Game News Drox Operative Demo Released

[Crooked Bee]

Tags: Drox Operative; Soldak Entertainment

Soldak Entertainment has just tweeted that the demo for the space action RPG Drox Operative is now available for Windows and Mac!

Drox Operative is a starship action RPG with warring alien races, fierce space battles, a dynamic, evolving galaxy, and co-op multiplayer.

In the Drox Operative demo, you can get a taste of the dynamic and ever changing galaxy. There is no time limit, but it does limit everything to around level 6. The demos are about 120 MB.​

Go here to download the demo, and be sure to share your impressions if you do try it out.

 

[Zed]

Oh hallo. I've heard of this game! And I have time to play!
It checks all the boxes!

Downloading!

 

[Morkar Left]

Can't run it on a netbook, please give feedback Zed!

 

[Metro]

 

[almondblight]

It's OK. I get the feeling Soldak could make a good game if they weren't always trying to make single-player MMORPG's.

 

[Zed]

So essentially it's Diablo in Space. You create your character/ship/operative and then you cruise around in space and kill and loot. That's... kind of it.
I think you can win the game through diplomacy somehow and maybe it's a cool way to beat it in the retail version.. The NPC interactions are kind of boring though, because of the lack of text and dialogue.

There are tons of weird sci-fi abbreviations and stuff that I personally don't like. I actually don't care for space settings at all. I understood the basic stuff like... lasers... and shields.

I played 4 out of the 6 levels possible to achieve in the demo, and then I quit because I died. While I didn't play on hardcore - and you can do that - it made me feel like such a newbie that I rage-quit. I felt like I had seen what I needed to see anyway.

I took screenshots but I can't find them on the HD anywhere. The game looks pretty with nice pewpew-effects and spacey-looking space..scapes. The gameplay feels like Asteroids meets Diablo 3 and is exactly as you'd imagine it from that explanation. Dialogue and world interaction is pretty boring. Overall nice indie effort but I won't play it again.

 

[Jasede]

It's essentially Din's Curse in space to be more accurate.

I've been playing the beta on and off for half a year or so. It's only entertaining for the same reason Din's Curse was: it's sort of fun to see what other factions are up to.

 

[quasimodo]

I wish these guys would make a TB game.

 

[Jasede]

The whole draw is the sense of urgency - how quests can fail if you hesitate too long at any given time, how planets can fall if you don't act, and so on. I don't feel like what they are aiming for would translate into TB very well.

 

[quasimodo]

I would work fine if they did it like Space Rangers 2.

 

[Metro]

It isn't anything amazing but, yeah, it's basically a combination of Din's Curse with Depths of Peril diplomacy between factions. Shades of Starflight (just without the narrative). I enjoyed it although I don't think it's anything I'd pick up not on sale.

 

[Balor]

This is Diablo meets Space Rangers. Unfortunately, somehow it falls short of either, but quite enjoyable nonetheless. I miss text quests. Every game needs more of those!
Btw, were cut text quests (best and longest) eventially reintroduced to Space Rangers 2 English version?

 

[Morkar Left]

Sounds to me like I should keep playing SR2 instead...

Balor, afaik in SR2 Reboot were some more quests but it never reached the amount of russian textquests. Damn, if there was a proper english explanation how to use the questeditor I would even start to do my own quests...

 

[Baron]

I wasted most of my entire day off playing this game, apart from when I went out for ten minutes and a Sri Lankan guy t-boned his car into mine (thanks, bro). And the weird thing is... these two experiences were about the same level of fun.

Drox is too much a makeover of Din's Curse, a mouse mashing loot-fest. I thought it worked quite well in a dungeon, a vicious pit of distorted summoned creatures battling for survival. But a crowded universe is quite distasteful, (hence, the necessary genocides).

I think I would really love this game if it was slow and strategic, if I could scan sectors, mine populated planetoids, hail the enemy on comms, slowly turn my ship about, disrupt his shields, activate tractor beams, juryrig my systems, ram his ship... but nah, it's all about button mashing. Fire and forget.

Half the game is scanning recovered loot in your cargo bay to see if there is some slight statistical advantage, and then selling off this clutter for chump change. I don't find this much fun. Emptying one's cargo bays is like a compulsive hoarder attempting to do spring cleaning. Quests usually demand contact with worlds and solar systems you've never encountered or not likely to encounter (I play biggest maps... cos it just be like real space, dig?).

There is a good game to be made here, with the quests, sabotage, rumourmongering etc , and it's Soldak doing what Soldak does. But it's just a cacophany. For me, I think of space as a symphony. A symphony where you can enjoy the dull thudding of missiles against the hull, and make deliberate decisions to jettison the upperdeck crews into the cold void of space for a fraction more power to the shields.

Alas, not everyone can live up to my standards. Certainly not Sri Lankan drivers. Certainly not Space Diablo. What a brain dead day.

 

[Metro]

Agreed -- there's too much ARPG/Din's Curse influence with the loot and pacing. I don't quite understand the need for it. It works fine for Din's Curse but not shoe horned into a space exploration backdrop.

 

[Lightknight]

So essentially it's Diablo in Space.

If it's supposed to be Diablo in space - then it's badly done Diablo in space.
Much like in Din's Curse, classes are without anything unique to them, too many pointless stats lead to a mound of items with many pointless +stat (in case of Soldak's games it realy is quite alot of +stat on every item), and like in Din's Curse, i suspect the variety of items will also be very, very small.

Half the game is scanning recovered loot in your cargo bay to see if there is some slight statistical advantage

Pretty much this.

 

[Mastermind]

If the pacing bothers you play as a slow juggernaut instead. I'm still butthurt the level restrictions don't allow me to become a genuine aircraft carrier, but otherwise I'm quite happy with it and will be purchasing when my financial situation improves.