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"At the dawn of the 22nd century the conquest of space and the colonization of the solar system is being monopolized by several huge and ambitious megacorporations. Although extremely delicate and vulnerable, a balance is maintained by these companies. At the very edge of the solar system the companies make a discovery which will shift the technological advantage and upset the balance. And so a new conflict is born: The Jupiter Incident."
Title: Nexus - The Jupiter Incident
Genre: RTS
Developer: Mithis
Publisher: Vivendi/HD Interactive
Release date: UK - November 5th 2005. US- unconfirmed 2005
Introduction
Nexus - The Jupiter is a brand new RTS game set in space. You control a fleet
of up to 8 vessels and undertake a huge variety of missions ranging from rescue
missions, defense missions and of course, large scale battle missions. Powered
by the awesome new Black sun engine, Nexus promises compelling and tactical gameplay
with huge explosions.
Requirements
OS: Windows 98, 2000, XP
Processor: 1Ghz
Memory: 128MB (512MB recommended)
Video: GeForce 2 (nVidia 5xxx/ATi 9xxx 128MB recommended)
Sound: DX9 compatible
In a nutshell, Nexus is a RTS focusing purely on combat rather than economy and resource handling. These aspects of the gameplay do exist but only come into play between missions. There are many innovative new features, but we will talk about that later. For now, let's look at the first thing new games are judged on: the graphics.
The image on the left should give you some idea of the general detail. The textures are extremely detailed, especially on some alien vessels encountered later in the game and the more I played it the more the game just screamed Homeworld 2 at me, which is by no means a bad thing. The Black Sun engine used is extremely powerful and very versatile. At the click of a button, it can be optimized for DX8 cards meaning that it should play just as smoothly on DX8 native cards.
This to me, seems a good idea, keeping the game playable on the older generation of GFX cards really would broaden the games audience.
The excellent use of lights and shaders also gives this game that extra factor towards making it as visually stunning as possible. The models really do look fantastic, especially when emerging from he shadow of an asteroid or other intersteller body. Couple this with the variety of highlights and blasts from weapons you get one hell of a light show.
As I mentioned earlier, the explosions on this game are nothing short of colossal. Take a look at the below screenshot of a torpedo about to seriously ruin some bodies day.
This immense scale does have it's drawbacks. If you are viewing a vessel up close and it suddenly gets torpedoed... better prepare to be temporarily blinded. Also, from a gaming point of view, these massive, high yield weapons tend to take out half of your fleet too. So, visually, they're great, but tactically, they're not so great.
I'm quite sure you'll agree that it looks the part, but how does it play? well, the game is basically divided into 2 parts. One is the pre-mission preparation, the second is the actual battle itself.
Pre-mission
To start with, we'll check out the mission preparation. Below is a shot of the basic interface you are presented with before you embark on a mission.
On the left you will notice a list of ships. This is the fleet that you currently command. You are limited to 8 ships in total. Once a ship is selected, you get the corresponding list of upgrades on the right along with their cost. Each upgrade costs X amount of resource units, or RU's. RU's are gained when a ship survives the mission and extra points are awarded for individual performance.
This simple method is a highly effective way to incorporate economy and resource management.
As you can imagine, a RTS in a XYZ coordinate environment isn't the easiest thing to get used to. Navigating vessels is fair simple, however, the camera takes a while to get used to.
Dishing out orders is fairly easy and you can directly control vessels, or let the AI use it's best judgment on how to deal with a certain situation. This is a nice feature and means you aren't frantically clicking around trying to keep tabs on what every ship is doing at any moment in time.
Here is the UI used in missions.
At first glance, this looks complex, but to me it has a logical layout.
On the left is your fleet and it's status.
On the right is all enemy and NPC vessels/stations in sensor range.
At the bottom is the list of commands.
In the bottom left corner is the extended status of the selected ship.
and above the the command bar is the advanced command bar, used to alter repair and power priorities.
Final word
As you can see, there is alot to take in when playing this game, and with over 25 missions, it should take some time to complete. However, the length of this game isn't helped by the general difficulty of this game. It is hard, no two ways about it. Also, I often found myself losing track of objectives and not knowing what to do next. Keeping on top of everything despite the AI's help can often be very difficult. I also found the learning curve to be very gentle to start with, but then, became very steep within the course of 2-3 missions; There was an awful lot going on and alot to take in and remeber, but despite these minor flaws, I found this to be a very good game, perhaps a little advanced for some gamers, but for those seeking a powerful RTS linked with a rich story line, this might be the game for you. Discus this game in the gaming forum here. |
