A game released by Chris Taylor, creator of amazing games like Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander and the heavily played Dungeon Siege games, has stepped up to the plate again and brought us Space Siege.

The only thing the game has in common with Dungeon Siege is the name. Space Siege, as the name indicates, is set on an enormous ship that’s speeding off into space. Earth at this point is a memory due largely in part to the Kresrik, an alien species bent on eradicating the human species from the galaxy. But fear not, you’ll have quite a bit of revenge to serve up hot, cold or, best of all, with one of their own weapons.

Gameplay is pretty simple; you and your trusty robot sidekick Har V (Harvey) will traverse various levels ranging from short and sweet to simply massive in search of alien bad guys to relocate. Each level has numerous baddies hanging around for you to use your various weapon attacks on. And there are numerous explosive materials lying around for you to use (or just blow up) against the alien bad guys. Control of your character is done using the mouse, with the WASD keys rotating the screen and adding as a zoom feature. One thing that the game could have used during this point was a higher zoom scale. The current two levels of zoom just didn’t leave enough to actually see where you were going. While it gives a great impression of just how large the ship is, it’s often frustrating not knowing what is more than 3 meters in front of you.

As you adventure, you can pick up upgrade material from the baddies as a form of loot; this upgrade material will let you upgrade your armor, health and Har-V, and it also will let you gradually upgrade your weapons to fire faster, hit harder and critically hit more often. Also using upgrade material are the various inventory items you can carry based on your skill choices — things like health kits, bomb drones and turrets can all be created using upgrade material. Skills are gained by completing mission goals instead of how many baddies you kill, leaving you with either a wealth of upgrade material or always needing more pending on what you spend it on. Fear not, much of the environment is breakable and will often leave upgrade parts lying around as you trash your way through the ship, Also available are tool boxes [treasure chests], which drop large amounts of upgrade material or the rarer weapon cache, which fill you up of your scarce weapon supplies like grenades or stun bombs.

As mission goals are achieved, you’ll gain skill points that you can allocate to either the engineering or combat tree. The engineering tree lets you build neat devices such as turrets and seeking bombs, while the combat tree lets you hit harder and do more damage. Keep in mind, however, that the skill tree is actually fairly shallow if you stay as a full human. As you progress through the game, your “team” will point out weapon upgrades for you and your Har-V. And they’ll point out cybernetic enhancements you can pick up and install via a special utility that will greatly increase your combat prowess. Some skills and weapons are only useable with the right cybernetic choices, while other skills require a certain humanity level. The choice is yours as always.

One thing I really have to impart on is the choice of cybernetics. At first, it was amusing to listen to the various support characters argue over whether or not you were using the implants. After a while, it just became tedious. The constant cries of “no don’t” and “yes do” tended to get on my nerves (But it didn’t stop my from picking up the parts; who knows when they will become useful.)

Overall, the game isn’t bad There are several things that could make it a far better game. A difficulty setting wouldn’t be out of place, and it could be longer ‐ much longer. The single-player version I played through in about 12 hours was actually quite short in comparison to most role-playing games on the market today. By adding a difficulty setting (letting me start on Difficult, Heroic or are you mad settings), the first time through would have prolonged the gaming experience and probably would have made it an 18–30 hour single-player campaign.

My second issue with this game was the AI. The enemies were frightfully un-intelligent. Set trap, back off. Wait for them. Rinse/repeat — for everything, boss encounters included — which leads to a grinding feeling when moving through the game. Toward the end of the game, it started to get a little more difficult, as the maps would set up bigger and badder enemies with still limited intelligence. Also with limited intelligence was the Har-V. While it faithfully follows you around, trying to get it to do what you want can be frustrating at times. It charges blindly into combat, doesn’t back off when ordered and hates riding elevators with you. Lastly, there’s a medical center every 100 meters or so in most portions of the game that have the dual function of allowing you to upgrade yourself, make healing kits and other supplies, heal yourself, and quick save the game, making it a very quick jaunt through the ship.

It’s not a bad game; it’s just not very filling as far as games go. Normally I don’t rate games, but in this case, I’d give this one a C+. It’s far too easy to complete, with a lackluster AI. It is, however, enjoyable, and blowing stuff up around the ship is just marvelous. I’d suggest trying this game out, but wait for a few weeks after release for the price to go down.

If you liked this game, I’d suggest trying the earlier Dungeon Siege games — both the first and the second part.