You wake up on a ship with a pistol as your sidearm, but the pistol is empty. This voice is telling you where to go and what to do as you make your wake through this unknown ship. You are tasked with finding something that will help you in your journey beyond this first ship. You find what you are looking for and run for your ship, but there are enemies waiting for you. They shoot you and then you are no more. This is our review for Void Bastards.
From Developer Blue Manchu and Publisher Humble Bundle comes a strategy-shooter that looks, and plays, like an old school Doom with a comic style to the art. As the game begins you are welcomed by the electronic voice of a computer system, and it is trying to tell you what to do. It will walk you through a few brief in-game tutorials as you figure out your controls. Once you complete the beginning tutorial mission you find out the one key to this game. When you die, the computer just picks another criminal to take your place. That’s right, you are from a prison ship which is off-course, and the computer is using its disposable assets to make it back to where it belongs. This brings a whole new aspect to the term slave labor.
Void Bastards will take you through your cut scenes the way any great comic book would, with animated comic book panels. This is a very cool aspect to watching the videos that are inside of this game. When you die, it will take you through the progression of your backpack bot taking the gear off of your corpse and taking it back to the Void Ark to give it to a new body. Once you have had your new criminal selected, then you will be brought to a map of the area. Here you will pick your path which leads through the void from one ship to another. You will board the ships that you need to for supplies, fuel, and anything else of interest. Depending on the size of the ship, and the type of the crew, some ships will be easier than others. Some bad guys will be too hard for you with the basic weapons you start with.
That brings us to the next topic, crafting. You are able to craft new weapons and gear while you are on STEV. STEV is your transport ship from the Void Ark through space. In this crafting chart, you will find that you need to search for ships to find parts to build new gear. There will be specified pieces that you need to find on a ship, and then just basic materials to move forward with your crafting trees. Needless to say, the better your gear, the longer you survive.
I like the combat in the game for the most part. You are in a first-person mode, and you really have no zoom for your aim. You literally just point your gun where you want to shoot and pull the trigger. This is very different for me to get used to because I play a lot of shooters where I like to aim at my enemy for better shots. This game just makes you hip fire and kill the enemies. It is fun no matter how you hack it up.
Note: Our copy was reviewed on Xbox One with a code provided by PR.
