sylph

If you're into shooters, particularly euro shooters, this is a gem! The nostalgia elements are huge and I'm sure will be covered by many other reviews, so I'll focus elsewhere: There's enough interwoven systems here to always give you something to do when you're not dodging bullets. I'd like to say that the nature of bullet dodging here is a huge departure from the 'cave' style of collision detection that is popular amongst genre fans, but I can't help but feel that it was Cave (genius developers) who departed! Either way, this means that in Project X:Light-years, you really don't need the hundreds of bullets that typifies 'bullet hell' - 3 bullets fired at you at once is enough, and it's about the cutoff point where you'll employ other defenses besides dodging to stay safe.- And there are many! overloading, stealth, destroying incoming bullets using particular weapons, of even using active defensive options to reflect them, there's a *lot* of playability in this. There's also ship selection and weapon selection which can be pretty involved (atm use magma or laser vs rocks. Plasma is terrible vs rocks, but puts the best damage out in a cone in front of you. Laser can be saved for when accuracy is required (tight enemy formations etc), Guns destroy shields, etc. And yes, I admit, ~60 hours in this DEMO is probably on the really, really high end, but I can only hope someone gets even more joy from it, I've hundreds of hours in the full game! (It feelsso good to have these games kind of games getting released again!)

Edit score updated since 'hard mode' was added to the game (and with more extra content and depth than any 'hard mode' I've ever seen in a videogame before). I would have enjoyed this game far, far more if there were more challenging game modes. I play it hardcore to increase the challenge, but as most good gamers know, hardcore is a little more of an excersice in patience than it is skill, and it would have been nice to just see a 'hard' difficulty level, with stronger monsters, and perhaps with a save point each dawn, to up the challenge.

This could have been an excellent game. It had all the hallmarks **** game. Sadly (and I imagine the current trend for MMORPGs had something to do with this), it features an unnecessarily extensive grind to get anywhere in it. I'd rather the higher difficulty levels were actually difficult, instead of just being tests of patience. The developers clearly wanted us to play for 50+ hours in order to see everything this game has to offer, but if you were to play the game without repeating the same part more than once, there's less than 3 hours gameplay here. The rest is made up by grinding.

An interesting attempt to rebalance the great original game in this expansion pack ultimately killed it - Forged alliance multiplayer features tech 1 (out of 4 tech levels), and nothing else. Game ruined by a crying community. Real shame.

Pretty much the shining example of what a PC game should be, in my eyes. Awesome single-player campaign, and astoundingly deep, well-balanced, competitive team-based multiplayer. This is my only 10/10 on here, and will remain the only 10/10 short of another miracle of PC gaming.