It’s been a long four years since Gratuitous Space Battles was released, but that hasn’t stopped Positech Games from supporting their space strategy title with brand new content on a frequent basis, the most recent of which is the expansion called The Outcasts. This makes for a total of seven pieces of DLC, so it’ll be quite a while before you run out of content in this one; that and it also has quite the active modding community.
That said, there is no plot or mind-numbing resource gathering in this one. At all. Gratuitous Space Battles ditches that stuff and instead goes straight to the meat of sci-fi strategy: epic space battles! Don’t cast it aside as another twitch-based Starcraft wannabe either, because this places far more emphasis on strategy and tactics than reaction time – either you plan accordingly before starting each battle, or risk a humiliating defeat as your ships crumble on the screen before you. Planning ahead is vital since you have zero control over your fleet once the photon torpedoes start flying and everything’s blowing up, which almost makes Gratuitous Space Battles feel more like a tower defense… with massive – and quite expensive – space ships!
It had all started so simply, eleven thousand years ago. The odd replacement leg here, the odd augmented eye there, and for a while everyone on the Vla-hurk home-world was quite happy with the trend towards cybernetic augmentation. Then along came the New World Religion, and the obsession with ‘biological purity’, and before you know it, half the Vla-hurk population is being shunned for having so much as a hip replacement operation…
‘Biological purity’? Madness. Imagine if mankind traveled down a similar road! Anyway, with the new race comes 10 ships, 6 equipment modules and even 2 brand new scenarios in which your strategic skills can be put to the test. It’s available directly from the developer, from Steam or GamersGate for $5.99; and don’t forget about the other expansions.
