Space Pirates and Zombies [& Bounty Hunters] (Review)

Oh! I so wanted to love this game! It was made by two guys. 

"Anything made by two guys. I love." I'd whisper into the ears of girls.


Unfortunately, I can no longer say that sincerely, as it's suddenly false. I am going to spoil the verdict of this review by now stating: Nurp.

I will now use another voice, represented by italics, to explain what's unique about the game.

Space Pirates and Zombies is the epic tale of you doing the same things over and over again for most of sixty seven hours. There will come a moment when one of your friends on Steam will notice that you're playing this game. This friend will be a kid, and he'll say something like, "Hey Paul! That game sounds funny! Is it good?" And you, knowing that this game has only been fun for four of the last forty hours, but also you being self-conscious about the fact that you don't want anyone to think you're a loser who's willing to be bored for dozens of hours, just to write a review almost nobody will read, will say, "Oooooh yeeeah! It's sooooo good! It is the computer game equivalent of hot, oil-covered, panther sex! Oh! I totally don't envy anyone who's not playing Space Pirates and Zombies right now! And overall I don't recommend it." At some point you'll send what you'll call "explicit shot shot shots!" of the game even though the kid didn't ask for them.

"Look at those real-time graphics!" You'll tell the kid. "You get to play with one ship at a time. You can switch - so freely - between them. You'll eventually be able to bring fleets of four. Little ships. Big ships! You can swap resources with space stations and pick up 'goons' (wink) to 'crew' your 'ships' (wink wink)." 


But then I realized....you realize you're sounding too much like a pedophile, and you'll fix the tone by saying, "Ships can get zombified. Self-destruct or vent the crews. How's school goin'?"

Luckily for you he's logged off. No pressure to warn him of the game's leveling up addictiveness. RPG addiction...


And that's the good of the game in a nutshell! Or, in a smaller nutshell: "The game provides a totally unique experience. Can you think of any other game that has you play out space battles amidst a zombie apocalypse?"

"....Homeworld: Cataclysm?"

.....Okay yeah, that's one. But this game lets you choose to travel to nearly identical star systems! And you get to play the same missions over and over again as a means to "quickly" build up resources! And you can trade the same items over and over and over! OKAY I GIVE UP! I WANT MY LIFE BACK! (SIXTY-SEVEN HOURS!!!!!!!!!)

Let me describe how exactly this game will waste 90% of the time you put into it by noting something Tom Chick said. Tom Chick, as you know, is the best games journalist in the universe. He rated Space Pirates and Zombies an "A" (which is a good score), and named it the 2nd best game of 2011. For that reason I bought it.

The only unhappy thing he had to say about SPAZ was that it might be "too grindy for some players."

"Ha ha!" I said. "I can take a little "too grindy for some players'!"

What I didn't know was that by "grindy" he meant: "The vast majority of SPAZ's gameplay requires that you do little thinking and exercise little skill."

"How does SPAZ manage to achieve this?" You ask.

Well, the battles you must fight to beat the game are best beaten by performing a strategy, such as: "Wait for the enemies to kill each other; stay cloaked; tell your ships to 'hold fire.'" Or "Play as a carrier and fly away from the enemy while launching missiles at them until they die." Or "Something else that's also simple to execute and works in those situations in which the carrier strategy doesn't work."

Now, I'm not saying there's no depth to the gameplay. With all the different weapons, which affect different things on different enemies, and with the cloaking and the jettisonable armor, and with the shields, and the drones. And did I mention that the game features self-destruct?! That's practically synonymous for "depth." The game has the depth.

But at the same time, it doesn't, because most of the battles involve so many ships that your piloting skills become not really important, while your Remembering-The-Strategy-That-Is-Easy-To-Perform skill is super important. And since you probably have an I.Q. over "3," this ends up making SPAZ's gameplay experience not so deep. Unless you think assigning experience points to skills is the deepest of deep gameplay, in which case, yep, this game provides a wonderful experience.

The game ends with a unique yet anti-climactic battle. This could be because I was playing it on "Normal difficulty." Or maybe it's because the final showdown was easier than half of the last 67 hours of battles. I don't know.

And that's the review! I wish I had loved the game. Two guys made it. And I played it for 67 hours.......67 hours.

[According to Tom Chick it even gets the Zombie mythology right. And according to my brain, I don't care!]

Verdict: Sixty-Seven Hours....Sixty-Seven Hours......Sixty-Seven Hours.