystals, scrap metal, mountains and industrial buildings, there is not much to see during the missions, at least on Stopan. This environment is nicely lit and richly detailed on ultra settings, but the hero textures really stink against their pin-sharp surroundings and seem far too spongy. And why can’t I take a closer look at my character? A zoom function is missing.
Our team of three found it particularly irritating that we learned very little about the game world from NPCs and in the missions and that all the objectives turned out to be interchangeable. No comparison to the thrilling Borderlands story, the diverse WildStar world and even the adventure quests of Lost Ark!
The often quite deliberately witty remarks of our mercenary team didn’t help to create a bit of a relaxed atmosphere. And no sooner had we warmed up to our heroes than the inevitable grind was already waiting in the form of the “Get a Job” missions, with which we should have increased our equipment level for more difficult “Road to Glory” tasks.
The fact that such game time stretching mechanics already appeared in the first levels critically hit my motivation for upcoming levels and planets. Coupled with the uniform mission design and a world that looks nice but feels empty, there is still a lot of room for improvement for the beta phase. Until then, Space Punks, available exclusively on the (Epic Games Store), will have a hard time holding its own against more fun and accessible alternatives.
Editor’s Verdict
I really like trying out new games that seem promising at first glance. Sometimes I find real gems, sometimes I crawl around in the midfield and sometimes the positive first impression is disappointed – like with Space Punks. There are some useful ideas in this action role-playing game. But what is made of them is simply not rousing enough to convince our team of three. At the latest, when you have the feeling after the fifth mission that you’re playing almost the same thing as in the first one, there’s a big hitch somewhere.
I would have really enjoyed the scenario itself and the quirky heroes. But the grind-heavy missions aren’t even good as a fifteen-minute snack for in between, the overall level progress is simply too tough, the path to new, perhaps exciting abilities is too long. Especially in direct comparison to other genre representatives, the sci-fi scenario doesn’t do anything for me, although I find future worlds much more exciting than the twentieth fantasy medieval kingdom.
