Reviews - Hell_Diguner

If you've ever played (and loved) one of those top-down space shooter flash games, you'll love SPAZ. It has all the bells and whistles you could want:
-Excellent modern visuals
-Runs on older computers
-Well balanced economy and RPG elements
-Dozens of unique ships, weapons and ship components - customize your ship(s) to your liking
-Find new weapons and ship components by exploring, destroying, or trading
-Weapons, components and ships have upgrades and research
-Tight, responsive feel for any ship you directly control
-Build up a fleet (if you want), and control any ship in your fleet
-Give orders to you fleet's AI using an intuitive interface, from fleetwide orders to single ship tactics
-Procedural galaxy generation for infinate variety from one game to the next
-Visit any solar system and any intresting objects in those solar systems, including ship graveyards, space stations, toxic spills, and warring planets
-Missions, story, and events occur dynamically
-Multiple factions, some of which you can influence to become your allies or enemies
-Zombie faction that dynamically spreads throughout the galaxy and has multiple tiers of "infestation"

The developers state: "We have tried to make the top down space shooter experience as rich as possible and then merge it with a rich and living galaxy that you can play a major role in shaping."
...and I'd say they have succeeded. I would feel ashamed if I were to rate SPAZ anything less than 10/10

I just finished it, and I must say, I'm impressed. Lost Control hides the fact that it IS a mod very well. There's no odd jumps between areas, lots of cutscenes, two dozen scripted events, intro and outro, english voice acting with lip sync, and lots of non-Crysis assets. Bottom line, you_should_play_this.

A couple weapons and attachments didn't have proper names. The walls/ceiling/floors could have used some decals to add more detail. I would have replaced one of the "shocker" moments with a "can't escape and shooting it does nothing" moment. I would also have reduced the amount of ammo you find. Another weird **** moment towards the end would have been good. More suspense would have been good (better control of music and audio, and better lighting). Towards the end I was getting tired of blue/white lighting. With more varied and better use of lighting, this would have gone from suspenseful to scary for me. There were a few spots of lagging, usually whenever there was dynamic smoke. Story was too incohesive to make me care. It detracted from the gameplay because the story should drag the player into the situation. The entire thing felt like "what's going to happen next", when there should have been moments of "oh god please don't let ___ happen". I would not have given the player a weapon until a little bit later. Don't know if you intented this, but as I progressed through the mod I went from being uncertain to almost a power-trip as I reveled my time slow ability. Headshots galore.

FYI, I died once at each of these places:
-alien encounter
-first time slow moment
-the flare fight in the parking garage
-the laser cannon (which I did not see until it vaporised me)
-final battle
You had very good save points.

Snowman made me chuckle, and I really liked the "Matrix Room" - fits perfectly with the time slow feature.

Now I want to play Crysis and Crysis Warhead with the time slow ability and nothing else. Anybody know if a mod like that exists? (PM me if you do)