Space Rangers 2?

[J-H]

This game came up in the comments on a post by Shamus at Twenty Sided (I was there before I was here). The reviews look interesting.

I've been playing LOL, but with a baby on the way I'm going to need to transition mostly to single-player games that can be paused or saved for later without 40 minutes advance notice.

This game looks fun. Is it as fun as it looks?

[warty goblin]

Space Rangers 2 is excellent. It's just nearly impossible to explain why. What follows is my feeble attempt.

So each solar system in the system map is simulated - planets orbit, asteroids zoom, etc. Each ship on the map also has its own AI and agenda, so races wage war, pirates pirate, evil robots dominate, markets fluxuate, etc. You are but one agent in this chaos, given free reign to do as you will. It's a bit like Sid Meier's Pirates, or Mount and Blade.

Now this is a lot of stuff, but the realization that the game was made be crazy people hasn't really hit yet. That hit me in the face like a moist fish the first time I got arrested for piracy or somesuch offense. My ass got thrown in jail, which turned out to be a text adventure. I mean obviously. I was able to make a fair bit of money by feeding my cockroach illegal and highly dangerous stimulants, and using him to win races.

After that I commanded a force of mecha in a simple RTS to defeat a planetary invasion. Naturally I was able to take control of a mecha and play the RTS battle as a mech sim. Later I played an arcade space shooter inside a wormhole.

The other thing that you need to know is that Space Rangers 2 is ridiculously hard. It's not particularly common to die during the tutorial. But it's brilliant fun, and there's a heap of game there.

[J-H]

It looks like there's a "remastered" version on Steam released last year. Is it any good? Some re-treads aren't as good as original versions...

[warty goblin]

It looks like there's a "remastered" version on Steam released last year. Is it any good? Some re-treads aren't as good as original versions...

It's the same game, except it supports higher resolutions and adds a pirate questline. But otherwise it's exactly the same. So far as I know, it's the only version currently for sale on the internet, since they pulled the original SR II and its expansion to make room for the rerelease.