Space Trader: Merchant Marine review (PC)

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Do you remember the first ever episode of Futurama? Fry evaded the law in order to avoid becoming a delivery boy. It was only until he became one (accidentally) that he found out he actually enjoyed it. That situation parallels my experience with Space Trader: Merchant Marine. With a title that would cause most to fall asleep before they finish reading it or others to believe the game is based around Gorden Brown, a special strike force of economists and lasers the game proved quite a surprise and I ended up enjoying myself.

DHL in Space!

Space Trader: Merchant Marine, which is an indie game, does exactly what you would expect by focusing it’s entire gameplay around commerce. The main campaign sees the player, who has just become a trader after acquiring a trading license, venture forth into the world of economics/killing people. In this world you can trade legally or become embroiled in the sleazy dealings of the black market. Also, in the future the galaxy is ruled by the Ministry of Accounts who control every aspect of money and trade. They are seen as the bad guys as they seem hell bent on taxing everybody to the brink of poverty. The opening level starts off with the player buying a ship in order to further his/her trading operations, but ships aren’t cheap and you begin your journey by repaying the money you borrowed to purchase it. With your ship you can travel to distant planets in order to buy/sell and establish better trading opportunities.

The game is a first person shooter/action adventure. The player can collect money by trading, bounty hunting and collecting rare goods. Bounty hunting is probably the most fun way of making money. Bartenders and sometimes other people will offer money for you killing people and your reward will depend on how well you did. This section of the game reminds me of Unreal Tournament/Quake of old and while it’s not up to the standard of many modern FPS games there is a nostalgic feel to it. The game teleports you to an arena and you advance through it until you kill your designated targets. More maps become available as you progress through the game, but there is not enough of them to shake a feeling of repetitiveness.

This recession has gone intergalactic.

Trading is a simple way of making money and is not complicated in the slightest. Basically you buy goods on one planet and you sell them on another where they are in demand, thus making a profit. Since it’s the core element of gameplay it is forced upon you and can’t be avoided. The problem with trading is that it can become very tedious very quickly and turns the game into a chore at times. It may throw many statistics and figures at you trying to mask the boredom of trading, but it becomes evident at an early stage. Collecting stashes/rare goods is also another way of making money. These goods are hidden throughout the game’s levels, but they are not well hidden so it spoils most of the treasure hunting.

If you have looked at the screenshots for this game, then you are fully aware that graphics are not Space Trader: Merchant Marine strong point. Given the budget this game was given they are actually not all that bad. The character models and environments are nice, but there is not enough of them and you see a lot of copy and paste jobs. Nothing to be ashamed of really since copy & paste jobs seem to be creeping into many of today’s games. Big name titles are guilty of it as well (see Fallout 3). The game also uses the same character models time and time again. This in turn leads to too many of the planets not being unique in any way since you run into the same people in different clothing with similar environments.

Autechre Needed

The sound in the game is found wanting. The majority of characters don’t really have much voice acting and what little that exists is rather poor. The music in the background is techno which is catchy at times, but unless you start tripping balls on ecstasy 24/7 it will become repetitive and annoying after a while. The music in turn affects the atmosphere in a bad way as I felt at times I was at a rave as opposed to a space station.

Space Trader also suffers from more annoying little problems. The game only saves automatically meaning there is no way you can save unless you decide to leave the planet and go travelling. This can causes the player to either lose all the stash they have collected during a mission in order to save the game or, well, there is no or because that’s the only option you have. You could, however, contribute to global warming by leaving your computer on until you have finished the game, but something tells me those hippies won’t take kindly to it. They might even camp outside your house and have a concert about how your destroying mother earth.

Fun with friends…if you have them

Space Trader allows friends to play co-op in the challenge modes. I didn’t get to try this feature much because a) I have no friends and b) I wasn’t able to join a quick match because the feature wasn’t an option in the game. It seems that you would need to pre arrange games with friends in order to play online. You could also go the the game’s official website and search the forums for a match, but it shouldn’t be that hard. What little multiplayer I did play allowed me to come to the conclusion that it’s an enjoyable feature that expands on the single player experience.

It may sound like I’m being very critical of this indie game, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. When everything falls into place then Space Trader: Merchant Marine is a good game. Sure it won’t challenge the big boys in the gaming industry, but it’s up to indie developers to push unique ideas further. Hermitworks Entertainment should be proud of their game because it shows a lot of potential. With a bigger budget it could go far. Space Trader: Merchant Marine retails at $9.99 through Steam and at that price your getting a game that is double the length of most full priced titles and can be just as fun on some occasions.