Space Overlords (PC) Review

Destruction Gone Wrong

The building destroying game you had 20 years ago but worse.

In this new title from 12 Hit Combo, you play as an ancient life from that has escaped his underground prison to fight the evil small lifeforms on the planet you once called home. You fight military installations, turrets, small armies, and even a few bosses along the way. With 4 characters to choose from, feel free to wipe out all of civilization to regain your former glory.

The formula of destroying cities and stepping on the tiny ant people below is a very old, yet very successful plan of attack, especially for video games. There are many a memory of me playing Rampage at the local skating rink, playing with friends and decimating virtual cities. Space Overlords is trying bring this back and putting all of its eggs in the destruction basket, but they seemed to have forgotten to make everything else.

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The graphics are very low quality for a game in this day and age, when it looks like it could be run on a PS2, or even a smart phone. Blocky characters, fake water, and straight edges as far as the eye can see really make it hard to even enjoy the better aspects of this game. Even when not on planet wrecking everything, even the cut scenes are deplorable, and really ruin any kind of character development, or world building.

The gameplay is unresponsive and there is a severe lag between button press and action, so every time I want to punch I have to plan it out since I won’t see my results until later. This also applies to walking around and aiming, since nothing apparently seems to activate until seconds after I press the buttons. Walking around is especially tough since the level design is very awkward, and even going over cliffs, which one might think an Overlord would have no problem with seem to be the worst enemy out there.

There are a few positives, such as the special focus you can grant yourself with one of four traits, like strength or agility. This gives you some time to focus on a plan of attack instead of just rushing it. Also, the fact that you can play through the story with any of the 4 characters, albeit not on one campaign run, is cool and offers some nice replay value. With those 4 playable characters in mind, the multiplayer is nice add on and welcome in this kind of game. Having a level editor is actually fairly impressive for a game that’s only $15 and can definitely satisfy some of those planners out there.

Although there are some cool bits, they are just not enough to drown out the monotony and boring level design that never seems to change. Rampage had cool characters with backstories and names that we all knew and loved. You could interact with the buildings, like crawling on them, and shattering the glass, which you won’t find here. Even with this look and feel it doesn’t measure up to others like Planetary Annihilation that look similar but much better. If this was free to play id say it was great, but with a $15 price tag, it’s probably not worth checking out, save for the multiplayer and level editor.