Nexus: The Jupiter Incident

[Dark0ne]

Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, formely known as Imperium Galactica 3 and Galaxy Andromeda is a space strategy game set in the future. Aliens have taken over Earth and it's up to you to colonise planets, build your fleet and take it back.

[Zmid]

I am impressed by this game. It's a simulation of commanding a small squadron or fleet of starships, ranging from small, fast and nimble frigates to large, lumbering, powerful battleships. In the single-player, you get taken through a fairly good story-line where you start off as the captain of a fairly small and weak Stilleto-class corvette, then move to a cruiser-sized ship of alien origin, which, you discover, is highly adaptable. Without giving too much away, you then travel through a jumphole to a distant part of space, where you discover a couple of different alien races and a surprise or two. It has a multiplayer option, which, if you get a good server, is fairly intense, though there doesn't seem to be a very large online community.

 

The gameplay is well thought out, as, instead of commanding vast armadas of ships, you command, at most, a dozen or so, but goes into a lot of detail in the commanding of them. It is fairly focused on combat, but there is a little bit of resource management in it, and the way this is done is about the only complaint I have about the game. In the single-player, before each mission, you can configure your ship(s) with different weapons, fighters, shields, etc, etc, etc, but you only have a limited number of each component, and fitting or removing each component takes a different number of resource points, which can be VERY limited. This, coupled with the fact that missions can unexpectedly change from what was said in the pre-mission briefing, means that you can suddenly find that the way you've set up your ship(s) means you are unable to complete the mission. The only option in this circumstance is to reload the autosave from immediately before the mission and start again.

 

However, apart from that, the level of detail is very well done. For example, you can target each individual weapon on a single ship on a different enemy ship, then lauch fighters and order each wing to attack yet more targets, and there is also a 'commando boat', which is used for two things - in the single-player, exploring derelicts and rescuing survivors from downed vessels, or, in both single and multiplayer, sabotage, where your men fly the boat to the airlock on the enemy vessel, blast their way in, then destroy that ship's components from the inside. Which brings me to another detail - each ship has individually destroyable components. This means that you can do things like send in a small frigate or two against a battleship to take out it's flak turrets, then pull them back before they get destroyed and order your carrier to send in fighters and bombers (which are too small to be targeted by anything bar flak turrets) to pound the battleship into submission.

 

In short, if you liked Homeworld, but thought there was too much time arsing around with collecting resources and having to build up your fleet, this is the game for you.

[Dark0ne]

Ugh...I'm more of a Resource Management guy :(

[loveme4whoiam]

I atempted to play the demo of Nexus but as there was no tutorial I was confused very easily by it. I might buy it when it goes down in price and I can understand how to play it. I liked the look of the game and the tight unit management of the game appeals to me, but the complexity did daunt me a little. Let this be a lesson to companies to release good demos WITH TUTORIALS for their games.

[Peregrine]

Agreed on the demo. Would it really have been that much to ask to include a tutorial mission?

 

Impressive looking game though. Poor demo or not, it was enough to have my copy ordered. Everything good about Homeworld 2 (a game I loved), none of the bad parts, and potential to be the game engine I've been looking for to make the game I've been dreaming of for the past few years? It'll be a cold day in hell when I don't buy that!

[Dark0ne]

I played the original demo to this game back when it was still Imperium Galactica 3 (and I ran the site imperiumgalactica3.com). To this day I still believe they changed the name of the because I lynched that domain...

 

..but that's by-the-by. I found the demo at that time (a year and a half ago) practically impossible to win. And, of course, there was no tutorial.

[Peregrine]

I think I've found the explanation for the poor demo quality. You see, it wasn't supposed to be a demo. It was actually a gift to the fans, a chance to see a hated character die in an embarassing way. The admiral whose ship runs into a mine field and dies is the one giving you orders for half the game, and you quickly learn to hate his arrogance. So as a gift to the fans, they created a mission where you get to witness his very appropriate end. Then, behind schedule and needing a single player demo, they released the gift mission.

 

 

 

Now that my copy arrived, I can safely say it's an amazing game. Except for some crash bugs, the game is one of the best I've ever played. And more importantly, it's the perfect engine to build the game I've spent the past three years dreaming of with.

[CrazyGilbert]

I am also quite impressed with the game The graphics are nice but on the demo It was hard to undertand