Miner Wars: 2081 is the latest in the sputtering line of six degrees of freedom shooters, and it glides onto Steam with the similarly epic ambitions of Interplay's nauseating 1994 roller coaster. Of course, high-definition 3D space is a given, so the technological advancement Miner Wars offers is that of destructibility. Almost all asteroid surfaces can have granular chunks blown out of them with dumbfire missiles, whilst a forward-facing drill attachment allows players to literally chew through the level's geometry. Its a feat well-accomplished; akin to the original Red Faction, but seen through the visor of a fighter pilot.
Drilling through rock can also uncover nodes of precious minerals which can be mined and sold to one of the many shops - pretty much space vending machines - for ammunition and equipment upgrades. It's a tangential aspect of gameplay, however, as the scripted campaign missions thrust pilots to and from waypoints whilst they gun down suspiciously-respawning waves of enemy fighters.
This combat is almost always dull, thanks to the prevalence of hitscan weapons. Just shoot the enemy ships quicker than they shoot you. Descent understood that offering six degrees of freedom went hand-in-hand with throwing projectile weapons at you to dodge; sadly, even the missiles in Miner Wars are lock-on based.
The environment's destructibility is also completely under-utilised in combat encounters. Whilst burrowing through a wall to flank an aircraft sounds neat, the Al exhibits no behaviour that reacts to this beyond turning to target you as usual. When a chunk of rock explodes with the force of a missile impact, smaller pieces of debris tumble out in all directions; having that debris damage enemies rather than clip through them, as it currently does, would have afforded a fantastic opportunity to exploit the cramped interior environments against clusters of foes.
It's not just the dizzying indoor installations of Descent that Miner Wars recreates; full open areas of space surround them, littered with asteroids and abandoned capital ships. There's a constant shifting between these outdoor environments and the game's confusing indoor areas, bringing to mind the duality of 1995s Terminal Velocity. Speed through some of Miner Wars narrow tunnels and you'll feel like you're in a high-def reimagining of Terminal Reality's solid arcade shooter. Whatever happened to those guys? Oh... they made Kinect Star Wars.
Back inside, the major problem with this game's interiors is their visual complexity. Though spatial disorientation is a given for the genre, compounding it with any level of environmental elements that are difficult to immediately parse is an invitation for frustration. You'll find yourself mashing the "highlight path to objective" key, which throws out a glowing blue 3D line to follow, more than should be necessary.
As an indie title, developed by a small team, it's obvious most of the work has been put into this engine; the campaign's story not at all interesting and wracked with incredible dialogue such as "Revenge is delicious" and voice acting to boot. Fortunately, it's playable entirely in co-op mode, but additional players are prevented from completing contextual objectives, and their waypoints only ever lead back to player one. So, for everyone else, it's a game of follow-the-leader. A deathmatch mode is on offer, too - but try as we might, we never found anyone online playing it. We were lucky to find more than ten players across the co-operative campaign, too. Connectivity itself is hit-and-miss, whilst the game client itself suffers occasional instability and crashes.
What kicks the final support strut out from this incredibly ambitious hardcore PC title is a horrible kind of mouse acceleration that makes flying your ship an awkward, unresponsive experience. It's akin to a mouse deadzone; something that can be slightly compensated for by fiddling with your DPI levels, but never entirely eliminated. No other arcade flight sim does this, and for good reason.
There's no denying Miner Wars is a massive game. But developer Keen Software House has overextended its reach. Though technically stunning and sporting effective destructibility, the game is visually cluttered and little is actually done with the ability to blow holes in asteroids. The design of various sectors hints at ideas of a more open, freeform campaign, but its current scripting and direction overshadows much opportunity for player ingenuity and surprise. It's a game born of a small group of people asking "Wouldn't it be cool if we could do this?" then failing to ask what comes next.
Developer: Keen Software House
Publisher: Keen Software House
Price: $24.99
PFLC: N/A
Out: Now
Web: minerwars.com
Download: http://www.minerwars.com/Downloads.aspx
