The core concept is little short of awesome: this is a 4X game, but the player doesn't actually run a whole empire as in the 4X games of yore. Instead, the idea is to take control of a single ship, a member of an elite galactic force called the Drox. The job is, simply, to interfere with the 4Xing going on all around in order to bend the galaxy to the Drox's weird only-semi-altruistic whim.
Great right? Win conditions include forcing everybody to be friends, allying with one race and then dominating all the others, and a series of other conditions that are pretty typical for 4X. It's not turn-based of course, it actually plays like Diablo. Warp in to different systems, scout around for "treasure chests" (in sci-fi garb, like abandoned spacecraft), disturb and then destroy enemies, and collect ship components (loot) for upgrades.
The twist is that as well as the "wandering monster" ships, the other races in the galaxy are doing their own thing and will occasionally shout out for help or offer a Freelancer-style mission. Defend this planet. Destroy that boss monster. Steal this technology from someone's enemy. There's also a 4X-style diplomacy screen where treaties can be offered, wars declared, bribes paid, and so forth.
Drox Operative is a game of awesome ideas. Unfortunately it's also a game of terrible execution. Call me a snob, but there is no excuse for a game to look this bad, in this day and age. Oh, it all FUNCTIONS well enough and the interface is pretty streamlined for constant ship upgrades and mission accept/complete updates. But the art is... ugh. That font. Seriously guys, of all the fonts in this wild and whacky universe, why did you pick the one that doesn't fit quite neatly enough inside your UI?
With beautiful art, DroxOp's other big failing could be forgiven: after about three hours, you feel like you've seen everything the game has to offer. The missions are just too cookie-cutter. The enemies are just too samey-samey. The 4X elements are just too by-the-4X-playbook.
Drox Operative is a game that sets up your expectations, confounds your expectations, and then - oh wait - confirms your expectations after all. And yet... and yet... the whole time I played Drox0p, I was thinking "I'll just play for another half hour and then write up the review". I did that for about eight hours.
There's something here. A germ of awesomeness. You could even scratch at it for a while, in hopes the infection might spread...
PC
Developer: Soldak Entertainment
Publisher: Soldak Entertainment
Price: $19.99
Out: Now
Web: http://www.soldak.com/Drox-Operative/Overview.html
